Basecamp vs. Google Sheets vs. Zoho Projects

Basecamp is a wonderful tool for teams of varying degrees of technical knowledge, teams managing lots of different types of "agifall" and waterfall projects, and teams that are remotely distributed. It's probably less useful for more strictly agile-focused development teams, compared to other more flexible software applications like Jira and Asana.

Incentivized

Google Sheets is well suited in two main areas: is free to use and you don't need to buy a license to use it, comparing to the most direct competitors ; collaboration is in my opinion the best advantage, with multiple people working together and seeing others working in real time. It's less appropriate in low connectivity environments (offline capabilities)

My work involves projects of 5-15 people with numerous projects running simultaneously. Prior to Zoho, I did not have a central location from which to view all project statuses at once. Zoho looks to provide this and also looks like it will deliver. I am anxious to see how our organization's use of it develops. At this time, I feel I am likely to recommend Zoho Projects because my organization has made great software decisions in the past so I have a level of trust already that the research has been done that Zoho is the best solution for our line of work.

Incentivized

• Task management - It is very easy to add, organize and discuss tasks within Basecamp's interface.
• The "Campfire" function is great for communicating when you just have a quick question for someone on the team.
• Notifications - Basecamp lets you decide how often and about what you'd like to be notified. The ability to respond to messages in Basecamp directly via email saves a lot of time.

Incentivized

• Collaborative planning : In the initial phase of project, Team leads and architects create a permission matrix along with the naming convention simultaneously, seeing who is editing / adding the details in real-time.
• Cost tracking : We use this tool to track cloud resource usage monthly costs, so that we can analyse it and send out comms for high cost based resources. By storing cost data here, it's easy for use to store data of last couple of years.
• Flexible documentation : For change logging of different scenarios we would need different / ad-hoc columns to be added on the fly, which makes using this tool much simpler then reputed third party tools.

Incentivized

• We use it to manage our sales orders as there are lots of moving parts which are necessary to get client orders done properly.
• I use it anytime I have a new idea I want to put into motion. As I can create a list for brainstorming, feedback, specific actions necessary in order to test and or implement the idea.
• Unrelated to business, it's a great way to plan travel in order to make sure you don't forget those important things like passport, flight arrangement, client meeting confirmation, and meeting prep as far as what specific documents or things do you need to bring with you.
• And since everyone is on the go and expected to keep up with work, the mobile/tablet app makes it a breeze to keep up, work on, and create new projects.

Incentivized

• High Learning Curve. It's true that it can be easy to use, but to use well and effectively takes some time to learn. It's recommended to have an agreed-upon system in your team of what tools to use and when.
• Notification Overload. If people aren't careful they could send a notification to everyone when only a couple people were meant to be prompted. And since emails are sent by default, you could have your mailbox overloaded with unnecessary updates. This is where it takes a bit of training in your team to have an agreed-upon system.
• Lack of organization with Archived Projects. I will often need to reference an archived project to make a new one, but there is only a list of archived projects in alphabetical order, with no way to organize by archive date, or even search.

Incentivized

• Ease of use - I collaborate with a lot of folks on these and a lot of them have trouble using it.
• Would love more live features; for example, being able to have cells react to other inputs (checkboxes, etc) with reactive formatting
• More cross-usability with other Google products; it's hard to think of drawbacks honestly, this is a pretty seamless software.

Incentivized

• There is no ability to add custom fields in the "Bugs" module - for example, if we want to add fields such as Version Number.
• Reporting is not integrated - its a fairly expensive add-on.
• There is no easy way to track actual and completed dates for tasks - so historical variance analysis is not easy.

When I bring new people onto a project, it's immediately obvious how to use Basecamp. I don't have to worry about teaching them the features or walking them through it, it's just incredibly user-friendly. For this reason, I'll continue to renew my subscription even as new people are brought onto production jobs or the client changes.

I am not involved in the purchase/selection process, but my organization is a Google shop, and Sheets meets most of our spreadsheet needs and works seamlessly with our other tools. I don't anticipate our switching anytime soon.

Incentivized

I've reviewed about 8 other project management solutions and Zoho Projects is the best I've seen without being overly complicated. Zoho Projects keeps getting better! Recent new enhancements makes it even easier to navigate. There are new keyboard shortcuts that cut my time way down. The tools are very easy to use.

It is easy to use, even for clients who have no experience with the platform. It can only get a little cumbersome to ensure that a client can't see certain documents you might want to keep in the Docs & Files folders. And sometimes, getting a client to actually use an unfamiliar platform can be a challenge.

Incentivized

It can easily handle most uses and functions. It is only for very large datasets or advanced analysis that it either lacks the proper functions or performance begins to slow. Most employees who continue to use competitors' products do so out of preference, familiarity with the user interface, or other surface-level reasons.

Incentivized

Zoho Project has been very user-friendly. As a small business, we have a diverse group of people with varying skill sets. This platform has been easy for our team to learn, implement, and succeed with. The mobile version is also very handy for our team.

I've never experienced downtime while using Basecamp, or been unable to access it when I needed it. That's not to say they've never had downtime, but I've been lucky enough not to encounter any, and I work odd hours, including late nights when maintenance is often undertaken.

Incentivized

Like most Google products, Google Sheets rarely has outages or slowness, and when it does, connection is always momentarily restored. I can't recall a time when I've been unable to access Google Sheets but able to access other sites just fine. That said, errors aren't uncommon when handling large data volume. You know what they say about using spreadsheets as databases, but sometimes it's just the most convenient option, especially for smaller or one-off projects, and not being able to store large amounts of data hampers our ability to move quickly with scrappy prototypes or full solutions. It would be great if we could better integrate our data manipulation (Apps Script) with big data in the sheet.

Incentivized

Has not been down to my knowledge.

Again, Google Sheets is no exception to Google's general high speed and reliability, but load times can be slow for larger amounts of data. I've used Sheets with Zapier and have used the Python API, and speed has never been an issue.

Incentivized

Speed meets my expectations.

For the many reasons I've given, Basecamp is a very strong program. There are a few features I can imagine that might make it even better, but I don't have a basis for comparison to be able to say that there is definitely a better one out there. I've noticed that Basecamp has evolved a bit from the time I started using it until now, so that makes me think that the producer of this program values it and believes in continuous improvement. If you could use the features offered by Basecamp, I would think you could use it with confidence.

Incentivized

I have never contacted Google Sheets support, but Google Sheets makes it very easy to report an issue or suggest a feature from Sheets itself (Help > Help Sheets improve), and I've had mostly good experiences with support for other Google products.

Incentivized

Although it might lack intuitiveness, once you get a hang of how Zoho Projects works, you can do a LOT. The impact good project management has on profitability is huge, and it has helped not only improve communication and coordination when working on a project, but more importantly have adequate tracking of time, due dates and potential bottle necks

Incentivized

Decide the process before implementation - i.e. when it's due 8/9 does that mean 8am, noon, 5pm, 11:59pm? Check your to-do list frequently Set-up templates - just not with the dates (they can be funky)

Pretty good, but [Basecamp] has its drawbacks. Honestly I find the interface non-intuitive and sometimes have trouble figuring out how to change the status of a task. Perhaps it has something to do with the way it was originally set up by the admin, but I'm not sure. I liked Jira's drag and drop obvious functionality, but the project management side of the software was lacking. Smartsheet has excellent project management functionality, but the task management isn't as good.

Incentivized

I have found that I can do almost everything I could have done in Microsoft Excel faster and easier in Google Sheets. We recommend Google Sheets in 99.9% of our use cases and feel it meets the needs of our workers very well. I am sure there are other spreadsheet creation programs out there, but because we are already in the Google environment, adopting Google Sheets in very easy.

Incentivized

Zoho Projects provides a more limited set of functionality and customization options than other task/bug trackers on the market, but what it lacks in functionality it makes up for in ease of use. It probably has 80-90% of the features of its competitors but takes about a third of the time to get up and running and realizing value.

Incentivized

I'm not involved with the purchase, but I assume everything goes smoothly and that the pricing structure is predictable and reasonable. We do not get surprise fees.

Incentivized

Google Sheets works very well with multiple users. It's convenient to see in real-time who is collaborating in a sheet, down to the specific cell that they're viewing/editing. Linking Sheets across departments is convenient with the IMPORTRANGE function.

Incentivized

• It has saved me time when having to get the same message out to multiple restaurants
• It has helped us make smarter operational decisions because we can all collaborate on an answer in a shorter amount of time (instead of calling a meeting!!!)
• The calendar function allows us to plot out our marketing agenda for the month and add/change it together as needed. The chef will post his recipe, the managers will cost it out, the social media manager will post pictures on it, and ultimately we will get that information out on an info sheet to the staff by printing the page.

Incentivized

• Don't need to pay for windows 365 license as it is free
• Has a positive impact since I am not cursing excel for annoying problems(I don't want the new Pivot table format, I want to use Classic and I don't want to expand/collapse arrows. "x$#%")
• [Haven't] looked at return on investment on work, but has "simplified" for basic and medium spreadsheets.

Incentivized

• We needed a system to organize our growing business, so anything was better than what we had, which was nothing.
• Recording time spend is a huge reason for using project software. It has made me aware of the tasks that are taking too long and where we are not being profitable as a company.
• It has kept our team accountable for what needs to get completed and when projects are not in motion or completed timely. It's helpful to know in order to get billing out faster.

Incentivized