Basecamp vs. Microsoft 365

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Basecamp
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Basecamp is a web-based project-management tool. Basecamp offers features standard to project management platforms, as well as mobile accessibility, unlimited users, and 3rd party integrations. Basecamp is priced by space requirements and concurrent projects.
$15
per month per user
Microsoft 365
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) is a Microsoft Cloud subscription service that includes Microsoft Office products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access). The software can be installed across multiple devices and ensures that users always have the most up-to-date version of the included Office applications.
$5
Per User Per Month
Pricing
BasecampMicrosoft 365
Editions & Modules
Basecamp Plus
$15
per month per user
Basecamp Pro Unlimited
$299
per month (billed annually)
Basecamp Free
Free
Limited Capabilities
Business Basic
$5.00
Per User Per Month
Individual
$5.84
*Per Month
Business - Apps
$8.25
Per User Per Month
Enterprise - F3
$10.00
Per User Per Month
Business Standard
$12.50
Per User Per Month
Business Premium
$20.00
Per User Per Month
Enterprise - E3
$32.00
Per User Per Month
Enterprise - E5
$57.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BasecampMicrosoft 365
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details*When billed annually.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BasecampMicrosoft 365
Considered Both Products
Basecamp
Chose Basecamp
Basecamp built from its foundation as a project management tool. It has all the tools needed to make sure your projects are created, shared, and completed in the most streamlined process. It definitely knows what teams need to have effortless project sharing, and delivers …
Microsoft 365
Chose Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 [(formerly Office 365)] is an industry leader and for email, calendars, word processing, and file sharing is primarily out ahead of all the competition. The software is also so ubiquitous that everyone knows how to use it and it's standard with most people that …
Chose Microsoft 365
Haven't used any of the options in the drop down option listings. I've used G:Suite (Gmail, Google Calendar, Drive, etc.) and I think it has comparable functionality to Microsoft 365. If our organization shifted to G:Suite, it wouldn't be a difficult transition. But we're all …
Features
BasecampMicrosoft 365
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Basecamp
8.9
124 Ratings
14% above category average
Microsoft 365
-
Ratings
Task Management9.3123 Ratings00 Ratings
Resource Management9.1103 Ratings00 Ratings
Gantt Charts6.843 Ratings00 Ratings
Scheduling8.599 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow Automation8.672 Ratings00 Ratings
Team Collaboration9.7123 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology9.451 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology8.748 Ratings00 Ratings
Document Management9.6115 Ratings00 Ratings
Email integration8.4101 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Access8.8100 Ratings00 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking9.248 Ratings00 Ratings
Change request and Case Management9.458 Ratings00 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management8.342 Ratings00 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
Basecamp
8.0
42 Ratings
3% above category average
Microsoft 365
-
Ratings
Quotes/estimates10.030 Ratings00 Ratings
Invoicing10.026 Ratings00 Ratings
Project & financial reporting8.034 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with accounting software4.028 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BasecampMicrosoft 365
Small Businesses
Stackby
Stackby
Score 8.9 out of 10
Google Workspace
Google Workspace
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
InEight
InEight
Score 8.4 out of 10
Google Workspace
Google Workspace
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
InEight
InEight
Score 8.4 out of 10
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BasecampMicrosoft 365
Likelihood to Recommend
9.8
(150 ratings)
8.0
(242 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(26 ratings)
9.5
(6 ratings)
Usability
9.3
(20 ratings)
7.7
(13 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(28 ratings)
8.9
(54 ratings)
Online Training
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.7
(4 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BasecampMicrosoft 365
Likelihood to Recommend
37 Signals
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.
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Microsoft
Microsoft 365 would be well suited for medium to large enterprises. This is where there are several hundreds or thousands of people. Since most everyone has used one of the applications the learning curve would be reduced. Another reason would be the ability to implement security measures to prevent access to sensitive data. This could justify the cost of an Enterprise license.
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Pros
37 Signals
  • 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.
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Microsoft
  • Chat with teams and the integrations with the other apps, and many more smaller ones, like to-dos, news, and the recent Outlook integration.
  • Easy embedding on SharePoint to broadcast all the content created in the different tools.
  • The office package is still robust with the good things from the past and new additions.
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Cons
37 Signals
  • 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.
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Microsoft
  • Forms lack comprehensive features and parameters for detailed questioning for example cannot be directly linked with Power BI
  • Outlook email filters are not handy to use and require more detailing in terms of location past emails
  • Teams requires substantially large amounts of system resources which could be finetuned
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Likelihood to Renew
37 Signals
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.
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Microsoft
So far the Microsoft 365 platform provides features and tools that can cater to 100% of present organizations needs considering both technical and business necessities, however most features are not been effectively utilised at present. The current featureset is able to cover for most of the future needs of the business and technical functions.
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Usability
37 Signals
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.
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Microsoft
Microsoft 365 is the gold standard for performing project tasks in a professional environment, enabling the quick transfer and exchange of files and ideas for team members who work locally and remotely. Its suite of tools is familiar and has evolved to being cloud based, allowing for files to be updated in real time from near and far.
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Reliability and Availability
37 Signals
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.
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Microsoft
To-date Microsoft 365 platform has offered an amazing uptime and availability percentage per year compared to all other products which provide the stability and overall business resilience of their ecosystem which is a great relief for information technology service entitites which heavy rely on Microsoft offerings as a whole to redeliver their own custom products
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Performance
37 Signals
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
The Microsoft 365 tools expects and demands a substantial amount of system resources to operate at optimal level and even more when integrated with other applications which is a downside, however given that external supporting tech factors such as fibre/broadband speed bandwidth, high speed RAM and ample storage resources are allocated the tools work error free providing robust communication
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Support Rating
37 Signals
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.
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Microsoft
Over the past 8 years of using Microsoft 365, I have noticed that they change vendors often. This always leads to a poor experience in the beginning, then levels out after some time for the company to get things worked out. As a customer, it is really frustrating because I don't have time when something isn't working to have them "look into my issue" and get back with me. They have even closed a ticket I specifically told them to keep open. Your applications are only as good as the support.
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In-Person Training
37 Signals
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
The resellers involved with selling Microsoft products are reluctant to provide in person specialist trainings to consumers due to the fact of costs of economies of scale and is not provided free of charge most of the time. In Person trainings needs to be agreed to at the initiation of projects and implementations for better ROI.
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Online Training
37 Signals
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
The standard training offered with 3rd part resellers are fairly standard and covers the basic workability however the trainings needs to be specifically customised according to unique requirements of the organizations. for example an MSP would need to master specific communications verticals within Microsoft 365 whereas and online store using Microsoft 365 would needs to master a different set of tools within the suite to get the best ROI post implementation.
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Implementation Rating
37 Signals
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)
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Microsoft
The Microsoft support partners are more than capable of handling implementations and dealing with unprecedented errors during the implementations. Not part of the implementation though the setup was done with minimum misconfigurations which is evident with present live setup which works fine without any bugs and gaps at present context.
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Alternatives Considered
37 Signals
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.
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Microsoft
Typically I prefer working with companies with Microsoft 365 as their main tool because they're usually a fast growing company with a global presence. I like using it for work because it's easy to collaborate, share, review, comment, reply in any of the tools. The mobile app for Outlook and Teams are lifesavers when we're constantly traveling and you can join meetings on the mobile Teams to never miss a beat.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
37 Signals
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Microsoft pricing is not very expensive and yet not very cheap as well, and it hovers in between the baseline. The charges are mostly based on the tier level partners who charge based on their individual reputation in the market. Power negotiation will lead to cost effective and attractive pricing
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Scalability
37 Signals
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Multiple tools within the same platform have been deployed successfully within different functional technical and non technical teams such as Devops, SOC, NOC, Shared services, Managed services, Global Information technology, Cloud operations, Finance, Administration, human resources and all these teams collaborate while maintaining central uniformity in terms of global standards who are dispersed in different geographical locations with ease
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Professional Services
37 Signals
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Have not directly obtained professional services from Microsoft but rather obtained specialized services such as implementations and configurations, setting up and integration support with Microsoft authorized suppliers, 3rd parties, and resellers, which has been a pleasant experience. Again the level of delivery quality on professional services is based on the level of hands on exposure of the 3rd party
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Return on Investment
37 Signals
  • 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.
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Microsoft
  • We have a lot of nonprofit users, so they have a good ROI.
  • I like the constant updates without having to purchase the software repeatedly.
  • I used to purchase each Office (insert year here) often, so the software was up to date and had the newest options and connectors. I think my return on investment would have been much better if Microsoft had updated those versions to keep them current; after all, we did pay for them.
  • Microsoft 365's offering a monthly fee or a discount for a year helps, and you can look at it as a free backup if you have everything set to back up to One Drive. (Cloud-based document filing you can access anywhere ( with an internet connection)—you Can't beat that!)
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ScreenShots