Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review I love to outline in MM and its ability to link related maps. Great help to me as a writer! I don't love the export of the outlines. Needs to be a cleaner, simpler look. I work around it, though. I rated the above question 6 only because it's too expensive. I've had it for years and, until recently, got almost every upgrade. I can't afford it now and may have to look for an alternative to keep updated software. Bummer!
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Great to segment things out (projects, organizational charts, processes, workloads, etc) and gives you a full picture of the job. It is user friendly, simple to use, and powerful. MS Office and Teams integration is great. Allows for easy collaboration. Great GUI and visuals Excellent method for project planning and brainstorming Read full review Cons 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. Read full review I find formatting a challenge. Example, make all the boxes the same format and fonts so when you add a box, it understands the format of the top level box. I have played around with some of the templates but find creating my own each time is better route. The project plan template is very good but I find myself deleting boxes and again, takes more time than creating a new map every time. I try to get colleagues to use MM but they are intimidated by the UI. I am really comfortable with it but to them it can look more complex than it really is. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review I feel the main issues of the old Mindjet seem to be gone with the Corel purchase. With the huge advance of sharing via browser HTML even 1 user can affect many. And, actually, using MM kind of forced my rigid brain to rethink how I categorize and classify information/projects.
The
idea of paying $69USD for an annual cost is more than fair and a great
model for Corel/Mindjet to keep rolling out improvements!
Read full review Usability Basecamp is a little tricky to learn. I've used it for quite a while but I feel like there's still so much I don't know. It took me a while to learn but having used it in college definitely helped me integrate it into my work career.
Read full review MindManager is very intuitive. The user interface is not cluttered and the ribbon icons are easy to understand. Several excellent "how-to" videos are available on the MindManager site as well as on YouTube. MindManager starts quickly and the user interface is very responsive. Launching other programs from MindManager such as Excel is very fast and issue free. The browsing feature is lightning fast. The drag-and-drop capability is also very fast and reliable.
Read full review Reliability and Availability 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.
Read full review Almost perfect.
Read full review Performance The application is quick and responsive. We are able to produce mindmaps and reports with ease. The program is not complicated at all and integrates well with software and programs like Microsoft Outlook and Teams, which we truly appreciate.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review I have called technical support a few times. During the COVID Crisis, I called a few times repeatedly due to a rush request. The technical support guy called me back in minutes. He somehow knew that I had called repeatedly and wanted to make sure my issue was resolved immediately
Read full review Online Training The videos are not well categorized...I had to do a bit of digging to get what I wanted and many videos on older versions. If Mindjet was to improve the titles used that would help.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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)
Jenni Waggoner Marketing Content Manager | Social Media | Newsletter | Blog | White Papers
Read full review Wasn't involved but works great for me.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review Both are equally good.
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is used to get the models in a more technical format in comparison to the MindManager. MindManager is easier to use in comparison to
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect . MindManager makes collaboration easy and can be understood by a layman and does not need to have specific software training.
Read full review Scalability A team can collaborate on the same project but cannot create a shared project file. It would be helpful for that feature to be added.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review When scope planning before I was introduced to this tool, I needed to make one master Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) for the entire project and move on. With MindMapper, I typically generate about 20 WBS-like charts throughout the project, which encouraged conversation with staff members. The major key in such ease of use has been some well thought out and very intuitive keystroke planning that allows me to keep up with the free flow of ideas. This software's cross-functional capability allowed 10 engineers to create their projects directly within their own environment without use of a virtual machine. Read full review ScreenShots