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 This tool enables the visual management needed in many offshore teams to easily and quickly see the pending work, work in progress and completed work.For teams that work with a waterfall methodology and do not have AGILE internalized, I believe there are other solutions from Planview or other providers.
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 Ability to color code cards based on type, giving better visibility to the variety of tasks a team handles Ability to set deadline dates and have those dates easily visible Flexibility in design the kanban board. It is easy to add a lane or make a change on the fly. Work doesn't have to stop and a long process created to make simple layout changes. Movement of cards is easy as well as the ability to connect cards to show dependencies. 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 Planview LeanKit currently can't or should not be used as a central spot for data and collaboration. Particularly attachments are not well-handled. The portable side of Planview LeanKit is really lacking. We would appreciate some options to group or stack cards. 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 Perfect tool to manage requirement backlog
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 LeanKit isn't the best designed Kanban system I've seen, but overall it's pretty usable. The boards I've used are pretty complex, so it can be difficult to find things. I found that searching and filtering for specific cards was somewhat of a challenge. Dragging a card from one lane to another is kind of a fun way to get things done though.
Nate Dillon Front-End Web Developer, Office of Mediated Education
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 Very minimal outages
Read full review Performance Never experienced major slowness
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 It solves all our needs at this time.
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 Very easy.
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 I think that LeanKit is very similar to
Asana 's Kanban feature and
Trello , but is much less sleek looking than
Asana .
Asana 's clean and sleek UI makes me enjoy project management much more than LeanKit. It might sound silly that the UI makes so much of a difference to me, but it really does.
Trello is also sleeker than LeanKit, but I still prefer
Asana because it has more customization options and a better interface. We are actually going to look into switching to
ClickUp because we wanted something with a better UI.
ClickUp seems to have a great UI with a lot of customization options.
Read full review Scalability Good use cases for small/large teams
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 Our team meetings are more direct and quick to get through thanks to the better visibility of the workload Easily being able to move cards between team lanes gives instant visibility to where the responsibility for the next step is needed. Read full review ScreenShots Planview AgilePlace Screenshots