Basecamp vs. Teamwork.com vs. Trello

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

Teamwork is awesome for teams who need a flexible tool that supports all types of projects. Since it supports kanban it makes visualizing the work to be done and the work in progress very easy. The Gantt chart support is decent and helps to understand how a team is doing when it comes to getting work done in a given time frame. Teamwork isn't a great option for companies that have a bunch of projects going simultaneously due to the way Teamwork structures their billing based on a number of active projects.

Incentivized

For teams or individuals with lots of individual tasks/details to track, Trello is perfect! It basically removes the need for a paper checklist. For those that need an overall project management tool that requires less tasks and more overarching goals, collaboration amongst various teams, and gantt charts I would suggest monday.com

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

• I am a believer that simple and easy should be the key to create great opportunities.
• Teamwork has helped me to turn simple task management into the execution of large, massive projects.
• It has certainly worked great in helping to maintain workflow in my department.

Incentivized

• Helps track employees "to do before hire", "to do after hired," and "to do when employee leaves"
• Provides important information on each employee like personal information along with data collected during the time of hire and during employment time
• Allows more than one person to be assigned to a task per employee and will remain open until everyone involved has completed their task

• 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

• Visualization needs to be improved, charts graphs are limited
• Value stream mapping should be available to determine and prioritize the work.
• Documentation should be available stepwise with export and printable facility.
• It should be configurable like ERP with cross functionalities of different users, where users login, assign and approve the work, job or project details, where it should be collectively effected on a project.
• Add many examples, little more AI, Machine learning required for suggestion and recommendation. It would be a plus point

Incentivized

• I use colour coding a lot so I would like a wider range of colour options.
• Also as a visual thinker I would like to be able to easily add images to cards.
• I would like to be able to attach a wider range of file formats to cards.

Incentivized

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.

We are already at an annual contract, and have been for the past 5 years; so far the system has delivered, and our personal is already trained in it. A major overhaul of our entire infrastructure (as in moving everything to a single, unified platform) might change the current continuity of Teamwork Projects on our organization, but that's not feasible in the near future.

Incentivized

I am very likely to renew Trello, because it doesn't cost anything to do so. I am also very likely to use Trello's upgraded features in the future because a lot of my team's data is stored on there and they have already gotten used to the platform. Trello is very easy for new team members to pick up, making the onboarding and usability very streamlined.

Incentivized

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

I give it a 9 out of 10, because there is a bit of a learning curve when you first start using Teamwork Projects because there is a lot to learn & recognize where to find it. They do offer a good range of tools that can be applied to every project - So say you're working on an internal project and don't need Milestones or Billing, you can shut those modules off. This can help simplify the interface for beginners. Once you've had a few days in Teamwork Projects, I think it's a 10/10 usability. It's very easy to accomplish your tasks and keep track of what you're managing.

Incentivized

Trello is incredibly intuitive, both on desktop and mobile right away. It is also full of helpful features that make it even easier to use, and is flexible enough to suit almost any organizational need. Onboarding for the software is thorough, but concise, and the service is frequently updated with even more QOL improvements.

Incentivized

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

yes always support available when I need it!

Never experienced issues with the above!

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

We've been able to meet with the customer success team on multiple occasions to discuss the roadmap and learn about the company culture. Being based in Ireland, we occasionally have to wait until they wake up to get support requests handled in the states and larger conversations about big enhancement requests were politely collected but not followed up on

Incentivized

I haven't reached out to their support very often and their support is very limited anyway for the free users. They do have tons of great articles and videos in their Help Center and constantly send emails with updates and add-ons to the product. The fact that I've barely ever had to contact their support team means that they've developed a great product.

Incentivized

It was helpful and informative! It was back before the pandemic in 2019 so I'm not sure if they still do it but I really enjoyed the experience

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)

For our small business, getting a few of us started well on Trello was the key, I think. As long as a couple of us were really comfortable with the interface, we could lead others and help them with any questions. From now on, anyone who works with us just naturally uses Trello for information sharing - it's just part of what we do.

Incentivized

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 spoke about this quite a bit before, but as far as usability goes, Microsoft Projects is totally useless for me, so I avoid it at all costs. Basecamp was just a task management app and had very small feature set beyond that. We had to rig it to do other things for us, but it failed at that. Asana was a very nice app to trial, but it lacked many of the features that we were looking for.

Incentivized

Trello is more simple and not as "robust" as the other tools, but it's easier to use and manage and understand and ACTUALLY get stuff done with. It's simplicity is part of the beauty of using it. You don't need a million options that nobody uses, you just need to get stuff done.

Incentivized

Feels like anyone across the org (no matter their location) can use the tool easily!

Not sure if we use those

• 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

• Teamwork was a great starter into project management software. We were WAY more organized and efficient than we ever were with Trello boards and the PM software included with our accounting system.
• Clients were mostly pleased with interacting with Teamwork, and appreciated the ability to track their comments and requests in one place.
• Ultimately, we stopped using Teamwork after about 6 months because we need something more focused on web development projects specifically

Incentivized

• Trello keeps me organized, focused, and on track. I could filter the Trello board to only see my issues and understand what I needed to work on and when.
• Trello helped our team implement an agile structure. It's a very simple kanban method of viewing all of your team's tasks and statuses. You can completely customize the columns to your team's specific workflow and create tags relevant to your work.
• Trello helps reduce unnecessary communications between teams. When I want to request translations, I simply create a card on the localization Trello board -- no need to directly message anyone on the team, and I can watch the status of the card change from "in progress" to "in review" to "translated," all without having to directly ask for updates.

Incentivized