Item: Basecamp
Rating: 7
Author: Jared DeLong

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We tried out using Basecamp for a little while for our Customer Success Team, mainly during onboarding new customers. There are lots of steps to our onboarding process, so Basecamp allowed us to track the progress of each customer account while also sharing resources that are personalized for their onboarding.

Pros and Cons

Basecamp has a very simple and effective product that is easy to navigate and not overwhelming compared to other project management type tools out there.
Their price point is superior to any other tools out there. You can have unlimited users for just $99 per month and 500 GB of cloud storage.
Their campfire chat area is a great alternative to emails. This plus to-do lists saved a lot of time in drafting follow up emails and checking in with accounts.

They have virtually no reporting within the system, which makes it very difficult to figure out how to improve systems and optimize.
Their integrations feel a bit lacking, especially again with any reporting tools out there.
The lack of customization has been frustrating at times. For example, there isn't a way to hide whatever you want in a project, so we've had some customers confused about certain sections where we've had to explain to them to just ignore those.

Return on Investment

We had used the system to test out improving our onboarding process for new customers, but we ultimately found that the system wasn't customizable enough for what we needed.
Basecamp was a bit difficult for some of our customers to understand, so we ultimately didn't stick with using it for onboarding.
It essentially delayed our business objectives because it didn't prove to be the tool we thought it could be. It also had a negative impact because we weren't able to run any type of reports to collect data about various projects (customers) we were onboarding.

Usability

It's a good tool, very user-friendly and very affordable, but there are just better systems out there that allow more customization and reporting to get you what you need. This could still be a great tool for some organizations if their needs are fairly simple and the budget is more of the main challenge.

Support Rating

Their support team was excellent to work with. They were very prompt to respond to any email questions I had sent in and they were also willing to take feedback from me and also provide info about some integrations they had for potential reporting needs rather than just telling me they didn't have a certain feature.

Alternatives Considered

monday.com, Asana and Trello

Basecamp is probably towards the bottom of the totem pole here based on what our needs were. Trello lacks reporting as well, but there's much more customization with Trello. Asana has more reporting and integration capabilities. monday.com is my favorite so far. The amount of customization, reporting and different views are pretty incredible.

Other Software Used

monday.com, Asana, Trello

Likelihood to Recommend

Basecamp is great if you're tight on a budget and want a simple, yet powerful tool that can handle lots of users. It's also great if you're on a budget, especially as your team and clientele grow. If you have a repeatable process that you can build out into a template of to-dos, then that would be another reason to use Basecamp.

Good Project Management Tool on a Budget

Overall Satisfaction with Basecamp