Item: Brightpod
Rating: 8
Author: Lisa Maier

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Brightpod to manage tasks for our digital marketing agency clients, interacting both with internal and external resources on task management. Some of our projects are made accessible to our client teams as well.

Pros and Cons

Ability to easily review the resolution path when multiple participants contribute to a solution.
Good search functionality to find tasks based on keywords.
Good archival access for closed tasks and pods.

Cannot open files right from Brightpod, have to download first. Would be great to at least be able to preview/view in advance.
File organization within a pod seems clunky, so it is difficult to organize and classify, as well as to find/access previously uploaded files.

Return on Investment

We don't measure the ROI of this product.
Previously, we used Box and Basecamp and we find this product superior for our needs.
We think the simplicity of the product increases usage.

Alternatives Considered

Box and Basecamp

It has been a while, so I don't recall specifics, but we started with Basecamp about 10 years ago and it was not meeting our needs, so we moved to Box, and again were driven to find another solution. We moved to DeskAway, by the same company as Brightpod, and when that product was sunsetted, they migrated us to Brightpod.

Support Rating

Support is just OK. Our needs have not been great, but I feel like we need to solve most of our own problems when they do arise. Although, I have to say that the team is very friendly and responsive, so we do appreciate that.

Usability

Brightpod is easy to use. We have several levels of users, some are from outside the USA and some are here. We needed something that could be used by programmers, coders, technical project managers, marketing individuals, and administrators. We get a thumbs up from all these user types. The system is hardly ever down, so we are able to use 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

Key Insights

Do you think Brightpod delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Brightpod's feature set?

Yes

Did Brightpod live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Brightpod go as expected?

Would you buy Brightpod again?

Yes

Other Software Used

8x8 X Series (Formerly Virtual Office), Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), QuickBooks Desktop Premier

Likelihood to Recommend

I like Brightpod. We used their previous product, DeskAway, which we actually liked a bit more for our needs (cannot remember why now as we've found workarounds over the last three years!). It is good for us, and we need to organize multiple task lists for multiple clients. We need to be able to monitor task progression and completion, as well as to track time by resource. We need to prioritize and focus our resources, and we need to review time tracking/performance reports. All possible in Brightpod. We especially like the access we can give to clients, which is on a task list basis, so they can see some task lists in their pod but not others, which allows us to not overwhelm them with unnecessary info, but at the same time, accomplish the detailed tracking we need.

BrightPod: A Handy Task Management Application

Overall Satisfaction with Brightpod