TrustRadius Insights for Basecamp are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Recommendations
Based on user reviews, here are the three most common recommendations for Basecamp:
Learn and Utilize Basecamp's Features: Users recommend taking the time to learn about all of Basecamp's features and functions. They suggest getting training or working with someone experienced in Basecamp to fully utilize the platform. This recommendation helps users make the most out of their Basecamp experience.
Set Up a Standardized System: Many users suggest setting up a system or process that everyone can follow when using Basecamp. This recommendation helps to ensure consistency and streamline project management within teams.
Consider Other Tools for Advanced Functionalities: While users find Basecamp handy for organizing projects, offering instructions and feedback, some reviewers suggest using a more advanced tool, like Monday.com, for large teams collaborating on projects. They advise evaluating additional functionalities and comparing prices before deciding on Basecamp.
Overall, users recommend considering Basecamp as a low-cost option for small teams with straightforward projects. It is recommended for organizing projects, managing workflows, facilitating team cooperation, linking departments, coordinating tasks, and storing data. However, users caution against using it for purposes other than its intended use and highlight that compared to more advanced tools, it might seem basic and limited in benefits. It is also suggested to stay updated with appropriate titles and efficiently organize projects while using Basecamp. Additionally, Google Drive is recommended for file management purposes.
We use Basecamp for messaging and file sharing between our Standing Committees. It helps keep information easily accessible in one place that can be referenced at any time. It is also an easy way to message committee members and keep a simple thread of responses. It is also good for collaboration, with use of the Writeboard feature.
Pros
messaging
calendar for keeping track of deadlines and events
document retention and file sharing
Cons
When messaging, you have to click names of people on the committee so they get an email into their email inboxes (nice feature), but click that many boxes can be time consuming.
If you need to change someone's login email, you have to delete the user and then re-add them with the new email.
Listing of "projects" on the side is small and takes a while to "see" sometimes.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is good for asynchronous work. It is a great messaging system, even if it can be a bit clunky at times. But, easy to learn. If you have a large folder of documents to share, you can create a ZIP on your desktop, then upload the ZIP - works very well.
We are a software product company and sell a school management software on a monthly subscription. Since we keep enhancing and improving our product through the feedback we get from our customer schools and do specific customizations for schools, we need to manage all these requirements somewhere to communicate, collaborate, build and close them on time. We manage all of this through Basecamp.
Pros
Project Management.
Internal communication between team members.
Internal collaboration between team members on product features.
Managing timelines so that work can be delivered in time.
Keeping evidence of all requirements and delivery of these requirements through Basecamp for clients.
Cons
Adding team members in between pings so that they can join the same conversation.
Reports for tracking team member's schedule and availability.
Only selected people in the project should be allowed to communicate with clients added on Basecamp for clients.
Likelihood to Recommend
Communication and collaboration between small teams of up to 20-25 people is where Basecamp works best. In terms of reports on the schedule and availability of team members, Basecamp needs improvement.
VU
Verified User
C-Level Executive in Information Technology (Education Management company, 11-50 employees)
We used Basecamp as the project management software of choice from a vendor tasked with the migration/development of our new website. All communication was to be funneled through the app along with any files and assets needed. To my knowledge, no one else on campus is using it. We were using it as a PM tool with a third-party vendor.
Pros
Easy to get started
easy to add/onboard team members
web/mobile access
Cons
Horrible user experience
Messy chat threads
Was hard to find what the vendor was referencing at times--was the file I need in the messy thread, the files tab, or somewhere else?
Likelihood to Recommend
It may be fit for light usage in a team environment but we had a horrible time trying to make sense of the app with 15-20 people attempting to collaborate in different countries and time zones.
VU
Verified User
Project Manager in Marketing (Higher Education company, 501-1000 employees)
We use Basecamp in our marketing department. It could easily be used across the company, but only the marketing department uses it currently. It's used to manage all of our projects and tasks in the marketing department. I don't particularly like logging in every day or even reading the daily recap emails. Instead, the way we use it is this: If I have a task or a new project, I meet with my team, and have my project manager take notes as to what needs to be done. Also, any one-off tasks to any team members are copied to the PM. The PM creates those projects and tasks in Basecamp, and each morning, the PM reviews tasks completed, tasks over due, tasks due that day, and tasks coming up due over the next week and makes sure the team is aware of the tasks.
Pros
I enjoy the calendar view. As long as you're always assigning deadline dates to the tasks, the looking at the calendar view can really help you determine your outlook for the day, the week, and quickly see any tasks past due that need to be addressed or moved.
It's easy to bring in outside people in on projects and give them access to that particular project to collaborate just on that.
Duplicating projects or task lists is a helpful feature when you have a recurring task list. It makes it easy to have the same process every time you want to execute the task list.
Cons
I use Basecamp V2 because the newer V3 misses some functionality of V2. It seems it was built for a slightly different purpose. Unfortunately, V2 is not seeing feature updates as often as V3
Integration with other platforms would be nice. For example, I'd love to see my personal calendar or my business Outlook calendar overlaid on the Basecamp calendar, but this is not a possibility currently.
I can subscribe to Basecamp's iCal to show the Basecamp calendar on my personal calendar, which is handy, but it is quite limited. I can't see any detail about the task aside from the title. None of the description or information on what project or task list the task is attached to.
Likelihood to Recommend
Basecamp is a basic task list tool with a few cool features, and is well suited for most companies to track their projects. It's not comprehensive enough that I would log into it every day to review what's coming up that day, so I delegate that out to a project manager. But I would certainly recommend it to anyone to use as long as they are willing to log in daily or they have someone to log in daily and monitor.
We use Basecamp to communicate with our offshore development team for our digital learning platform. It is only used by our digital learning team to communicate with this specific vendor. No other department or team in our organization uses it. We use it to discuss new features for the platform in depth, in order to keep the user stories on our development tracking platform cleaner and less cluttered. It is a great way to keep in touch with the dev team on more complicated features that will span multiple sprints, and to work out strategies for how to build and deliver those features.
Pros
Provides a consolidated feed of recent activity (messages posted, discussion threads, sprint planning and recap posts, etc.).
Provides email updates on what has been happening on the board, with the option to not email you during non-work hours.
Allows for both synchronous and asynchronous discussions, which is great for working with offshore teams.
Cons
Does not allow for information to be automatically ported over (via API or similar) to our user story tracking platform.
Doesn't provide an easy way to search for file or image attachments that were added in various discussion threads.
Unclear how or why some files are accessible via the Docs & Files tab, and some aren't.
Likelihood to Recommend
Basecamp is great for having in-depth discussions about product feature development with virtual & global teams. It is not a one-stop-shop for development tasks, though. You still need a separate system (like YouTrack, which is what we use) for writing, prioritizing, and scheduling user stories into sprints, and tracking their QA progress through the various development environments. It is more of a supplemental product development tool than a main development tool.
VU
Verified User
Professional in Product Management (E-Learning company, 501-1000 employees)
Basecamp is used for a project with different parties to stay connected and share experiences.
Pros
Message board where people can share news or ideas.
Creates a dashboard suited for your needs.
Cons
Notifications may get a bit excessive if you don't set them right.
I'm not sure if there's an ability to hold video meetings, that would be really good.
Likelihood to Recommend
Basecamp is suited for collaborative projects or just a place for people to come together to use as a platform for engagement. This can also be used as a good tool for project management where you can keep track of projects and events, and document management in a company. Its user-friendly interface allows users to use it easily and efficiently.
We use it as a project management platform to organize different projects and initiatives.
Pros
Easy to use.
Works well on iPhone.
Good value.
Cons
It would be nice to customize notifications to not just be all or none and to select preferences by the project.
Likelihood to Recommend
Basecamp has been a great tool to get our teams working together and to share information. We haven't been using it as much this past year, and I am not sure why, but 2-3 years ago it was really great for our organization.
Basecamp is being used by our Marketing and Admissions departments to communicate with our outside marketing firm. The platform has allowed us to share files and respond across multiple members of our team. Basecamp addresses the challenge of sharing large amounts of data and content in a format that is easy to access.
Pros
Provides an email thread that is easy to navigate.
Allows users to communicate without having to send multiple emails.
Provides a means to share large files.
Cons
I would love the calendar to be synced to Outlook (please forgive if this is a feature and I have just not figured out how it works).
Likelihood to Recommend
Basecamp, in our case, is excellent for users at multiple offices or locations. It simplifies communication and storage of projects for access for all members, provides daily updates on the projects, and allows for consistent communication to all involved. It might not be as appropriate if a group/company already has a common method for project management.
We've been using Basecamp for about 4-5 years now as a project management tool. The entire organization uses it to manage all of the various projects we have going at any given time. It's honestly made a huge difference in our ability to keep up with timelines, deadlines, notes, and documentation for each and every project. I 100% believe it has made our company more effective.
Pros
Allows for the creation of groups of To Do's under one project.
The Activity Feed allows for a great overview of what's happening to be able to quickly see where things are
Anyone can create a to do and assign it to anyone, so people are empowered to take ownership over projects.
Is pretty easy and straightforward to get started and creating To Do's and Projects
Cons
No dependencies! I wish so much that dependencies were an option. So often we have to remember to manually assign the next To Do to someone after something has been completed and it's easy to forget this. So that this human error can be avoided, dependencies would help with this greatly.
It took a long time for us to figure out how best to fit Basecamp into our work flow, who was responsible for what and how our processes would best work. It's great now but it probably took us a solid year before we got to the point where we had smoothed out the rough edges and felt like our processes worked perfectly within Basecamp.
You sometimes have to be careful about where you are placing information: in the comment v. the note v. commenting on the list v. commenting on the To Do. Depending on who has been checked to received a notification, not everyone will receive the information. This isn't necessarily an issue; it just means you have to be very careful about where you are placing information and double-checking that the people you want to be notified will receive it.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you have a lot of different projects that run concurrently and have a lot of moving parts, I think Basecamp is especially beneficial to help not only the project manager keep track of progress, but for everyone in the group to understand where they are in the process and to make sure goals and expectations and deadlines are clear. It has meant that we have less meetings, which has made us much more efficient.
I think if your projects really depend on dependencies, you'll need another program, however. And perhaps if you work at a very granular level, this may not have the level of detail you need.
I am using Basecamp as my project management software to enable our team to track short term and long term projects. The ability to assign tasks, comment on those tasks, and most importantly, assign due dates, is great. The low point of entry too is something that allows you to get this cloud based solution in place quickly. One of the features I most like is the direct integration with Google Drive. You can link files in Google Drive instead of having to upload them. I would rather manage files in Google Drive, so this makes it easier. The newer feature of allowing vendor/clients limited access is a great add on. I would suggest for those that are going to go the Basecamp route to take a look at the great videos that the Basecamp company provides. In addition, there are a ton of other products that directly integrate with Basecamp.
Pros
Direct integration with Google Apps. Allows you to link files instead of uploading them (why upload a 1GB video files into another system when it is already in Basecamp)
Allows assignment of multiple people for a task in the newest version of Basecamp
Easy on-boarding of additional users, being that it is cloud-based. As long as they have a browser you can send them an invite
Limiting access to client/vendors. This allows you to use the same project without worrying about clients seeing items they should not.
Cons
Tasks. If you could assign tasks to multiple people and assign a sub task to each person it would be great. Such as make a logo, then a week later, have a sub task of replace logo on website. Right now you have to create two tasks or fiddle with dates
Improve the calendar or task date view (depends on if you're using 2 or 3.) I had issues with it being hard to navigate.
Their pricing structure is good for what you get, but I wish they offered an education discount.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you require project management in the general sense, to better organize your workflow, this is the software for you. A few great uses of Basecamp include: to share with a photographer, so they can upload assets for your projects; to type it into your design work with InDesign; to plan out a schedule of advertisement for a year.
Where Basecamp is not good is if you need more of a flow chart model, where there is step 1, then 2, then 3. Basecamp cannot handle that easily. You end up making a lot of tasks and they are not linked, so you have to manually move dates if one task is not completed in time.
VU
Verified User
Director in Information Technology (E-Learning company, 11-50 employees)
