No matter how much responsible you are about your work, you are bound to forget tasks at times. It becomes tedious at times to manage tasks of a whole team with a large number of team members; monitoring each one’s task list view in real-time and also having a clear view as to how much progress has happened in work. In such situations, team management apps come as a saviour. You sure must have heard of Basecamp as a project management tool, but today I am going to discuss some exclusive Basecamp alternatives.

App stores are flooded with apps that help in managing your team seamlessly. But are all these apps worth trying? How do you know which one will save your time and energy?

Basecamp and Basecamp Alternatives

I faced the same situation some 10 months back. As our number of projects and customers increased, it became more difficult for me to manage tasks and workload on the project managers was overwhelming. Unknowingly time was wasted, the work speed lagged, resource planning floundered and I found it difficult to keep a track of which team member is doing what. Not just me, but our each team member seemed to be oblivious of what the other person is doing. I wanted to have proper communication tools for transparency and unified tasks board where I can view everything in a glance. So, we decided its time we start using team management apps that can help track our progress in real-time and provide us with detailed project reports. Since the app market is already overflowing with team managing apps, we decided to start with Basecamp.

On right time 37Signals understood the need of web designer/agencies and came up with Basecamp – a clean, simple and elegant way of managing projects and collaborating with clients. I personally loved Basecamp

Frankly, $20 or so every month did not seem much compared to the services I was using. At that time I would have given my free software advice and asked everyone to use this tool. I liked the fact that Basecamp did not try to do everything. Rather it did one thing and was perfect. But in two months’ time, I started looking for other basecamp alternatives. As our projects and customers increased, I found Basecamp less useful. The one problem was, 37Signals did not try to improve Basecamp. Rather, additional services like Campfire and Highrise came into the market from them.

Some other pressing issues with Basecamp were-

For using the chat services, I was asked to sign up for Campfire.

Time tracking was missing – this feature can be availed by third party integration.

Sad that even the “New” Basecamp came with no trace of time tracking feature claiming that no one was using it. Well, we were and we loved it!

Basecamp refused to grow, but my team size was! I needed better options and other project management solution.

Best Basecamp Alternatives that I tried:

While building a team during the last 10 months’ time, I tried many team management software with my project manager. Here I will discuss picking up the best work management platform, along with their pros and cons. I tried to find the best option, but honestly, nothing is perfect. I realized every app has its strength and weakness. So, instead of searching for the perfect solution, I turned my focus on what problems I was facing with Basecamp. I started to look out for apps that will help me solve these problems first.

Basecamp Alternative – TeamWork

The next project management software on my list was Teamwork. Why I tried teamwork? I was browsing through reviews of different project management app when I chanced upon Topten REVIEWS. There I saw Teamwork has received a verdict of 7.88 out of 10. I scrolled down the list of features and reviews featured against each. Hence, I decided to try Teamwork. The first thing I noticed in Teamwork is an entire page dedicated to a detailed comparison with Basecamp. Among its 100,000 companies mentioned like Pepsi, Forbes and EA. Here are some of the management features to love about Teamwork :

Sophisticated search – Enables you to search any term quite easily.

Continuously updates iOS and Android apps – These apps are loaded with the latest features.

Time tracking feature even available on the mobile app.

Milestone Tracking – Enables to break large tasks into small achievements.

Integration with 3rd Party Apps, like, Google Calendar, even Gmail and other Google applications.

Teamwork has updated some of the features and has made the integration of the Teamwork projects and Teamwork CRM much better.

You can also add the teamwork CRM home button to your smartphone and be updated about the details while on the go.

The best part about Teamwork Project Management tool is that it readily available Zapier integration, which opens up the wide integration of advanced web applications.

Teamwork’s free plans allow a maximum of five users, two projects and 100 MB storage space. To upgrade, you need to have a paid plan at $9/mo per user. With that, you get 300 projects and 100GB storage. They have a premium plan that is $15/mo per user, offers 250GB file space, a total of 600 projects and can add up to 100 users.

The disadvantage of Teamwork is that its features are price-restrictive, especially those in regards to integration with storage apps like Dropbox and Google Drive.

Update: Teamwork products are prepared with GDPR and CCPA requirements to serve the European customers and subscribers accordingly. With the third-party vendors audit, data access, portability, and privacy policy, Teamwork has updated all the detail here.

Basecamp Alternative – Hive

Hive is one more tool like Basecamp which you should try-out for managing your team in your company. Hive project management systems have plenty of management features starting from planning and project scheduling to executing them with the team members, maintaining regular team communication and monitoring the progress along the timeline.

Having a flexible project management system, with multiple project views and actionable templates, you can quickly plan the repetitive tasks. Using action cards, action lists and forms you can fasten up your project planning and execution and save time while switching back-and-forth the email mailboxes. You can also share the forms outside your organization, among clients, customers and more.

Built-in communication integrations with an instant messaging app like Slack and Zoom helps you instantly organize video conference and internal messaging and group chats. File sharing with the team, partners invite for collaboration in a single project are some of the collaboration features that keep Hive head on head with Basecamp and other alternatives.

Monitoring, project scheduling and tracking and resource scheduling with predictive alerts are some of the key features which make the tool visually quick to use within the complete team.

Upcoming management features of Hive application includes 2-way email sync, meeting notes – to turn notes into actionable tasks, simple feedback loop process and approval workflows.

Update: Hive products are fully compliant with GDPR and CCPA, and it has taken all the significant steps to serve the EU citizens and subscribers. Data controllers belonging to EU can enter into a new revised DPA(data protection addendum) with Hive. Also, Hive is self-certified under EU-US privacy shield which further makes the data transfer more protected.

Apps and Integrations:

Hive instantly integrates with more than 1000+ tools, and also have integration available with Zapier, Dropbox, and more tools. You can immediately import existing tasks from other alternative systems like Asana, Trello, Basecamp systems – Incase you are looking for instant migration.

For a remote working team, Hive also has apps available for iOs and Android mobile phones, along with Windows and Mac operating systems.

Hive vs. Basecamp:

While comparing this project management solution with Basecamp, Hive management features include kanban board, analytics reporting, resource management, Gantt Charts, single dashboard view combining all projects, request forms and time tracking.

Hive Price Plans:

Hive price plans are pretty straight-forward, they mention one plan available at $12/user/month billed annually, or $16 billed monthly. If you have more than 20 users you need to talk to their sales team.

Hive also offers its users with Workspace add ons such as proofing and approvals priced at $3/user/month + base price, resourcing at $4/user/month and so on.

Basecamp Alternative – Wrike

At one of the point of time, I also tried the popular project management software Wrike. The fact that Paypal, Adobe, HTC, Disney, and Nissan use this, I thought to give it a try, check the features, that may meet my team and project needs. From Wrike, I liked the fact that resources and deadlines are moved centrally which helps project teams to align fast.

Features of Wrike are worth mentioning here are:

Elegant and simple to understand user interface

Detailed time-tracking feature

Integration with Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, as well as mobile apps

Provide Free up to five users and with 2GB storage.

Efficient resource allocation and management

Customized automated workflows

File widgets for efficient file management

Wrike management software has all useful charts including, Gantt Chart, Baseline Chart and Performance Chart which shows and tracks all progress and achievements according to the plan. With great collaboration with all the team-mates, Wrike also includes real-time team documents editing, where you everyone can collaborate at the single sheet, similar to Google Docs. Wrike also helps to avoid confusion and uncertainty with the help of their activity streams and @mentions feature. It also allows integrations with instant messaging apps such as Slack and Gotomeeting. Another, very different offer from Wrike, came in the form of exclusive case studies, learning resources that can help you with issue tracking and industry performance benchmarks. All these helped me and my project manager in gaining more knowledge about our industry and at the same time eased out the learning curve.

Wrike is a great project management tool for:

Marketing Teams

Creative Teams

Project Management Teams

Product Development Teams in a company across the Globe.

Business operations teams

Service professional teams

Not only this, if your company uses Google applications then, Wrike has very close integration with them, you get to:

Easily attach documents straight from Google Drive

Save time with Gmail gadget inside your Gmail account

Integrate tasks into your Google calendar

Now only these, looking at overall feature integration of Wrike with Google Apps, we can call it Google Project Management Tool.

The pricing plan of Wrike: The free trial plan allows you to use 5 users. The paid plans of Wrike starts at $9.80 per user month for 5 GB storage and unlimited projects. You might need to connect with their help desk to get the enterprise plan.

Wrike update:

To be able to put up with new GDPR and CCPA law Wrike is continually investing in new tools and features to make their product GDPR and CCPA compliant. These updates include improving the security infrastructure, an audit of the third party contractual terms and conditions, new tools for data portability and data management.

Basecamp Alternative – Asana

I had heard a lot about Asana. So, I decided to try it. Asana is a wonderful project management alternative like Basecamp alternative and a great team management app. It allowed me to add more than one person to a task, track what others are doing, mark a task finished and also create different teams as per my need. I could also create custom fields to help me create task priorities.

Management features I loved about Asana:

User-friendly interface, easy to understand (allows you to use various color schemes to color code your task views)

Integration with Google Drive, Dropbox, Slack, GitHub, WordPress and many more – these are all the apps we use day and night.

Perfect for Small and Mid-size businesses; especially for growing startup like us.

Mobile and tablet compatible – One of the most required features for flexible team.

Social Media sharing and Time tracking feature set available

Ability to see teammates’ tasks and priorities

Follow tasks and add followers to them

Set due dates and goals – Reminder is a wonderful feature

REST API for customers to create custom-interfaces

The pricing model of Asana: Basic Model which is Free. The paid plans starts at $10.99 per user per month and the business plan is priced at $24.99 per user per month both prices are when priced annually.

Asana offers open-source Chrome extension and its REST API can manage users, projects, tasks, workplaces, and stories! This Task management software serves companies like Twitter, Uber, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Rdio, NationBuilder, new york times and Airbnb. Rosenstein from Hops & Hominy compares the working of Asana to a healthy human brain. He opines Asana is the future where coordinating collective actions will be hassle-free for every organization on earth. To Rosenstein, Asana has its heart in helping people self-actualize, help their fellow men and leverage their potential.

Asana was great until the trial period expired. The paid plans seemed costly for us, since all these features I was getting by paying at Asana, I could avail them for free at Podio. Also, you can find my Wrike vs Asana review and Asana alternatives.

Asana update: Asana has introduced several new features to make their products GDPR and CCPA ready. It includes everything ranging from data transfers, security, data management, and other portability tools. You can find everything related to that here.

Basecamp Alternative – Podio

After a few days, I started with Podio. Found in 2009 and acquired by Citrix 2012, Podio is definitely a fresh take on team collaboration software. I will give a quick overview of Podio’s features-

Android, iOS, and Web-browser compatible

Integration with Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, Zendesk, GoToMeeting and Freshbooks

Full open API

In-built IM and video chat for team communication

Includes private and open workspaces

Management of files and sharing

GoToMeeting integrations

I immediately took a liking to this cloud-based project management software Podio. Any app that connects me to Evernote and Freshbooks, is always welcome. So, Podio was my next trial. Although Asana promised “Teamwork with emails”, I still took a liking to Podio for its integration feature, especially its integration with Campaign Monitor, Dropbox, and Google Docs. The icing on the cake was our custom integration with Mailchimp alternative – Mailerlite.

Podio also has a freemium model. However, I would say this is where Asana out beats Podio. It offers a free version for limited access rights and functionality control to up to 5 users. After that, it is $9 per employee, per month. Asana definitely wins.

Pricing/Billing plan of Podio: Upto 5 Employees and 5 External Users, Try Podio for free.

Comparison with Basecamp:

Basecamp vs. Asana

In the hunt for a perfect tool for project scheduling and management, I started with Basecamp, followed by using other tools over time; one by one. Here is a very first comparison of Basecamp vs Asana:

Basecamp VS Asana

Basecamp comes at a flat rate of $99 irrespective of number of users you have. Asana, on the other hand, offers a free plan with generous features. The paid plans starts at $9.99/ month per user. So, if you are a decent team then BaseCamp will be a cheaper option.

Basecamp offers 500GB space and allows a maximum file size of 2 GB which is more or less enough. Asana has a different take on storage. A company spokesperson quoted “Asana doesn’t specialize in storage functionality, so instead offers integrations with cloud providers Dropbox, Google Drive, and Box. For individual files uploaded to Asana, there’s a 100MB limit per individual attachment”. But the good part is that there is unlimited file storage.

Basecamp has a ‘master’ calendar for the whole team. Also, you can have specific project calendars. Asana hosts the option of having personal calendars as well as project-specific calendars. Also another point worth mentioning is that Asana is quite popular amongst the tech teams for its strong project planning and tracking capabilities.

Next comparison I want to do with,

Basecamp vs. Podio

Podio provides a review of all the tasks across the workplace, unlike Basecamp which reveals the ‘To-do’ lists only. In Basecamp you will need to navigate across all the Accounts to get the status view of your task.

In basecamp ‘Discussions’ pick up from where To-dos take leave, but sadly these are separate features. Podio has the task management features like Task comment threads and descriptions features in contrast to Basecamp.

Basecamp definitely has its priority set to clients engaging priority, and it is perfect. Podio has a weird way of showing the “contacts”. They have something called “External Users” which are supposed to be either contacts, or clients! It is confusing, in other words.

However much we negate emails, it ultimately boils down to one truth- emails are important. Your clients may have different systems to worry about. In such cases, emails are saviours. Basecamp does this most effectively and beautifully. The email notifications for project tracking are a seamless way to have control. Podio is a mixed bag in this case. There are a lot of features that keep users wondering what’s happening. The lack of integration of emails for actual conversations is where Podio lags.

After Podio, let’s compare,

Basecamp vs. Teamwork

Well, Teamwork went on to have a detailed overview of how it has all the features that are missing in Basecamp. Starting with project boards, time tracking, , recurring tasks, task assignment of multiple people to one task, advanced privacy options- Teamwork kind of built itself keeping Basecamp in mind I think! To add to that, they also list down reviews from ex-Basecamp users who now use TeamworkPM. Seems like Teamwork took the Basecamp vs Teamwork bit too seriously!!

Basecamp vs. Wrike

Features available in Wrike only are:

Can include one task in several projects

Several projects and subprojects can be viewed on one screen

Cross-project prioritization available

Office files can be edited without downloading

Wrike allows you to share a single task or the whole project, while Basecamp allows you to loop-in someone in a discussion topics only via email.

While Basecamp gives Newsfeed, Wrike has-

Allows to create Custom reports

Time-tracking

Hierarchy of projects

Recurring tasks

Gantt Charts

Customized project Dashboard

Task dependencies

More Basecamp Alternatives that I used:

Bitrix24

Bitrix24 is a social Intranet for your business. It’s also a task management app, integrated with document sharing and time-tracking with social network apps. What it offers include blogs, calendars, files, tasks, photos, workgroups, likes, task comments, kanban boards and more! It advocates a freemium model. Get the free version here. You can also avail the Enterprise Version of Bitrix24.

Zoho Projects

Break down your complex tasks into simple milestones and task lists with Zoho Projects. Features that the project management software Zoho offers makes it a strong Basecamp competitor with time tracking. Names like Techcrunch, PC World features in their customers’ list. Its integration with Dropbox and Github, along with new mobile apps makes Zoho Projects a simple Basecamp alternative. You can sign up for a free trial of Zoho that too without entering your credit card details.

Atlassian Jira, another tool like Basecamp, has more than 23,000 customers and a user-base of 30,000,000. LinkedIn and NASA are some of the prominent names among others who use Atlassian Jira. It includes Google integration, time management, and tracking features, and also has a HTML5 enabled mobile interface. Jira also has self-hosted option for a one-time price of $10 for 10 users, $3500 for 25 users and so on. If you are to use Jira on an open-source project, Atlassian will let you use it for FREE.

Freedcamp is one of the best Basecamp alternatives as recommended by some of my fellow users. It is most explicitly cited as “the closest free alternative you will ever get to Basecamp”. With 140,000 customers at bay, Freedcamp by Enavu has Google, ABC and Chase Bank on the list. The simple interface, integration with social platforms, browser alerts, and other group conversations and communication tool makes Freedcamp a great project management tool to track your project progress. It is free for unlimited users, but it comes with a file size limit of 10 MB. It has three more plans the minimalist, business plan and the enterprise plan. All of these plans offer unlimited storage, projects, and tasks.

Chanty is a messaging app that helps with team collaboration and communication. If the requirements of your team are more than just sharing files and communications Chanty is a more streamlined,task-oriented and goal-specific group collaboration tool. The free plan of Chanty allows unlimited messages with restriction of 10 users. The paid plan has more features like audio and video calling priced at $3 per user per month.

While I think the above eight options are the closest collaboration tools and competitors to Basecamp, two more I think is worth mentioning as Basecamp alternatives are Trello and Glip. Both these tools offer good communication features and customisation options.

Mostly all of these collaboration tools are mobile compatible and offer social media integrations with Facebook, Instagram and other related platforms. Basecamp is good in the initial stage, but sadly Basecamp stood rooted to its original features, with no improvisation at all.

These are few slick tools worth noticing if you have a smaller team size or is a solo-preneur. You can also check some of these open source project management tools for small business referred by Capterra. Know any other alternatives? Tell me in the comments.

Questions asked before selecting the Basecamp Alternatives: