Task Management Reviews: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly- Part 1

In this seven-part blog series, .orgSource reviews online task and project management tools that we predominantly use with our clients, our internal team, and as individuals—and offer the pros and cons of each. Today, we focus on Basecamp.

Basecamp is a private, secured space online where colleagues can work together, organize and discuss everything they need to get a big project done. Connect or sign in to your shared account with your email address to see updates, track/manage project completions, and discuss tasks with those who are tagged on the assignment. From tasks and discussions to easily set deadlines and files—everything is clearly organized in Basecamp.

The Good: From our experience, Basecamp lives up to its motto of being meticulously organized, easy to assign tasks, mark assignments as completed, and keep everyone assigned to the project notified. You can attach files –spreadsheets, Word documents, presentations, etc., to discussions or save them in a separate location for resources. Also, you can easily distinguish between discussions, project tasks, as well as project resources—with separate locations for each. An added bonus: Everyone gets their first Basecamp account for free.

The Bad: While Basecamp is great for organization, we found that attempting to communicate with the group on a shared assignment was harder than expected. Because its secured space is connected to your work email, a lot of the group notifications would get lost among the other emails in our inboxes, leaving some questions unanswered, and ultimately having to reach out through our work emails instead of Basecamp. Also, if you want a second account, you will need to pay for Basecamp.

The Ugly: It’s proven to be too time consuming when trying to reach out to the group with questions. It also is difficult to gauge the status of projects—the various stages of completion. The platform only has the one option of “mark done”–which can create stress when seeing numerous deadlines not “marked done.” Furthermore, it does not have the ability to create reoccurring tasks, a huge time-saving feature for those who have similar tasks throughout the week/month. And the price for a Basecamp account ranges from $29 per month to $3,000 per year depending upon the plan you choose (yikes)!