ProjectSpaces vs. Basecamp Comparison

13 May 2010 in Misc

Quite a number of ProjectSpaces customers have come to us because they are looking for a Basecamp alternative. ProjectSpaces serves many of these frustrated users well. Its suite of easy-to-use features support simple online collaboration and provide all the essentials an online project management tool needs to have.

Simplicity and Usability

The ProjectSpaces user interface is so easy to use that anyone can log in to your site, and easily navigate to complete tasks and access content. This is critical for success, because users' rate of adoption is directly related to their understanding of the tool (see our blog post on Encouraging User Adoption). Many Basecamp users complain of unclear distinctions between which project (or workspace) they are in, but in ProjectSpaces the boundaries are extremely clear, so that even unsophisticated users can easily determine where they are. Consequently, when working with the content, the user interface provides for clear and consistent navigation through the forms and links needed to complete tasks like adding a document / event / task / etc.

Strong Document Management

One of the essentials to a strong online project management tool is good document management. You need to easily manage all your files, understand who is working on what, and store an archived list of all the versions of the documents. ProjectSpaces provides you with file versioning; allowing you to easily add new versions of a document while retaining the list of previous versions in one centralized location. However even the best document versioning is useless if you don’t know if one of your team members is actively working on a document that you also need to work on. To circumvent this, ProjectSpaces offers check in / check out functionality (something Basecamp does not) so that you can know when others are working on the file.

Online Documents

Another place ProjectSpaces excels over Basecamp is allowing you the option to create online shared documents, so you never need to constantly download and upload new versions of a document. Everything is retained online to make document collaboration as painless as possible. Finally, when you are finished you can export to Word with the click of a button for offline use. Also, all the versions are stored, along with their author and timestamp, so that you can scroll back to previous versions at any time.

Email Notifications

One of the best things about ProjectSpaces is that upon submission of any type of content you have the option of email notifying other members of your project (even when only editing content). You can specify which members of your project you wish to receive the notification, and can customize the email sent to them. This sends an email directly to their inbox, so they can see important information occurring within ProjectSpaces without having to even login.

Gantt Charts

Using the Workplan tab, you can set up hierarchical task lists to group your tasks assigned to members of your project. Users like ProjectSpaces’s interface over Basecamp’s because this allows you to also see an overall view of these tasks in Gantt chart format. This is particularly useful for members who are used to working in MS Project. You can also export your project’s tasks to a downloadable Excel or Word file at anytime as well.

Have your own thoughts on how ProjectSpaces is better than Basecamp? Leave them below!

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