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DeskAway vs Basecamp vs ActiveCollab vs ???

by LavelleC
13 replies
I hire a lot of work through oDesk, Freelancer, and elance and I'm
looking into some options to bring all of my people together under
one roof - without a 3rd party freelance company and possibly with
the ability to collaborate with clients online as well.

I'm looking at some of the online collaboration and task management
tools at Project Management Solutions | PM-Sherpa and was wondering if
anyone has any personal experience with these tools and can provide
some pros vs cons.

Which one(s) have you tried?
Which one did you decide to go with?
Which features did you like?
Which features are absolutely essential to you?
Which was the easiest for you to and your team to use?

Anything else you can add to help me make a decision would be very
appreciated... Thanks for the help!

Lavelle
#activecollab #basecamp #dskaway
  • Profile picture of the author LavelleC
    Just one bump... still looking for anyone with experience with any
    of these tools. Thanks again!
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    • Profile picture of the author JannaCathrin
      I've been using Basecamp for about 6 months and it's fantastic. I trialled it because it was recommended to me by some people who work on a lot of projects where people use Basecamp as a central project management hub. This includes working with client, freelancers, VAs and other outsourcers.

      What I like about it:
      • easy to use and great instructional videos
      • you can set up lots of different projects independent from each other, so your clients don't know about each other, or freelancers only know about the project they are working on
      • you can set milestones for people and they get reminded automatically via email
      • you can notify people about new files, messages, etc via email and they can respond via email and it all gets posted on Basecamp.
      • Version tracking on white boards so you can see who changed what
      • People can make their own to-do-lists
      • It's a great tool to encourage people to take responsibility on their own projects because it tracks who does what and when, and it also tracks the deadlines and milestones. (Found this particularly good for VAs)
      • Allows you to track the progress of a project and systemise so you can re-use some of the steps and files later if you have another similar project.
      • I like that you can personalise your profile with a photo, etc which makes it a bit more of a team environment.
      • Iphone App (Sherpa)
      What could be better:
      • It's difficult to collaborate on files - if you're reviewing a document and making changes or adding comments you'll need to save a separate version and upload it as a separate file - We use Google Docs to collaborate on files live, then upload the final version into Basecamp
      • No strategic project management functions (like Gantt Charts, etc) - we use MS Project for this, then transfer the milestones into Basecamp.
      I haven't tried DeskAway to ActiveCollab.

      Hope that helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author J. Barry Mandel
    I use TaskFreak - it's FREE and I think it works very well for keeping track of my projects and my team:
    TaskFreak! web based task manager / todo list written in PHP

    Otherwise we use Google Docs as well for the things that TaskFreak cannot do.

    Best of Luck!

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  • Profile picture of the author rhj12345
    Lavelle,

    I will get a support ticket E-mail from basecamp and post it here in the am.

    You may want to read it.

    Rob
    Signature



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    • Profile picture of the author rhj12345
      Support from Basecamp "37Singnals"

      What this is saying is messages don't work.

      Michael Berger, Mar 16 10:01 am (CDT):
      Hey Rob,
      This is the expected behavior in Basecamp, as the user who posts the comment to a message thread does not receive an email notification. This is done in an error to reduce the overall email volume produced by Basecamp.
      Please let me know if there's anything else I can do to help.
      - Michael

      Robert Jones, Mar 16 05:40 am (CDT):
      When I create a message to someone in a group, it works fine, but if I continue to send more messages on the same message thread, it fails. I get no errors, I / we just don't get any message notifications.
      Let me know how to fix.
      Rob
      Signature



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  • Profile picture of the author JamesM
    Basecamp is great for a paid option, but if you'd like a free self-hosted app then you could try FengOffice (Feng Office). It's available under an open source licence, but they also do a paid support version. I only installed it last week, but initial impressions are that it's exactly what I need to manage my outsourcers in an environment that *I* control.
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    If this post has been helpful please click the "thanks" button ;-)

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  • Profile picture of the author Mountainbird
    I'm using Feng Office since many months and I can say it is really great.

    See also: http://drup.org/20-basecamp-alternat...ect-management
    Signature

    :)

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  • Profile picture of the author niravmehta
    We develop extensions for both Basecamp and activeCollab. I have developed a project management system myself and have 13 years experience managing web projects of all sizes. Have also studied virtually every project management system out there!

    Here's my feedback.

    Basecamp:
    - Excels in ease of use
    - No management hassels - SaaS
    - Lot of people are already familiar with it
    - Limited features - not everything may work the way you like
    - Closed system - little scope for customization beyond colors and branding
    - Can get expensive with monthly fees


    activeCollab:
    - Excellent core
    - Feature rich - from project requests, management to invoicing
    - Needs some time to learn and get used to (Hint: start with limited features)
    - Open Source, Extensible, Fully Customizable
    - Self hosted - some server / FTP / DB skills required for setup, data under your control
    - Higher initial cost

    BTW, you may like to view this video I created: 5 Reasons why your team does not use your project management system and what you can do about it

    There are many other solutions in the market now. Asana is still free and very useful. Trello and PivotalTracker are great for agile teams. Wunderkit may also be a good option for a lot of people.

    HTH.
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    • Profile picture of the author ConnorMarc
      Originally Posted by JannaCathrin View Post

      I've been using Basecamp for about 6 months and it's fantastic. I trialled it because it was recommended to me by some people who work on a lot of projects where people use Basecamp as a central project management hub. This includes working with client, freelancers, VAs and other outsourcers.

      What I like about it:
      • easy to use and great instructional videos
      • you can set up lots of different projects independent from each other, so your clients don't know about each other, or freelancers only know about the project they are working on
      • you can set milestones for people and they get reminded automatically via email
      • you can notify people about new files, messages, etc via email and they can respond via email and it all gets posted on Basecamp.
      • Version tracking on white boards so you can see who changed what
      • People can make their own to-do-lists
      • It's a great tool to encourage people to take responsibility on their own projects because it tracks who does what and when, and it also tracks the deadlines and milestones. (Found this particularly good for VAs)
      • Allows you to track the progress of a project and systemise so you can re-use some of the steps and files later if you have another similar project.
      • I like that you can personalise your profile with a photo, etc which makes it a bit more of a team environment.
      • Iphone App (Sherpa)
      What could be better:
      • It's difficult to collaborate on files - if you're reviewing a document and making changes or adding comments you'll need to save a separate version and upload it as a separate file - We use Google Docs to collaborate on files live, then upload the final version into Basecamp
      • No strategic project management functions (like Gantt Charts, etc) - we use MS Project for this, then transfer the milestones into Basecamp.
      I haven't tried DeskAway to ActiveCollab.

      Hope that helps.
      Excellent breakdown of the goodness of BaseCamp. It was around that time that I first started using BaseCamp as well. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good all around.

      Originally Posted by niravmehta View Post

      We develop extensions for both Basecamp and activeCollab. I have developed a project management system myself and have 13 years experience managing web projects of all sizes. Have also studied virtually every project management system out there!

      Here's my feedback.

      Basecamp:
      - Excels in ease of use
      - No management hassels - SaaS
      - Lot of people are already familiar with it
      - Limited features - not everything may work the way you like
      - Closed system - little scope for customization beyond colors and branding
      - Can get expensive with monthly fees


      activeCollab:
      - Excellent core
      - Feature rich - from project requests, management to invoicing
      - Needs some time to learn and get used to (Hint: start with limited features)
      - Open Source, Extensible, Fully Customizable
      - Self hosted - some server / FTP / DB skills required for setup, data under your control
      - Higher initial cost

      BTW, you may like to view this video I created: 5 Reasons why your team does not use your project management system and what you can do about it

      There are many other solutions in the market now. Asana is still free and very useful. Trello and PivotalTracker are great for agile teams. Wunderkit may also be a good option for a lot of people.

      HTH.
      Your vlog articles absolutely ROCKED dude! They should be viral.
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