Here’s a homepage that will keep you on track:
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Basecamp is the subscription-based, hosted 100 pound gorilla – everyone’s heard of him and he’s a crowd favorite. ActiveCollab is the one-time fee, open source, server-side, up-and-coming contender.
Distinct but balanced pros and cons make this battle too close to call in advance. It will depend on your needs and what fits the needs of your organization…
We’ve been using Basecamp since the beginning – it’s elegant and it did what we needed it to do. We didn’t do much research at the time, it just stood out as a “fit” and we went with it. We create a new project for each client that joins our service so we are on the “unlimited” plan for $149 a month. We live in Basecamp, it’s one of the primary ways that we communicate with clients, so I feel very qualified to be doing a comparison of it to ActiveCollab (I’ve been using ActiveCollab for a few months now so I’m familiar with how it works in comparison to Basecamp).
From the beginning, Basecamp wasn’t a perfect solution for us. In our line of work as virtual assistants, clients want frequent updates on their time usage. Basecamp doesn’t allow clients to see time entries in a project – the option just doesn’t exist. So, we are forced to use a script to generate these reports for each client every evening. This is a $250/month fee in addition to what we already pay for Basecamp.
That’s frustrating in itself, but we started running into a lot of problems with Timepost which posts time entries into Basecamp. This is the only solution available for Mac OS X (we are 100% mac) so this is a major problem.
The combination of spending more than I felt we should have to and being inconvenienced by manually entering hundreds of time entries onto projects each day got me looking into other solutions. I stumbled into ActiveCollab, tried out the demo, and ended up becoming enamored with it. We are in the process of (slowly) switching our entire organization over.
Here’s a pro – con comparison to explain why:
ActiveCollab by A51 d.o.o:
- CON: You run the risk of hosting it. Your server goes down for some reason, your clients get upset.
- CON: Those clients who are already familiar with Basecamp may be annoyed with having to learn the (minor) differences between the two.
- PRO: You pay for it and you have it. No subscription fees.
- PRO: Much greater control over permissions and roles. Basecamp is extremely limited by comparison.
- PRO: “Modules” allow you to extend functionality versus more closed, Basecamp.
- PRO: Very similar functionality is going to make it easy to switch.
- PRO: “Tickets” functionality is useful and a definite advantage over Basecamp – though not yet robust enough for larger organizations.
- PRO: Clients can access time entries and run their own reports (unlike Basecamp)
- PRO: Mobile/iPhone version means clients on the go can easily access their Client Area (project). Do note that the iPhone version allows you to access project information but not add or edit tasks, pages, tickets, etc. I was disappointed by this. It’s nice that they have it but the mobile version is crippled in terms of functionality.
- PRO: “Themes” allow you to match the look and feel of ActiveCollab to your website (Basecamp only allows you to change colors).
- PRO: Invoicing module for service based businesses and Subversion module for programmers.
Basecamp by 37signals:
- CON: No modules means you are limited to what they deem “necessary” and “unnecessary” in terms of features and functionality. Their minimalist approach means you can expect them to error on the side of “less functionality and features” in favor of “ease of use and simplicity.”
- PRO: iPhone apps can interact with it.
- PRO: Some clients are already familiar with it and so can “get up and go” with us right away.
- PRO: They host it so I don’t have to worry about getting SSL, backing it up, etc.
At the end of the day, I just like using ActiveCollab more. It’s got a few differences that probably don’t matter to any other organization that tip the scales in its favor. The upfront fee is sizable in comparison to Basecamp’s subscription if you don’t need the larger plans. But, if you are on the biggest plan like we are, ActiveCollab pays for itself in only a few months.
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Squeezing more out of less: Slow times as the catalyst for future success
July has been a slow month for us. Traffic to our site is down, and there has been a proportional decrease in the flow of new clients coming in. It’s nothing to panic about, it’s just enough to leave me feeling unsettled and therefore very motivated to do something about it.
It has been this uncomfortable [...]