Don't Back Down

Denise and I were talking just yesterday about trying to get our projects more organized. What do you know - the answer fell right in our laps with Basecamp. Actually one of my customers started using this during one of our projects, so checked it out. Thus far, I'm impressed.

The site is very Ajax-errific, for those of you who like that sort of thing. And they offer both a free plan and several paid plans (the paid plans have a 30-day trial available). The primary difference is in what sort of features you get.

For free, you can run a single project, with unlimited milestones and to-do items (which is perfect for me). If you need to track multiple projects, you can upgrade to a variety of plans that range in cost from $12 per month to $99 per month, and each step up this ladder gets you more projects.

With each plan (even the freebie), you set up a subdomain to your project, with a selection from a few primary domain names, and then you can add as many individuals to the project as you like, be they co-workers, famliy, friends or even clients.

Once you've got your project going you can add milestones and to-do items, whch can be assigned to anyone on the project. This is the part I needed, and think that I will keep using. But if you need more, they offer shared file storage - none with the free plan, and it increases as you pay more. Other options are SSL connections, time tracking and increased "writeboard" usage (an online collaboration tool, it seems).

Their site states that everything can be exported if you'd like to "take it with you", but I'm not exactly sure what you would do with it outside of their service. Still, it's nice to know that you can.