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With so many different Basecamp alternatives available, figuring out which is right for you is tough. You know you want to find the best alternative so you can manage your projects and collaborate with your team more effectively but need to figure out which tool is best. I've got you! In this post I'll help make your choice easy, sharing my personal experiences using dozens of different Basecamp alternatives with a variety of teams and projects, with my picks of the best Basecamp alternatives.

What Are Basecamp Alternatives?

Basecamp alternatives are software solutions for project management and team collaboration. They function similarly to Basecamp but offer varied features and user experiences. These tools assist in organizing tasks, tracking project progress, and facilitating communication among team members.

The benefits and uses of these alternatives include enhanced customization to fit specific team needs, provision of specialized features for different industries, and potentially more cost-effective pricing structures. They improve team collaboration, are scalable for growing businesses, and often integrate seamlessly with other business tools.

Basecamp's Criticism

Although this tool has powerful features, Basecamp is commonly known in the PM world as a starter tool because of its simplicity. However, here are four things that users don't commonly like about Basecamp and might push you in search of an alternative:

  1. Limited Feature Set: Some users find Basecamp to be lacking in advanced project management features when compared to other project management tools. One of these features is workflow automation.
  2. Integration Challenges: Basecamp's has integrations in its offering. However, there is a lack of mainstream tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Hubspot or Salesforce. This means you'll have to learn to connect apps via the API or use Zapier which requires an additional subscription.
  3. Task Management Complexity: Some users find the task management features in Basecamp to be less intuitive and less flexible compared to dedicated task management tools. As the complexity of a project increases, it sometimes highlights weaknesses that can only be addressed by another tool. Think of multiple dependencies, dependencies with other projects in a portfolio, and highlighting a project's critical path.
  4. Mobile App Limitations: A common problem with mobile versions of a project management platform is that they are limited in the number of things you can do with them. Basecamp's mobile app has been criticized for not offering the same level of functionality as the web version. This makes it less convenient for users who need to manage their projects on the go.

Overviews of the Best Basecamp Alternatives

Here are the details on the tools that you can choose instead of Basecamp and what makes them good alternatives.

Best for customization

  • 14-day free trial + free plan available
  • From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats)
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Rating: 4.7/5

monday.com is an intuitive project collaboration software that enables teams to track project tasks, assign ownership, and manage deadlines with ease. Although easy-to-learn, monday.com offers advanced data insights, dashboards, and workforce analytics.

monday.com's features include all of the project scheduling, file sharing, communication, and reporting features you'd expect in a project management tool similar to Basecamp. For example, you can upload and attach files to updates on project boards, make comments, mention teammates, build and share reports, send messages, and easily organize project tasks by upcoming due dates. You can also easily manage recurring tasks and team documents by creating virtual workspaces for your team's onboarding or meeting notes for everyone to access.

monday.com has integrations with over 40 apps like Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Zoom, Slack, Typeform, and many more, accessible via Zapier.

monday.com costs from $6/user/month and comes with a free 14-day trial. They offer a free plan for up to 2 users.

Best Basecamp alternative for open source, flexible databases

  • Free plan available
  • From $5/user/month (billed annually).

Baserow is an open-source, no-code database platform designed for simplicity and flexibility in data management. It offers a user-friendly, spreadsheet-like interface for real-time collaboration, customizable templates, and API-first integration, catering to both non-technical users and developers seeking efficient, adaptable solutions for organizing and handling data.

Baserow stands out with its no-code approach to database customization, allowing users with no technical background to easily create and manage databases. This feature is particularly unique as it democratizes database management, enabling users to build and tailor databases as per their specific needs without any coding expertise.

Unlike many of its competitors, Baserow is open-source, offering transparency and community-driven enhancements. Additionally, it provides self-hosting options, giving users complete control over their data and the flexibility to modify the software to fit their unique requirements, a feature that is especially appealing to organizations with specific data governance or privacy policies.

Baserow starts at $5/user/month and has a free plan available.

Best for easy migration from Basecamp

  • Free trial available
  • From $5/user/month
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Rating: 4.2/5

If you are looking for a user-friendly yet feature-rich upgrade from Basecamp, then Zoho Projects is a great option. If you are already a Basecamp user, Zoho Projects allows direct migration from Basecamp. With customizations and reporting capabilities, this tool is a logical step up.

Schedule work items as tasks and set dates, or do it with the intuitive click and drag Gantt chart interface. Go beyond scheduling and analyze timelines with critical path and baseline. The integrated social feed, chat rooms and forums give ample options for starting conversations. Add to that, the documents module that supports file sharing, version history, and collaborative file creation. Zoho Projects is one of the few PM tools that allow creation of dependencies between projects.

Fully customize the dashboards to suit your needs. Integrate with Zoho Analytics and create over 50 types of charts and reports. Export Gantt charts to PDF, and task to XLS/CSV.  The interface and modules are highly customizable. All aspects of the UI from theme colors to arrangement and visibility of the various modules can be changed to suit a user's preferences. Zoho projects also offer free onboarding for its customers and a comprehensive online help guide for all users.

Being part of the Zoho's ecosystem allows Projects to connect to several of Zoho's own services such as Zoho Books, Zoho CRM, and Zoho's finance suite. The new Zoho marketplace allows 3rd party integrations as well. Zapier connections are also supported. Zoho Projects stands out in cases where there are multiple hand-offs involved. It is especially popular among IT companies, consultants and education organizations.

Starts from $4/user/month billed annually. Also has a freemium version up to 3 users for 2 projects and a 10-day free trial. No credit card information is required.

Best for small to medium businesses

  • 15-day free trial + free version available
  • From $5.95/user/month
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Rating: 4.6/5

Paymo is a full-featured work management platform that focuses on creating an intuitive environment for teams to collaborate. It covers features like planning, resource scheduling, time tracking and invoicing, milestones, and Gantt Charts in addition to advanced task management for daily operations.

Collaboration on projects is done seamlessly via assigned comments at a task level, to avoid spamming others who are not directly involved, or discussion threads at a project level. To make sure that no detail slips through the cracks, you can securely attach files for each task, comment, or project from your computer or via the Google Drive native integration.

To stay on top of your and your team’s work, check your email and in-app notifications for any new updates in terms of tasks created, files attached, and more. Paymo also offers a wide range of time tracking tools to make sure you’re not wasting any time that should go into real work. And you’ll also get paid fairly by your clients to whom you can send periodic time reports as proof of your work. You can choose between static reports (offer insights into a specific time frame) or live reports (updated every time someone opens them).

Paymo offers a free plan to solopreneurs and individual freelancers, while paid plans start at $9.56/user/month with a 15-day free trial.

Best basecamp alternative with intelligent automation

  • Free demo available
  • Pricing upon request
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Rating: 4.7/5

Forecast is a project management platform for resource and agile project management. The tool includes capabilities for managing the project life cycle from quote to invoice, as well as intelligent automation for predicting project delivery dates and forecasting capacity needs.

Users can create project plans for fixed price, time and materials, or retainer contracts with Forecast’s AI-powered auto-schedule feature. The AI can automatically estimate tasks, assign and optimize workload across resources, and set a project delivery date.

Task list and task card functionalities can show priorities, as well as allow users to comment, share files, and register time. Forecast offers a centralized location for the team to view and address dependencies, as well as see related subtasks.

Forecast offers customizable reports for viewing financial trends, assessing where projects and resources can be utilized more economically, and seeing how planned projects affect profitability.

Forecast offers integrations with mainstream project management tools, Jira, and accounting systems like Quickbooks and Xero with PM capabilities.

Forecast paid plans start at $29/user/month, and a 14-day free trial is available.

Best free Basecamp alternative

  • 14-day free trial
  • From $1.49/user/month (billed annually)
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Rating: 4.5/5

Freedcamp is a great Basecamp alternative software, providing useful collaboration features through a simple visual interface. The app enables you to track, mark up and follow your tasks, using a Kanban board and an interactive Gantt chart. It offers the option to categorize your tasks by who, when, and how the tasks are being done.

With Freedcamp’s messaging and task-overview boards, you will be able to assign members, provide them with necessary files, assign deadlines, and add sub-tasks. The built-in calendar allows you to create and customize events, tasks, and milestones.Freedcamp also has a general discussion board.

Freedcamp integrations include all of the standards: Jira, Slack, Trello, GitHub, and many others. It also syncs easily with the entire Google ecosystem, which means you can sync your Google Calendar with Freedcamp’s built-in one to keep your updates consistent across platforms and enable more report-generating possibilities.

Freedcamp costs from $3.49/user/month.

Best Basecamp alternative for software development

  • 30-day free trial
  • From $35/month
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Rating: 4.5/5

Backlog is a cloud-based project management tool with a special emphasis on collaborative tools for developers. Backlog provides useful collaboration features like task management (including subtasks, checklists, and custom fields), milestones, file management, wikis, and more. But Backlog is more than a project management app, it's also a bug tracker and version control system in one.

For collaborating on code, Backlog has SVN and Git repositories, a differences viewer and inline comments, plus pull requests, merge requests, and branches. For quick visual reports, the app provides burndown charts, Git graphs, Kanban boards, and Gantt charts, so project managers and users alike can quickly assess projects at a glance.

While there is no one-to-one chat, users can collaborate and comment directly on issues, including tagging selected team members on important activity and updates. Nulab — the creators of Backlog — also have their own chat app called Typetalk that seamlessly integrates with Backlog to give you the communication powers you need alongside the project management tools you depend on.

Backlog works for a range of team sizes. They have a free account available to teams of up to 10, while also offering a self-hosted Enterprise option for larger companies. They also provide a mobile app on both iOS and Android for collaborating on-the-go. It integrates with Nulab's other apps and provides both Redmine and Jira importers.

Backlog allows you to assign, track, and release work, right in one app while ensuring transparency and accountability across teams. If you're looking for a tool to help manage development projects or working closely with a team of developers, this is the app for you.

Backlog is free for up to 10 users with some feature limitations or $35/month for up to 30 users. For $100/month, your team gets unlimited users, i.e. their Standard Plan.

Best for extra features like timesheets and expense tracking

  • Free plan available
  • Plans start at $11.95/month
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Rating: 4.5/5

You might have realized already that these tools are always more than “just collaboration tools”. Avaza is a cloud-based task management tool with an emphasis on resource management, but it also offers a great deal of handy features for better communication.

Avaza gives you the option to track everything in one place: from simple conversations to expense tracking, time-tracking, invoicing, kanban-style task management, and reporting. The task scheduling features allow you to assign time and monetary value to each task, which is a useful feature for communicating the priority and resources assigned to the team members who will be working on the task.

Being cloud-based, they make it easy to share files and communicate in real-time. Nevertheless, if you want more than the ability to make comments and mentions, consider integrating an additional app because it offers only basic messaging boards.

This software integrates with popular tools like Jira, Trello, Quickbooks, Evernote, Slack, as well as Google apps like Google Calendar and Google Drive that allow you to share files and events directly within the platform.

Avaza costs from $9.95/user/month.

Best for content collaboration

  • 30-day free trial
  • From $5.99/user/month (billed annually).
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Rating: 4.4/5

Teamwork is a project management and collaboration tool that can easily fill the shoes of Basecamp, if you’re looking to change things up. Teamwork makes it easier for everyone to see what projects team members are working on, communicate amongst themselves, and plan ahead together. This software contains a full-suite of tools: project management, helpdesk, team chat, CRM, and content collaboration (called “Spaces”).

Teamwork’s Chat app introduces easy communication seamlessly into your workflow, be it internal messaging or external client-facing collaboration. With one central place for users to share ideas and look for feedback, project management teams can reach a consensus and make decisions faster.

The Portfolio feature makes it easy for project managers to get a high-level overview of multiple projects at once. Use Portfolio to see every project represented as a card and manage them all from one central place.

Teamwork integrates with Gmail, HubSpot, Slack, Float, KingswaySoft, Databox, Numerics, Automate.io, Easy Insights, Integromat, Chatify, Zapier, and Import2.

Teamwork has a freemium plan for up to 3 projects and 5 users. Their paid plan starts at $10/user/month, requiring 5 users or more.

Best for integrations

  • 30-day free trial + free plan available
  • From $13.49/user/month
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Rating: 4.3/5

Asana is already a popular Basecamp alternative. This team collaboration tool is a major competitor in the field of team communication software. Asana’s strong suit lies in its highly customizable nature. Even though it may seem like a bit much to get into, the visual style of this communication tool is minimalist, informative, and clean, making it easy to learn and organize things quickly.

When it comes to the baseline set of features, Asana has the whole package: project scheduling, a file-sharing module, customizable messaging system (in addition to the public message board feature), and time and expense tracking. The best thing about Asana is probably the option to create a program template for different projects. If your team deals with similar projects, you can easily apply the knowledge and processes from past projects to current or future ones. That being said, Asana helps you anticipate upcoming challenges, and it makes reporting on past events a lot easier.

One great thing regarding this particular Basecamp alternative is the option to integrate it with a ton of apps outside of its framework. When it comes to communications and planning you can integrate with Outlook, SalesForce, Slack, MS Teams, Trello, GitHub and many, many more. Even though it has its own built-in calendar, Asana can integrate with Google Calendar (along with the entire Google Suite). Asana syncs with cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive.

Asana costs from $10.00/user/month, and it has a free version, with a free demo included.

Basecamp Alternatives Comparison Chart

Here is a table where you can compare the tools we just covered in the overviews.

Tools Price
monday.com From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats)
Baserow From $5/user/month (billed annually).
Zoho Projects From $5/user/month
Paymo From $5.95/user/month
Forecast Pricing upon request
Freedcamp From $1.49/user/month (billed annually)
Backlog From $35/month
Avaza Plans start at $11.95/month
Teamwork.com From $5.99/user/month (billed annually).
Asana From $13.49/user/month
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	Compare Software Specs Side by Side</h2>

Compare Software Specs Side by Side

Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.

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Other Basecamp Alternatives

We haven’t had a chance to take a look at these new kids on the basecamp alternative block yet, but if none of the above options work for you, check out these cool kids.

  1. nutcache

    Best for visually organizing tasks

  2. Intervals

    Best for small teams and small businesses

  3. Yanado

    Best for Gmail users

  4. TeamGantt

    Best for drag-and-drop Gantt charts

  5. ClickUp

    Best free plan for a Basecamp alternative

  6. Nifty

    Best for ease of use & client collaboration.

  7. MeisterTask

    Best for integration of ideation and task management

  8. Quire

    Best Basecamp alternative for beginners

  9. Project.co

    Best for working with clients

  10. Productive

    Best Basecamp alternative for built-in invoicing

  11. Wrike

    Best for scaling organizations

  12. Hive

    Best for multiple project and task views

  13. Celoxis

    Best alternative for its portfolio and accounting features

How I Picked The Best Basecamp Alternatives

I selected the best project management software alternatives in the following way. I first looked at all the tools with good user reviews and ratings that were able to handle simple projects. Then I looked at their customization options and advanced features to see how they fared against Basecamp. Finally, I selected the ones I considered the best alternatives and carefully reviewed them. Here are some of the criteria I considered:

Project scheduling

This accounts for everything from simple task dependencies and milestone management to the functionality for scheduling appointments and events via the tool. Every alternative should have some form of task assignment and scheduling feature, as well as a module for tracking deadlines.

File sharing

Digital teams exchange loads of text and media files. File sharing is not only the option to send and receive files, but also to assign priorities or labels to files and make them easily accessible from task and discussion modules.

Conversations

While smaller teams might have it easier, the lifeblood of any well-organized team is fluid conversation. Therefore, message boards are a must in every collaboration tool that is to be considered a Basecamp alternative. These can be any chat-like features that allow project stakeholders to communicate with one another.

Reports

A Basecamp alternative tool should provide some basic reporting functionality. Many tools include basic reporting templates like data exporting and some include more advanced reporting features like creating visual representation of data.

Basecamp Alternative FAQs

Here are some questions other people ask about this topic.

What is the best alternative to Basecamp for a small business?

There are two tools that I like for small businesses as they offer a good amount of features for a relatively low price. These are ActiveCollab and Height (which are not part of this list).

In addition to the standard project management features, ActiveCollab offers CRM and financial capabilities that can be useful to reduce the number of tools that you use.

Regarding Height, I love that they offer automations and are exploring how to leverage AI to save you time. Their copilot feature will get the context of your tasks and help you write to-do lists, notes, and all kinds of information that could otherwise take hours to complete.

Are there free Basecamp alternatives?

In today’s market, of course, there are many free options for your collab tool needs. Keep in mind that most are freemiums, offering free versions with limited functionality. Here’s a list of free Basecamp alternative tools:

  1. NTask Manager (free version limited to 200mb storage)
  2. Open Project (requires self-installation)
  3. Podio (free option limited to 5 users)
  4. ClickUp (free option has only 100mb storage)
  5. Teamwork (free option has only 100mb storage & 2 projects)
  6. Paymo (free option only allows 1 user)
  7. Bitrix (free option limited to 12 users & 5gb storage)

How To Choose The Best Alternative To Basecamp For Your Team

Investing in communication for your team is essential, so picking the right software is really important! Here are some more quick tips on what to look for before you onboard and buy.

What Do You Need It For?

It is always important to understand your team’s needs first, so make a list and see what kind of criteria your team prioritizes. If you have lots of conversations, go with Quire or Monday. If you do a lot of data exporting and invoicing in your environment, consider Avaza. All in all, make a list of the main functions you want in a tool.

Who Is Going To Use It?

The size and structure of your team is important. If you need to make sub-sectors for different squads and teams, then a large-scale tool designed for enterprise is what you need. In this case, ActiveCollab or Asana can help you make the appropriate hierarchy with subgroups and customized permissions.

How Would It Fit Into Your Process?

Think about integrations and the type of additional software your team uses. For example, if you use other Zoho tools, Zoho Projects is your number one choice. If you want an offline view for yourself or your closest colleagues, Airtable is a good option.

How Long To Set It Up?

Upgrading your collaboration framework is never easy, so try to pick something that is relatively familiar to your team and makes the transition period as short as possible. For example, Freedcamp has a very familiar feel that’s similar to Basecamp, and it’s cloud-based so you can import and sync with your current apps very quickly.

Easiness Of Onboarding

No matter the size of the team, always consider that it will take some time for everyone to get used to the new collaboration tool. Quire might be the way to go if you’re looking for simplicity. On the other hand, if you want the option to customize a lot, Wrike is great—but it will take some extra time to learn.

Cost

The cost of a Basecamp alternative collaboration tool varies from $4.00/user/month to over $10.00/user/month, and with larger enterprises that scales to big numbers. Consider the growth scale of your business and consider the cost of the tool should your team expand quickly.

basecamp alternatives logos list

What's Next?

Collaboration software, as we have seen, comes in many shapes and sizes, from simple apps to gigantic all-inclusive project management programs.

Related tool lists:

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By Ben Aston

I’m Ben Aston, a digital project manager and founder of thedpm.com. I've been in the industry for more than 20 years working in the UK at London’s top digital agencies including Dare, Wunderman, Lowe and DDB. I’ve delivered everything from film to CMS', games to advertising and eCRM to eCommerce sites. I’ve been fortunate enough to work across a wide range of great clients; automotive brands including Land Rover, Volkswagen and Honda; Utility brands including BT, British Gas and Exxon, FMCG brands such as Unilever, and consumer electronics brands including Sony. I'm a Certified Scrum Master, PRINCE2 Practitioner and productivity nut!