Despite all the benefits of using Basecamp as a project management system, it is really a big pain in other ways. It’s a little bit like what Winston Churchill said back in 1947, “Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”. Switching “democracy” for “Basecamp” in that sentence still makes it sound just as true.
Anyway, changing project management systems is a pretty big deal, and you really want to read up quite a bit before venturing out on something like that. But after spending a weekend on research, I think I’ve settled on a system that we’ll at least give a real chance out in the field.
This system is Manymoon and is a really slick and simple system with descent Google Apps integration. Overall it works just the way I want it, even though I kind of miss the Basecamp look and feel.
I haven’t clocked that many hours yet with Manymoon, so I can’t give you the full review yet, but the general impression is really good. Some of the drawbacks I’ve noticed so far is that tasks don’t sync with Google Tasks, that the name is awful, and that you cant do “select all” on contacts, which is a pain if you’ve (like me) imported over a thousand contacts and you change your mind. Removing them is a several hour project.
So if you’re in the same situation as we where at Honesty, working with a mess of Google Apps and Basecamp, this might be just the thing for you. Try it out and join us here to discuss your impressions.
See you soon!
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I was interested to hear about this one. I’ve been using Basecamp for projects and often use it with clients but it is starting to feel rather “bloggy”. Also, the integration with Google leaves a lot to be desired. Especially as a lot of clients have jumped on the Google train of late.
I’ll check this out. Thanks for the heads up.
Glad you liked it.
I'm curious as to whether you continue to use/find ManyMoon the killer project management tool you thought it might be? I'm in the process of selecting one …
thanks!
We actually stopped using Manymoon here a while back. I think there were actually two reasons for this:
1. Design. It was just not intuitive or “friendly” enough for us. I think Basecamp are the leaders here.
2. Not perfect Google Apps integration. Partly because of the fact that Google tasks are not shareable yet.
For the time being we use Google Apps only supported by DropBox for certain tasks.
We actually stopped using Manymoon here a while back. I think there were actually two reasons for this:
1. Design. It was just not intuitive or “friendly” enough for us. I think Basecamp are the leaders here.
2. Not perfect Google Apps integration. Partly because of the fact that Google tasks are not shareable yet.
For the time being we use Google Apps only supported by DropBox for certain tasks.
What do you mean by this, “For the time being we use Google Apps only supported by DropBox for certain tasks.” Do you know of a good DropBox / Google Apps integration? Thanks
We don’t have Dropbox-Apps integration but use(d) it to get a rudimentary workflow for shared files. Today we have so many projects (70-80 at any one time) that we incorporated Basecamp again. It seems to me that the one killer feature of Basecamp is it’s simplicity. Everybody understands the UI immediately. Manymoon does have better features but was just not intuitive enough for most.
Hello Walter,
Thank you for posting your Manymoon review. We currently use Drop and Google Apps and I’m very tempted to present Manymoon to my team but am hesitant to do so after reading your post. So, to be clear, your’re using Basecamp again? Any new updates since Jan ’11?
Well – we do use Basecamp today, but after a while you kind of get locked in and it’s hard to change platforms. We’ve also grown rapidly since then and are now 23 people in the organization with hundreds of projects logged since my last post. I know that Manymoon has done a complete redesign of their system recently and that they were aquired by Salesforce.com; so I can’t say what I would choose today. It’s probably way better now than when I wrote this post.