As we’ve mentioned in some of our other review blogs — here and here and here — there is no shortage of project management software out there. That being said, not all of them are created equal.
Asana and Basecamp are two such platforms that are often in the conversation.
While there are some similarities between the two companies, they are far from interchangeable.
What is Asana?
In 2008 in San Francisco, CA, Asana was founded by a former Facebook engineer and a Facebook co-founder/ex-Google employee.
Asana positions itself as a tool to make it easier for teams to organize and track their day-to-day work and long-term projects. The software helps empower teams to “do great things together,” and to track their work.
Fun fact: Asana means “yoga pose” in Sanskrit!
What is Basecamp?
In 1999 in Chicago, Illinois, Jason Fried, Carlos Segura, and Ernest Kim launched a web design company called 37signals. Fifteen years later, they changed the company name to reflect its first—and most popular—commercial web app, Basecamp.
Basecamp is a digital task management tool designed for business project management.
Fun fact #1: 37signals got its name from the 37 radio telescope signals identified by Paul Horowitz, an astronomer who believed these messages were from … you guessed it … aliens!
Fun fact #2: Base camp (with a space) often refers to the “staging area” mountain climbers use as they get ready to scale a large mountain.
Who uses Asana?
Asana is used by over 80,000 customers (per its website) — small businesses and large enterprises alike — and is most often categorized as a “Project Management” solution.
Who uses Basecamp?
Basecamp does not seem to be focused on any one single industry or company size. It is used by entrepreneurs, freelancers, non-profits, small businesses, and (smaller) groups inside large enterprises.
The Basecamp website doesn’t list specific customers by name (though it does have a scrolling list of short customer testimonials).
Asana vs. Basecamp: comparing pricing and integrations
When reviewing software solutions, pricing and integrations are two items that are relatively easy to compare, side-by-side.
Here is a breakdown of pricing and integration options for both Asana and Basecamp (and monday.com):
PRICING
TL;DR: Trying to compare Asana and Basecamp pricing is not that straightforward. While both offer a few tiers, Basecamp’s paid offering is a monthly flat fee for unlimited users and projects.
Asana Pricing
- Offers four tiers — Basic, Premium, Business, and Enterprise
- Basic: “For individuals or teams just getting started with project management,” the basic plan is available for teams of up to 15 — FREE!
- Premium: “For teams that need to create project plans with confidence” — $10.99/user/month (billed annually)
- Business: “For teams and companies that need to manage work across initiatives” — $24.99/user/month (billed annually)
- Enterprise: “For teams and companies that need to manage work across initiatives” — Pricing here = “Let’s talk” (sales/marketing-speak for, “we have pricing tiers that can be flexible but we don’t want to publish them!”)
Basecamp Pricing
- Offers two plans, Personal and Business
- Personal: “Great for personal projects, students, freelancers, families, and light use.” — FREE; up to 3 projects, 20 users, and 1 GB of storage
- Business*: “Includes every feature” offered “plus unlimited projects, unlimited users, and no per-user fees” — $99/month flat fee; includes 500 GB of storage
- 15% discount when paid up-front; free accounts for teachers & students and discounts for non-profits
- No penalty for early cancelation; refund offered for any unused months (on a pre-paid account)
For comparison, monday.com pricing:
- Offers four tiers — Basic, Standard, Pro, and Enterprise
- Basic: “For a small team to execute basic work smoothly” — $8/seat/month (billed annually)
- Standard: “For a single team to visualize, run, track, and improve their work with confidence” — $10/seat/month (billed annually)
- Pro: “For teams to streamline and control complex workflows and operations ” — $16/seat/month (billed annually)
- Enterprise: “For organizations seeking enterprise-grade project and workflow management” — customized pricing
INTEGRATIONS
Note: Integrations are combining (or connecting) software “parts” into one system to form an “integrated system.”
TL;DR: Integrations enhance software solutions by extending what a product offers natively, out of the box. Asana and Basecamp both have landing pages dedicated to integration options. Monday.com also has a vast library of integration options (view them all here) and offers integrations to Basecamp and Asana).
Asana Integrations
Asana offers over 150 native app integrations, per its website. Some of the more common integrations include Gmail, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Jira, Tableau, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Slack.
You can search/sort the Asana integration database broken down by the following categories: New, Made By Asana, Communication, Connectors, Development, Importers, File Sharing, Google, Reporting, Time Tracking, Forms, and Microsoft.
BONUS: monday.com offers an integration with Asana (along with 40+ other integrations!).
Basecamp Integrations
Basecamp showcases 64 third-party tools on its “extras” landing page, breaking them down into the following categories: mobile and desktop apps (14), time tracking, invoicing, and accounting (17), reporting, charts, planning (18), software development (7), marketing, design, and asset management (1), customer service and support (5), contracts and proposals (1), and developer-only tools (1).
However, it’s worth noting that several of these integrations are actually “connectors” (Zapier, Automate.io, Unito.io, Zoho Flow, etc.).
Finally, Basecamp offers developers a hub to integrate their products with Basecamp 3.
BONUS: You can also add a Basecamp integration to monday.com.
Ratings and Reviews: Asana, Basecamp, and monday.com
TL;DR: Both Asana and Basecamp tend to rank as top product management solutions, albeit with a different feature set and pricing model. Generally speaking, monday.com comes out on top in nearly every rating/review sub-category and overall score.
There is certainly not a shortage of online software review sites — Capterra, G2, TrustRadius, Software Advice, SourceForge, and CrowdReviews, to name a few. For the purposes of this section, we will use two of the more popular ones, G2 and TrustRadius.
G2
G2 is “the world’s largest tech marketplace where businesses can discover, review, and manage the technology they need to reach their potential.”
Star Rating: Asana has a 4.3 / 5-star rating with 6,889 reviews. Basecamp has a 4.1 /5-star rating with 4,532 reviews. For comparison purposes, monday.com has a 4.6 /5-star rating with 1,257 reviews.
It’s worth noting that monday.com out-ranks both Asana and Basecamp in a side-by-side review of the individual ratings categories, as seen below:
TrustRadius
TrustRadius is “the most trusted review site for business technology. Optimized for content quality and data integrity,” TrustRadius helps “buyers make better product decisions based on unbiased and insightful reviews.” It also helps “vendors harness and scale the authentic voice of their customers.”
Star Rating + “Score”: Asana has a 4.0/5.0 star rating with 1,215 reviews and a “score” of 8.4 out of 10. Basecamp has a 4.0/5.0 star rating with 983 reviews and a “score” of 8.1 out of 10. For comparison purposes, monday.com has a 4.5/5.0 star rating with 198 reviews and a “score” of 8.5 out of 10.
Monday.com earned a “Top Rated 2020” badge from TrustRadius and scored higher than both Asana and Basecamp in its two “Feature Rating Comparison” subcategories.
monday.com: the smart alternative to Asana and Basecamp
Asana and Basecamp are definitely two of the more well-known, more used project management software solutions on the market. However, they are not the only options.
ClickUp. Workzone. Trello. Jira. Airtable. Smartsheet. Wrike. ProjectManager.com, and so on — all competitors.
So is monday.com, our (obviously biased) #1 choice.
We’ve even outlined why we think we are the preferred option compared to Asana and Basecamp.
Here is our short writeup on how we match up with Basecamp and here is how we stack up vs. Asana.
monday.com’s Work OS includes features and functionality that can be found in both Basecamp and Asana.
Basecamp offers only limited project management features, making customization and flexibility a challenge. Communication in Basecamp is also a bit messy, whereas monday.com eliminates painfully long email threads. Communication and collaboration — simplified.
Asana requires a learning curve. monday.com, on the other hand, is simple, intuitive, easy to use, and unlike most other project management tools, it’s beautiful and highly visual thanks to the color-coding, the timeline views, and highly customizable design of the boards.
monday.com’s Work OS is the visual platform that manages everything: Plan, organize, and track all of your team’s work in one place.
Kanban boards, Calendar, Timeline, Gantt charts, map, form, workload, and main views transform your data so you can see it the way you want to: from colorful and complex to basic and muted.
Read more about our feature set here.
Save time, streamline processes and projects, and keep track of all the moving pieces with monday.com.
Survey says!
Okay. No true survey, but here is our “final verdict” on Asana vs. Basecamp.
Both score near the top when it comes to project management solutions. Both have their strengths; both have their weaknesses.
While Asana defaults to a list or kanban view, you can also switch to see tasks on a calendar or timeline. However, if you need a tool to help with file management and conversations, Asana may not be your best choice.
Basecamp leads with projects and includes to-do lists (with tasks) and a calendar to make events. You can add notes and deadlines too. But if you are looking for subtasks or dependency management or true collaboration, Basecamp is not the best option.
Test out monday.com for yourself.
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