ZohoProjects challenges Basecamp on project management

August 25th, 2006 at 3:08 pm

Now it’s working… go figure.

August 25th, 2006 at 3:25 pm

re: “The Zoho team told me that if Basecamp targets ‘the less is more crowd,’ ZohoProjects will be feature rich. It’s not there yet, but it sounds like a good strategy.”

As a card-carrying member of the less is more crowd, I’d like to share the Basecamp secret password: simplicity. As in, ‘drop-dead, elegant simplicity.’ If someone is going to attempt to compete in the ‘project-management space’ based on features and price, they’re not going to be competiting with Basecamp, they’re going to end up competing with Microsoft Project, not Basecamp.

Also, Basecamp has about six months of open APIs with an entire ecosystem blossoming. Hard to replicate from a standing start. Again, ZohoProjects may be awesome, but it is to Basecamp what (fill in blank MP3 player) is to iPod.

August 25th, 2006 at 4:43 pm

Registered to zohoprojects, and love it.

You have to try it by yourself to believe it.
Gantt chart is useful, and very simple.

Please zoho, no more added functionality. This is good enough.

Features I hate : Todolist Flag, Member role in this project (manager, employee - this is sooo.. old time, we don’t require this anymore in work 2.0 environment).

August 25th, 2006 at 5:12 pm

Rex

Software is all about features not less. Magic is making features simple to use not provide them at all. All I see is dark clouds around 37 signals with the religion and idelogy they effuse.

August 25th, 2006 at 5:23 pm

Used to use basecamp

We now use http://www.centraldesktop.com

August 25th, 2006 at 6:13 pm

I found ZohoProject complicated to understand at first glance, something that didn’t happen to me with Basecamp.
I’ve been studying various project management applications recently and I learnt that Basecamp did the best work. All the apps are full of features that nobody ends using… they organize the information in a non natural way, for example, who needs to know the start date of a milestone?? do you prefer to read 08-26-2006 or “tomorrow”? Lot of things like that

August 26th, 2006 at 6:07 am

Simple may be fine for simple needs, but when you have a dozen or more overlapping projects, simple falls short. I may be relatively new to these “project management” services and programs, but I like gantt charts. And with multiple people wearing multiple hats, different on each project, John’s feeling that “we don’t require this anymore in work 2.0 environment” strikes me as just plain silly. The internet didn’t uninvent people, and when people are working together, clear roles are important, imho. (Besides, different billing rates may also

When it comes to my druthers, Zoho seems to fall short in much the same way Basecamp does. I don’t need a richly featured todo list with chat, I need real project management tools that can handle overlapping, interweaving workflows on multiple projects, without leaving budget tracking and individual workflows as proverbial tea leaves in the bowl.

Thanks for the review. I think I’ll keep looking.

August 26th, 2006 at 12:37 pm

Cruncher,
Central Desktop links Milestones to Tasks (Task Lists).
You can also assign Tasks to multiple people.
Check it out.
ig

August 26th, 2006 at 3:40 pm

Re: the previous comment: “Simple may be fine for simple needs, but when you have a dozen or more overlapping projects, simple falls short.” And then something about Gantt charts….

Give me simple any day. With simplicity, it is much easier to keep up with a dozen or more overlapping projects.

This is not a slam on Zoho — I’ve never used it and it could be right up there with sliced break. However, by defining the product in comparison to Basecamp and then suggesting that what Basecamp is missing is “features,” a MS type of mentality is showing…Basecamp is a great product because it is simple enough for me to use.

August 27th, 2006 at 3:38 am

I have worked with Zoho products for a while now, and i just have to say, they dont have “it”.
I dont feel any innovation in their products. They dont provide something different. Its just like PC applications, with all the good and bad aspects of them hosted. Web 2.0 is about innovating the tasks that we used to do on the PC, and put them on the web. Not mimic.
I think 37signals has nothing to worry about here. Neither does Writley, Thumbstacks, Empressor, Google, etc. These guys arent innovating, they are just playing around with AJAX.

May i also say that their UIs for all their products are terrible. They look like something out of fisher price. It looks childish, unprofessional, and most importantly, it is uncomfortable to use. Simplicity is key.
Small companies need simple tools to get started, and down the line, when higher level tools are needed, they should go with Enterprise and Open Source server (SugarCRM, Compiere, etc) solutions.

August 27th, 2006 at 7:19 pm

I completely agree with Haimson. I don’t believe this product is worth reviewing. It is a waste of time reviewing this. Looks like more copy cat..

August 27th, 2006 at 9:03 pm

I have spent a bucketload of time reviewing the various project portal/intranet type services out there and to my mind the one that leaves them all for dead is http://www.centraldesktop.com.

Of course as with any product its horses for courses but the thing I like about Central Desktop is that it works for lots of different horses, unlike other products like Basecamp or ProjectPlace who cater for either really simple or really sophisticated needs but nothing in between. There are 2 critical elements I believe this product niche needs - a good balance between power & simplicity, and well designed navigation. In this respect Central Desktop is unsurpassed.

I had a quick look at ZohoProjects, but as with all of their products I’m left with the sense of mediocre interface design and half-arsed implementation.

I am a software developer and I have been using Central Desktop for a few months now and it is now an indespensible element of our project and account management. As a software architect I am pretty fussy about the software I use, but the team at Central Desktop lead by Isaac Garcia & Arnulf Hsu continue to surpass my expectations.

One of the other things that impresses me about Central Desktop which you won’t find in any other competitor on the market at the moment is their undivided commitment to improving their product. It just gets better and better. Compare this to 37Signal’s relative abandonment of Basecamp and their users.

I feel passionate about great software design and its always a pleasure to find and use of software of other developers who clearly feel passionate about the design of their product too. Combine this with talent and you have a unbeatable mix.

August 28th, 2006 at 5:37 pm

this doesn’t have any of the cool buzz factor, until you use it; usetasks.com
isn’t contract oriented which is fine, in our case.