Is todo.vu a suitable Basecamp alternative?

Basecamp has been around for many years; in fact, as arguably the first ever online project management tool, Basecamp proved that it was possible to deliver reliable, secure, and safe management solutions for businesses worldwide.

Basecamp has great features and their approach to managing projects clearly works for many businesses. When comparing todo.vu and Basecamp, however, it is important to note that they are not the same and not necessarily intended for the same uses. That said, todo.vu may be a suitable Basecamp alternative for you.

Basecamp is primarily a project management system, unlike todo.vu, it has no time tracking or billing features.

Basecamp’s current pricing model can also be tough on small businesses. With a minimum price of $99/month, it may be out of reach for many small teams, consultants or freelancers.

For example, todo.vu’s highest priced (Business Time) plan is the same price as Basecamp’s cheapest plan.

Features comparison

Major differences

A Client vs Project focus

The primary difference between Basecamp and todo.vu is how work is organized within the platform.

Basecamp’s focus in on projects. Everything you do in Basecamp is siloed into a project; you must create a project to manage anything. This may work well if you manage a small number of large projects, such as if you have a large company with teams that spend many months on one or two projects.

For many agile small businesses, however, this is not the case. Many small businesses will have many hundreds of clients, each with many small tasks. It could quickly become difficult to manage your priorities for the day if you created a project for every task and every client.

This leads to people only using Basecamp for part of their work management; they put the most important projects into Basecamp and leave the small stuff out. This is far from ideal for small businesses.

todo.vu focuses on organising your tasks by client and helping you manage client priorities. You can add a new client, project or task in seconds without having to set up a project, and you can view all of your tasks across hundreds of clients in one view.

Tasks vs to-do list

Another difference between Basecamp and todo.vu is our focus on tasks. Within a project in Basecamp, you can create to-do lists with simple one-line descriptions. You are unable to provide detailed descriptions of these tasks, and, although you can attach notes and files, the user interface makes it difficult to collaborate directly on these tasks online with your team; such as through comments.

Basecamp’s to-do list items have two states: ‘Incomplete’ or ‘Done’. This binary choice can be limiting in a real world where tasks may be deferred or even dependent on other tasks.

In todo.vu, the task is the central focus of our system. Tasks may be as small as a one-line title, but can also be more complex structures with assignees, followers, detailed descriptions, multiple attachments, due dates, privacy settings and multiple workflow states.

In Basecamp, you can only ever see one to-do list at a time in a specific project. This is not helpful if you manage dozens of projects and need to determine your daily priorities constantly. todo.vu allows you to view all of your tasks at any time or filter by Client, Project, Label, or Assignee as required.

Time integration

Basecamp users can track their time by way of third-party integrations, but it is important to recognise the significant difference between using an add-on or an integrated solution for time tracking.

todo.vu’s ability to track time and manage tasks in the same tool provides a faster, smoother workflow, improves the accuracy and depth of your business reporting, and helps you to increase your billable hours. There’s no need for duplicate entry of project data and no possibility that time can be accidentally recorded against the wrong client or projects.

“Fully integrated time tracking is not just a convenience, it is a paradigm shift in terms of reporting and business intelligence.”

Billing reports link time entries back to the source; so there’s never any question as to why the time was tracked, logged and billed for. Integrated time tracking allows businesses to access a larger range of customised, detailed time reports not possible with third-party plugins.