Basecamp

About Basecamp

Competitive Landscape

Who Basecamp competes with, and how they differ.

Trello

Trellos board-and-card interface is simpler and cheaper for small teams, while Basecamp bundles project management with team-wide chat, docs, and scheduling at one flat price.

Asana

Asana targets cross-functional work tracking with heavier task dependencies and reporting, whereas Basecamp deliberately keeps its feature set flat to avoid becoming a project-management power tool.

monday.com7.5/10

monday.com sells a configurable Work OS with dozens of view types and automations at a premium per-seat price, contrasting with Basecamps fixed flat-rate, no-per-seat pricing.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

ClickUp7.0/10

ClickUp competes on an aggressive all-in-one feature list, docs, goals, whiteboards, and a generous free tier, pulling price-sensitive teams that Basecamps flat $299/mo plan does not chase.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Wrike7.9/10

Wrike leans into enterprise workflow automation and Gantt-chart planning for larger operations teams, a complexity tier Basecamp intentionally avoids.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Smartsheet7.9/10

Smartsheets spreadsheet-grid metaphor suits ops and finance teams tracking rows of data, a different mental model from Basecamps message-board-and-to-do-list approach.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Company Timeline

Key milestones in Basecamp's history, with sources.

1. May 3, 2022Milestone

   Company reverts name back to 37signals

   Citing its renewed focus on two flagship products, Basecamp and HEY, the company changed its name back to 37signals, its original 1999 name.

   daringfireball.net
2. Apr 26, 2021Milestone

   Political-speech policy triggers mass resignations

   CEO Jason Fried banned workplace discussion of societal and political topics; roughly a third of the companys 57 employees accepted severance and left within days.

   techcrunch.com
3. Jun 16, 2020Launch

   HEY email service launched

   Basecamp launched HEY, a paid consumer email service, immediately triggering a public dispute with Apple over App Store subscription-commission policy.

   techcrunch.com
4. Feb 5, 2014Milestone

   Renamed 37signals to Basecamp

   The company dropped its other products, Highrise and Campfire, to focus solely on its flagship app, renaming itself Basecamp on the products 10th anniversary.

   forbes.com
5. Jul 20, 2006Funding

   Bezos Expeditions makes minority investment

   Jeff Bezoss personal investment vehicle, Bezos Expeditions, made an undisclosed minority private-equity investment in 37signals, the companys only outside capital before it went public with its anti-VC stance.

   techcrunch.com
6. 2004Launch

   Basecamp project-management tool launched

   The teams internal tool for managing its own client work was released commercially as Basecamp, later becoming the companys primary and eventually namesake product.

   en.wikipedia.org
7. 2004Milestone

   Ruby on Rails released as open source

   The web framework extracted from Basecamps codebase was released as the open-source Ruby on Rails, which went on to see wide use across the software industry.

   rubyonrails.org
8. 1999Founded

   Founded as 37signals, a Chicago web-design firm

   Jason Fried, Carlos Segura, and Ernest Kim founded 37signals in Chicago as a web-design consultancy; it later pivoted to software products including Basecamp.

   en.wikipedia.org