BaseCamp, an Extranet Project Management Solution

Setting up an agency project management intranet (or extranet in this case) is surprisingly easy with BaseCamp.

BaseCamp is one product that people can use without too much effort. It's about as simple to use as a well templated blog. It is however, an ASP model project manager (meaning that BaseCamp is subscription based, hosted by the actual company, and not software you can buy and install on an internal agency server).

But as far as costs go, especially for an ASP, the price is pretty reasonable. For unlimited projects and people it's $99 a month. There are also pricing plans that are less expensive, they just limit the number of projects and users.

Setting up projects in BaseCamp is easy. The program has simple scheduling (milestones), to-do lists, and built in e-mail notifications. You can attach files to your projects (but you have to host them on your own ftp/sftp server). Basecamp has some interesting technology links as well, with RSS, XML, iCal and is Mozilla Calendar Friendly. You can customize the look and colors, matching up with your corporate identity. Subscribing to the extranet by using iCal or RSS is also included and is pretty nice. However, it does not integrate with Microsoft Outlook's calendar feature.

It's worth looking at, and has a free 30 day online trial as well.