The all-new Basecamp is live | Hacker News Reader

The all-new Basecamp is live

basecamp.com

216 pointstbassetto148 comments

I'm a bit behind the curve here - but now that I'm caught up, I'm concerned. When I saw the title of this article, I immediately logged into my Basecamp. Hmm, it looked the same. So I went and found their upgrade instructions. Then I learned that it's not a straight 1:1 upgrade, it's a different product. And they've dropped support for some quite important features, like, time-tracking.

My work runs on Basecamp. We chose it for two reasons, first because it did (nearly) everything we needed it to do, second, because it was being developed by a company we loved.

Now, it's completely integrated into our days to day production. We depend on it. If I walked in to work today and Basecamp was down, I might as well turn around and head home. We've let 37Signals premiere product become essential to us.

As of today, we're using their formerly premiere product. And if we wanted to upgrade to their premiere product, we'd lose completely essential feature.

Yes, they can say that Basecamp Classic will be the same great product it's always been, but it won't. Part of that greatness was innovation, and I don't think anyone believes that 37Signals will continue to innovate with a product that has "Classic" in its name.

The solution isn't hard. 37Signals just needs to be clear.

Will critical features like Time Tracking be in a future version of Basecamp, or will that requirement make us, forever, second class users? Because, I'd rather be a 1st class user at one of Basecamp's competitors than a 2nd class user at the service I've been using for the past 4 years.

We're launching with a great set of features we could do in a reasonable amount of time. If we had tried to reimplement every single Basecamp Classic feature in Basecamp Next before we launched, it would have taken a very long time.

Basecamp Classic originally launched without even file uploads!

We'll be busy bees making Basecamp Next fill in gaps all over the place in the coming months. Looking into how we can solve people's time tracking needs with a great workflow in Basecamp Next is high on that list!

Why did you do a full rewrite?

It's pretty much all explained in this blog post:

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3112-how-basecamp-next-got-to...

Quote: "[...] one of the key arguments for a rewrite was that we wanted a dramatic leap forward in speed — one that wouldn’t be possible through mere evolution."

That's great to hear - but why does it take a rant on HN to communicate that integrating Time Tracking with Basecamp Next is a high priority?

If you're committing to adding Time-Tracking in the future, publicize it, so users like me will be confident that it's worth sticking with Basecamp.

Until that happens, you're telling us, "Sorry, you're not our target user base."

We weren't happy with the time tracking integration in Classic. It was usable, but it wasn't great. We want to take our time to either come up with a better built-in solution or an integration with another tool or something else.

This is a big part of why we're keeping Basecamp Classic around for a very long time. Basecamp Next was not going to launch with all the features that Classic already has. So it's OK that it's not a perfect fit for all existing customers on Day 1.

The iPhone didn't have copy'n'paste for a while, either. There's just so much you can do for launch, if you want to ship.

The iPhone anecdote is such an important one. Probably the most important lesson I learned working at Apple was: people don't remember that a feature was missing once you implement it, but they remember broken features long after you've fixed them.

Consequently, missing features are extremely sore when missing again, such as the ability to turn off 3G on the 4S. (Useful battery saver.)

DHH seems shy about mentioning this so I will: 37signals has been thinking about killing time tracking. See the "Goodbye" list here. http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3110-basecamp-next-the-goodby...

There is a disclaimer, "Some stuff on the Goodbye list is completely gone from Next, while other things are just executed differently enough that they don’t resemble the way things worked in Classic... There’s some stuff on Goodbye that we ended up keeping."

That said, it's probably worth keeping this "goodbye list" in mind when DHH says carefully hedged things like how the team is "looking into how we can solve people's time tracking needs with a great workflow in Basecamp Next." There's a good chance that will NOT be time tracking as you know it.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I don't think you should be kept waiting around for a feature that may be axed.

"We have a lot of great ideas we’ll be exploring down the road. Time tracking may or may not be one of those – we haven’t made any decisions yet."

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3129-launch-the-all-new-basec...

Firstly, great products. I use Basecamp everyday as well, but we are also dependant on "Time", although I side with the philosophical argument that the "Time" feature is essentially useless. I would want to get rid of it, too. Here's why: project managers like to think it's a way of predicting the next project timeframe. It's a giant fallacy. In no way, shape or form, does Time keeping give you any sense of what to expect, so for that reason - I applaud removing it. However, Mr. Project Manager isn't happy. And when he's not happy, I can't use your new Basecamp. Once that sets in as a consciousness and we feel 'Classic', someone is going to start hunting for an alternative. Based on this thread, I'd wager someone is currently tying all of your features + Time together and imposing the "You don't have to be 'Classic' any more!" marketing ploy.

> If we had tried to reimplement every single Basecamp Classic feature in Basecamp Next before we launched, it would have taken a very long time.

As a software developer, I understand this. But I also understand that giving the user the power to migrate projects one-by-one, managing 2 codebases and offering support for 2 products is also a very large undertaking. I feel like adding Time and Private messages would have taken less time and perhaps only pissed people off momentarily when you flipped the switch, like when Facebook and YouTube users protest and then eventually shut up.

By over-engineering this process, I feel like you've opened yourselves up to competitors because now you're that company that is trying to satisfy everyone.

[T]he "Time" feature is essentially useless…[P]roject managers like to think it's a way of predicting the next project timeframe.

There's more to time management than just prediction. When I was working for a company doing client work, we used Basecamp to keep track of how long we spent on each project so we could bill appropriately.

Of course, I don't doubt that. We just don't use it for that, so for me it makes sense not to have it from my point of view.

I agree 100%. Without time tracking Basecamp Next is useless to us too. Migrating Classic to Next and losing our tracked time is no option. We mainly use To-Do lists and time tracking. Time tracking as it only is available in the 49$/month price plan was the single reason we upgraded.

I'm a bit disappointed now as i was looking forward to Basecamp Next.

> it's completely integrated into our days to day production. We depend on it

37signals, and DHH, constantly warn anybody that will listen, that they should not use free products because that "makes them the product" and leaves them at the mercy of an acquisition, or failure, etc.

But your comment shows that one can face the same risks with every Saas... Boxed software wasn't all bad! ;-) and open source software that you host yourself isn't bad either!

Hmm, I'm thinking of a third model, where you have SaaS, but you get a custom install for you (or your company), that you get to decide when and if to update.

Something between boxed software and a one-for-all SaaS.

The comments here remind me of Joel Spolsky's excellent 80/20 essay: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html

Excerpt: "...A lot of software developers are seduced by the old "80/20" rule. It seems to make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies.

Unfortunately, it's never the same 20%. Everybody uses a different set of features. In the last 10 years I have probably heard of dozens of companies who, determined not to learn from each other, tried to release "lite" word processors that only implement 20% of the features. This story is as old as the PC. Most of the time, what happens is that they give their program to a journalist to review, and the journalist reviews it by writing their review using the new word processor, and then the journalist tries to find the "word count" feature which they need because most journalists have precise word count requirements, and it's not there, because it's in the "80% that nobody uses," and the journalist ends up writing a story that attempts to claim simultaneously that lite programs are good, bloat is bad, and I can't use this damn thing 'cause it won't count my words."

The reaction from some heavy users of it reminds me of Spolsky's Things You Should Never Do, Part I essay, as well: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

http://basecamp.com/transition

I want to migrate, but...

> Basecamp Classic and the new Basecamp don't offer the same features, so some data in Classic won't make it into the new Basecamp.

So maybe I'll stay. But wait...

> Will you continue to improve Classic? The majority of our design and development efforts moving forward will be focused on the all new Basecamp, but we'll continue to support Classic as long as customers continue using it. We expect that to be for many many years.

Maybe. Maybe not. The web moves very quickly you know. New browsers, standards, security risks etc. I can think of a million and one reasons Classic will get EOL'd sooner rather than later.

This is certainly faithful to their backwards compatibility intolerance. The new product couldn't be bound by the "burden" of the old. Now I the customer am left with a very distasteful choice to make.

For a company that goes on about transparency and clear speaking etc., the answer to the second question you've quoted is appalling. It doesn't answer the question at all. It should be:

Will you continue to improve Classic? No. We will fix any bugs or other problems that stop our customers using Basecamp Classic but we will not be developing new features. Our focus now is on improving Basecamp Next so that Classic customers are happy to transition.

Their response is completely disingenuous.

What's appalling about it? It's not necessarily true that we won't add new features. This is day one right now. We don't know how things will pan out. It's disingenuous to say we won't do something that we might do.

As stated, the majority of our resources will go towards the new Basecamp. That's honest and as clear we can be without misleading anyone.

I just felt that the answer dodged the question. Your response to me answers the question i.e. you don't know if you will improve Classic. By saying the majority of design and development efforts will be focused on Next and then saying that you'll continue to support Classic implies by omission that no further improvements will be made.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not criticising the position of you not knowing - it's a fair position given this is launch day. I'm criticising the fact that the answer to the question didn't say we don't know.

It's unfortunate then that in this case the honest and clear answer sounds like glossy PR-speak.

Sorry, but this is exactly what continue supporting in context of software means for everyone. This is a standard term, there's nothing disingenuous. You don't expect new features in your old Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation without upgrading to a new version, do you? But you can expect bug fixes as long as it's supported.

Looks like they have got rid of the free plan...

(I'm not saying this as a negative thing, it's going to be really interesting to see the response to this, I know there was a blog post a while ago saying there hardly anyone on the free account upgraded) I'm using a free basecamp account but we only have one project and $20/$25 is just a little much for that a micro plan at $10 would be awesome :) )

I agree. $20/mo is definitely going to be too expensive for a ton of potential customers. I guess it's a luxury that 37Signals can not only afford, but will maximize their profit and I would assume they have some good historical data to back up the decision.

I do think that there is a magic $5-9/mo range that individuals will pay without thinking too much. Above that amount, they start equating a subscription with a trip to the movies or a (cheap) night out and you've lost them.

I totally disagree, $20/mo for a service like Basecamp is not expensive. I pay $20-50/mo per month for a whole host of services (hosting, backup storage, payment processing, etc.) and don't really think twice about them since they're business expenses. FYI: I'm an individual who has a full-time job but does projects/apps at night with a separate LLC.

I agree--$20/mo is not expensive but like @thehodge says... it all adds up. I think that in this space tho, you have a huge market of people who are "pre-business" who just couldn't justify 5-10 $20 services a month when they are pre-profit or only making a few hundred a month off of their products. Basecamp could appeal to some of these folks with a sub $10 offering.

Agreed. Someone else here already pointed out "hey, time tracking in basecamp is limited - we use harvest and integrate". OK, so now you've got 2 $20/month services (or whatever harvest costs). Then another $10-$20/month for another service. And another. And another. And that's usually $10-$20/month per user. A small company could easily be paying $500/month for a few services for a handful of users. Are they getting $500 or more of value from it? Possibly, but smaller orgs tend to be more gunshy about spending money, however small, without free tiers. Perhaps those are the companies that you don't really want as customers anyway?

I think 37signals won't do that for the same reason Apple won't make a $399 laptop, they don't want to be in that business. That's not the business they're in, and knowing what business you're in and not in is extremely important. I'm sure there are a dozen Basecamp competitors with $10/mo plans that would probably fit your needs.

I totally disagree. Certainly hosting costs that much, backup usual not and payment processing never. When compared to services with a free tier like ZenDesk, Yammer, Twilio, Stripe, DropBox, BiBucket and Trello, I don't think your comment holds water at all.

For a consumer product, $5-9/month is probably a good price point depending on the product. To a business, $20 per month is a great starting price. Businesses have a different set of demands than a consumer. The value of Basecamp has definitely proven itself to be worthy of that rate. There are "free" services out there that do similar things, but to a business they probably feel more secure paying for a service, knowing that they'll be around for the foreseeable future.

$20 here, $40 there.. it all starts adding up..

Some assumptions, to be sure, but you say "we only have one project", so that implies multiple people, so if you are employed by this work you must be pulling in several thousand dollars per month. $20/mo for a product you need to (or at least want to) use to accomplish this work and earn money is an absolute pittance.

It depends on what value you put on basecamp, most of what we do is on git and we pay for a large github account.. I don't want to be a free customer but I disagree that $20 is nothing in the long term when most of the features offered to me I'll never use

Just because they might have a team working in a free version of Basecamp doesn't mean that they're pulling in money.

Four friends and I were using free basecamp to track a personal free-time project we are working to turn into something more. That's five people on free Basecamp, not making any money (in fact spending out of pocket), but it's at times been an invaluable resource. Just, for our scale, not $20+ a year invaluable.

I'm fine with Basecamp Next being "not for me" right now because of that, but that doesn't mean I'm not a little disappointed.

Microsoft Office 365 cost $7 @ user, with Sharepoint Online, that is easy to use, as sort of the combination of Basecamp and Backpack.

I suppose the big difference is that Basecamp offers unlimited users.

As others have posted here about other businesses, prices under around $20/month start to rapidly become unprofitable. One common reason cited is that a price of e.g. $10/mo doesn't allow any budget for support time, etc. Lower price points work for consumer applications with potentially massive scale. But businesses unfortunately need to pay for results.

I think $20 is cheap enough.. I'm wondering why they switched all prices to ending in 0 now and how that will affect conversions. I feel like we are always so used to ending in 9's or 7's

It's fun to poke around under the hood a little bit, and look at parts of the internal API:

    > Object.keys(bcx.models)
    ["PersonOrGroup", "Bucket", "BucketAccess", "Calendar",
    "CalendarEvent", "Project", "Person", "CalendarDisplay", "Todo"]

    > Object.keys(bcx.models.Todo.prototype)
    ["constructor", "isAllDay", "isTimed", "urlRoot", "getBucketPath", 
    "showPath", "bucket", "doesOccurOn", "doesOccurOnOrAfter", 
    "doesOccurBetween", "getDueDate", "summary"]

Nice to see them using camel case in their js, unlike some other ruby shops.

Well, yup, but if I am not wrong, the point here is probably that they have embraced Backbone.

And obviously the difference between other ruby shops and 37signals is that they are the reasons other ruby shops exist.

This isn't reddit, but I'll still take a chance!

Hi Jeremy,

My name is Jeff Morse. I'm a Recruiter at a super-charged start-up called Mixbook www.mixbook.com I came across your profile on hacker news and have a full-time Jr. Backbone developer opening working onsite in our Palo Alto, California office that is a great match for your background/experience. Would you be ready to make the move to Silicon Valley, the most innovative place for web start ups which offers superior growth opportunities for talented Backbone developers like yourself? Mixbook will pay for all relocation costs. Would you be open to taking a phone/Sykpe call from our CTO, Aryk Grosz (see attached LinkedIn profile) to discuss the position further? If interested, email me your Skype ID and I’ll coordinate the call with Aryk.

Cheers,

Jeff Morse

Sr. Recruiter

Mixbook

408.234.2400

jmorse@mixbook.com

We're Hiring http://www.mixbook.com/careers#job-openings

Our Product: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_dhKroiAo4

About Us: https://gist.github.com/1960387

What is this all about then? A new kind of recruiter spam?

I don't get it. According to his profile, the guy is not a recruiter and his name is not Jeremy. I'm confused.

This is an Old joke (see above)

So everyone knows, this is a reference to David Hansson receiving a recruiter pitch from someone who didn't bother to research him. https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/statuses/175658131429400576

I'm just explaining it. I don't think that posting it as humor out of context is good posting on Hacker News.

Am I the only one here who thinks they've actually done a good job with this transition? I've been a long-time (paying) user of Basecamp and the entire 37 Signals suite, and I think Basecamp needed to be revamped long ago.

I actually like that they've created a brand new experience/product, and have given everyone ample time (90 days) to evaluate whether or not they like it. I also thought the FAQ was clear, and the transition process was well explained.

As for the loss of time tracking that a few people have complained about... If you're really that serious about time tracking, you shouldn't be using the extremely limited time tracking capabilities of Basecamp Classic anyway. We use Harvest and integrate it with our Basecamp account, and it's a perfect setup for us. I always thought time tracking seemed like a "nice to have" feature of Classic.

Minor update/edit to this note about the transition if anyone from 37 Signals is listening...

I just noticed that the Launchpad bar at the top of each page lists both Basecamp and Basecamp Classic when you're in the new Basecamp, but if you switch over to Classic you lose the quick link to the new Basecamp.

It would be nice during the trial to have the ability to switch back and forth easily from the Launchpad page/bar. This is a minor thing, but it would help me easily show my team the differences between Classic and Next because I know it will take a bit of "selling" them on it before we can fully make the transition.

Both links are also labeled "Basecamp Projects." I could see that causing some confusion with other people on my account.

It feels kind of weak to me. 37sigs used to be very vocal and strong about what they believed. "Here's our way, and you'll like it or not". This seems like they are really couching their bets... If no one likes the new one, they won't have lost their cash cow, if they do like the new one, they've made an easier transition for others.

I'm afraid what actually will happen is 45-50% will be on the new Basecamp, and 50% on the old, and it will be confusing to clients who sometimes use the old, sometimes use the new, etc... Will be interesting to see how it plays out, as with everything 37sigs does, it's innovative and if it works I wouldn't be surprised to see more people taking a similar approach.

Interesting point about clients being confused with two different versions... Although it's a remote possibility, I could see it being confusing for someone who works with one vendor who swears by Classic and another who has migrated up to Next.

I also agree that this could be seen as inconsistent with their stance on making opinionated software. However, I put myself in their shoes and see only a couple of options - you either revamp Basecamp with a new design/user experience and risk a huge backlash from your customer base, or you build a brand new product and give people the choice. I'd go with the latter option.

I notice the new version is running on basecamp.com. The old version is at basecamphq.com and 37signals always made a point about the domain not mattering as much as the product name. I imagine there's a follow-up to that saying that if your product becomes successful there's nothing wrong with going and grabbing the pure domain (thinking Dropbox, Instagram and others. Or basically the opposite of Color.)

"Your Basecamp Classic URL (which looks like yoursubdomain.basecamphq.com) stays the same. New Basecamp accounts are hosted on the basecamp.com domain. New Basecamp accounts don't have subdomains, so all accounts are at basecamp.com."

From: http://basecamp.com/transition

It looks like they're gradually simplifying. They originally launched with a range of domains you could choose from: projectpath.com, clientsection.com, grouphub.com, etc. with a subdomain. Then it went to subdomains on basecamphq.com, and now just basecamp.com with no subdomains.

I remember yourname.seework.com from a previous job. As a result, all of the project managers called it Seework, not Basecamp.

That's exactly what happened. It was actually confusing for people since different people on the same project were referring to Basecamp with different names. That's one of the reasons we migrated everyone to basecamphq.com and now, basecamp.com on the new accounts.

That was the first thing that caught my eye too. I would tend to agree with the assessment that a perfect domain name is negligible compared to having a successful product offering. You can take that too far, but for the most part a domain name doesn't matter all that much. It's a stupid investment for a struggling entrepreneur to spend thousands of dollars for a new domain. I think another significant reason they decided to go ahead and purchase the domain now, is that it was part of a larger effort to rebrand the product.

http://www.quora.com/37signals/Why-doesnt-37signals-own-base...

They didn't own basecamp.com then, now they have.

"Project name is bigger than domains" is a part of lie part of true: Product and it's name important but if you can't get the domain just be arrogant and say to people it doesn't matter. But because you know the importance of the domain name , when you have money and chance get the domain and rule the world.

We purchased the domain from the previous owner a few months ago. We wanted to use it to launch the new Basecamp since the Classic version used basecamphq.com. We wanted to keep the URLs separate so this seemed as good a time as any to make it happen.

Would it have been significantly cheaper if you purchased the basecamp.com domain earlier?

It wasn't for sale at this price earlier.

I enjoyed the ad for wysihtml5 in the console on pages that use it. "Heya! This page is using wysihtml5 for rich text editing. Check out https://github.com/xing/wysihtml5

First time I've seen that, but makes sense for an OSS project to promote itself to people who would have the console open, i.e. devs.

And it looks like a fantastic WYSIWYG editor, at that. I'm definitely going to replace my hacked together contenteditable editor with it.

I'm surprised to see people complain about the copy. Is "The majority of our design and development efforts moving forward will be focused on the all new Basecamp, but we'll continue to support Classic" really that hard to understand, let alone disingenuous? Is it, despite it being mentioned a zillion times in the FAQ, so tough to understand that they've cut some features and that therefore the upgrade won't make sense for everyone?

Here's the official announcement, BTW: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3129-launch-the-all-new-basec...

Their new pricing page breaks many of the "rules" for getting conversions (eg. clear call to action). It will be interesting to see if they blog about the results of it.

http://basecamp.com/pricing

"Get started today with a 45-day free trial" ?

No CSS buttons!

Does anyone else find the marketing on basecamp.com shaddy?

It says on the front page:

    8,000,000+
    projects managed with Basecamp

    99.94%
    rock-solid uptime reliability record

    97%
    of customers recommend Basecamp

Yet all of those stats are for the legacy Basecamp Classic product and not for this brand new product they created, which has a completely different code base, which was just released TODAY.

You seem to really have something against 37signals...

I'd like to see a successful product or company that hasn't done some sort of 'shaddy marketing'.

Old Basecamp was not being improved actively anyway. It took them 5 years to add deadlines to to-do's, for example.

The new product reminds me (even in the name) the failed NeXTSTEP operation systems. The incompatibility with existing solutions was part of it. Basecamp Next is not an upgrade, but a new product. It does not have the same set of features, in fact it has even less (time tracking, milestones, etc). Free accounts are also dropped out, as it seams. Old browsers like IE7 do not seam to be supported... A lot of things are going against what J was preaching all those years.

I can see Basecamp fans buying it, but if I would be a new user and I would check their website for the first time (that is also designed with you already knowing about Basecamp in mind) I would ask myself "why would I pay $20-$150 a month for a product with so few features"). It's a nice to-do list, but the users got smarter and the market moved forward - users need more features, not just a one-page project page (Google Docs can do half of it out of the box and for free).

The new Basecamp doesn't have less features than Basecamp Classic. It has different features. The new Basecamp has dozens and dozens of features that Classic doesn't have. All together, I can make a very strong case that the new Basecamp offers significantly more functionality than Classic. And it's simpler, too.

Comparing side by side isn't the end goal. The goal is which product fits you best. If you love Classic, you can stay with Classic. If you prefer the feature/UI/ideas mix of the new Basecamp, come on over.

Great, they basically removed all the features we use in Basecamp Classic :)

Yep. It would be nice to see a list of added/removed features vs. Classic. For example we use the time tracking functionality for our invoicing needs.

Also, does the API (http://developer.37signals.com/basecamp/) stay the same?

This post has a good list: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3110-basecamp-next-the-goodby...

The API isn't ready yet, soon though!

Thanks! Seems indeed a lot of useful stuff was dropped. I wonder if that was based on usage analysis, or just an opinion on what the product should have.

It is a shame that API appears to be only an afterthought. Otherwise third parties could possibly offer some of the missing features.

It's definitely not an afterthought. If you're interested in beta testing the API feel free to email me at nick@37signals.com, and I'll get you hooked up.

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3110-basecamp-next-the-goodby...

This is crazy, so 37signals doesn't even allow new users to sign up for the Basecamp Classic version.

Seeing this new Basecamp product makes me even more so want to use the OLD Classic version ... yet I can't.

You can still sign up for Basecamp Classic at: http://basecamp.com/classic

Where did timesheets go? Has anyone been able to find time tracking?

They're gone: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3110-basecamp-next-the-goodby...

Looks like there isn't any time tracking in the new Basecamp. When you upgrade it says that won't be moved over. I wonder if this is to be added later or not many customers use it. At my previous company this feature is the reason we upgraded to a higher plan.

No milestones? What are we supposed to use instead of it? Our workflow heavily depends on them ..

Same here. That's the only jolting aspect for us.

I suspect we'll have to use to-dos or calendar events. But calendar events don't seem to appear on the overview page and can't be checked off as completed either.

Anyway, clearly I need to keep investigating.

They're called events now. You can add them to the calendar or on the Events section of a project page.

Jason, I think the confusion is that your example Project is so nicely fleshed out, people use it to grok the entire range functionality within a project. Because there is no sample Event, people will miss the small "Add Event" link hidden at the top of the page.

That could be true. We made the call to get this sample project in at the last minute (literally a day or two before launch) so we couldn't get everything we wanted in there. We will likely include events in a future version of the sample project.

So, no API yet. The neat thing about client-side apps is that they force you to craft a great API from the get-go, because you'll be using it extensively in your own application. DHH was talking earlier [1] about how client-side MVC isn't a great developer experience and consequently why they avoided it for Basecamp Next, and I sympathize with that decision, but I wonder how great of a developer experience it is to have to develop a server-side app with various AJAX-related endpoints and then having to go back and develop a full-fledged API... instead of doing just the latter.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3603680

It's funny to think Trello is now competing with Basecamp by "underdoing the competition"!

I didn't use basecamp before and I'm just testing a little bit. Seems to be quite fast. What I kinda don't like: If you click on e.g. a discussion, a modal-window-like layer pops up where the discussion is displayed. Now how can I go back? First I was quite unsure how to do this without clicking on the browser's-back button. Then I figured out that you can click out of the layer and the layer disappears. I think there's a need for a "close"-Button..

Check out http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3122-the-new-basecamp-interfa..., there's a great video that explains some of the goodies baked in for navigation.

I am sure they A/B tested the new design, even though it appears somewhat less effective on a first look.

I'm sure that they are currently testing the design, but I'm not really sure how they could have been testing it previously.

Is there a way to migrate existing Basecamp accounts over? I can't seem to find anything on how to do it.

I guess this is what you were looking for: http://basecamp.com/transition-steps

We also have general FAQs for Classic customers: http://basecamp.com/transition

Easiest is to go to your Classic instance, look at the Account tab, where there is a huge call-to-action explaining the upgrade path.

Just finished reading Rework. in that book they usually tell that they rarely implement new features because most of them are redundant for most of the users and only a few would benefit out of this. Personally,I am not a Basecamp user and I really would like to learn what's new.

Here's a list of some of the new features: http://basecamp.com/new

I can see the lack of time tracking being a bit of a talking point, otherwise looks like a huge improvement.

What about the API? Is it still going to be supported in the new Basecamp or will it remain just for the classic Basecamp? I really hope there will be some kind of continuity where the data structure make it possible. Beside this, it looks really clean and fast. I like it! :)

We'll be introducing a new API. It's not ready yet.

Any ballpark figures on timescales to introduce the new API?Also is it your intention to add to the existing one or rebuild it from the ground up?

Are they using pjax or something like it for the marketing site. I know you had mentioned that's how the application works. Just wondering if there are any plans of open sourcing that.

Is it possible to export data from it ? because I just found out that there is no free plan, and I already added a bunch of stuff to the Next version... (felling really stupid).

37signals, have you had a SSAE 16 attestation (newer version of SAS70) performed yet on this new product yet?

I ask because my corporation can't use Basecamp unless this new product has coverage.

Wow, I love the attention they paid to details.

If you click on the blank project boxes behind the Red Marker "Welcome" text, the Add Project bounces to attract your attention.

It's really nice how the 37s pages use type for design. Other sites would use images much more to get the same level of design across. It's really neat.

Congratulations to the 37signals team on launching the all new Basecamp. Just migrated our projects from Basecamp Classic and it's working beautifully.

Wow lots of team members (32?) at 37Signals these days!

Interesting that they've taken an new approach to SEO for their feature pages... a long list of vaguely project management named pages.

Makes perfect sense to me.

I'd also say its not vague - they probably spent a great deal of time naming the pages/titles from a usability & SEO standpoint. I like the redesign a lot.

Thanks. To be honest, we didn't think much about SEO here at all. We thought about customers. Well written pages that speak clearly and explain products thoroughly are automatically good for SEO. SEO gains are side effects of good writing.

Does new Basecamp has an API?

We use a Gmail contextual gadget to create Basecamp todo from emails so I wonder if that is going to work.

I'm not a big fan of it, I think I will stick to Basecamp classic or develop my own solution very shortly.

great new simple and neat design. and the copywriting seems even more direct and to-the-point. well done.

It's looking great - easy migration, super-fast. Congrats to all involved (no humans.txt?)

It appears they just bought basecamp.com as well. It's been basecamphq.com for a while.

basecamphq.com remains for Basecamp Classic accounts. basecamp.com is for new Basecamp accounts.

is it just me, or is the stylesheet 404'ing?

http://basecamp.com/sprockets-c5fcdbcede3dff502006bc5d0d7bef...

EDIT: Told the team about it in a ticket, JIC.

No time tracking makes this completely useless for my company.

Any recommendations for alternatives?

No more free tier?

cool, so does this mean the month-long campaign 37s has been running on HN can come to an end? I prefer to be marketed to by only YC-backed startups.

A job well done to @jasonfried, @dhh and the 37signals team!

System Down!

http://imgur.com/e0GMk

Not sure how 37signals can claim 99% uptime when on the first day of launch, it's not working.

Another bug found, I can't upload files!

http://imgur.com/fy7Ie

37signals, this is why you don't rewrite software from scratch.

Arg! Bug #3 found. Now the Daily Progress is not working for me.

http://imgur.com/5ubmk

37signals, seriously.

Hi there. Sorry to see you're having trouble. If you fill out the support form, we'll be glad to take a look and get to the bottom of the problem.

BUG #4!!! This is a joke right!?!?

http://imgur.com/tHXkR

Now the People ("Everyone") section won't work for me.

I can't be alone with experiencing this pain - right?

Good way to start off the launch guys. I won't be a customer anytime soon. Just say'n

You're a real charmer, aren't you? We can't wait to have you as a customer!

Looking forward to their numerous blog posts talking about how good their new design is and how shit you are for not doing something the way they do it.

Is it still on Rails (or Node.js)?

Rails.

If your company is completely dependent on Basecamp, how come you haven't tried the beta already, and given feedback?

I'm fairly sure the beta was invite-only.

Looking forward to moving across from "Classic" ;)

Free plans by using a test credit card # (e.g. 4111111111111111).

It works.

Good job 37signals. You instill so much confidence in your in attention to details in your product. Much like the recent known Rails security vulnerability that you never addressed and now Github was compromised as a result.

I don't see a problem with accepting a test credit card. Once your free trial is over, then they'll email you a message saying your card can't be charged and you'll be expected to update it.

No, this is a major bug because they are trying to authenticate the credit card before accepting the input in the form field. Meaning, if you type "1234567891234567" that won't work, yet a test credit card # does work.

This isn't a bug.

The validation that they are doing when you enter the card is just Luhn validation.§

This is basically just to ensure that the numbers entered into the field "at least have the possibility of being a valid credit card". No processing of the card is being done at this stage.

§ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhn_algorithm

They aren't authenticating the card. They are doing a checksum on the digits entered using the luhn algorithm.

Exactly, its not a bug, its a feature. Just like mass assignment.

Next time you gear up for a major upgrade, try less time blogging for HN, more time talking to your users about the features they care about.

Why ask when they've got the usage data? I'd presume canned features are the ones least used across all users.

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