The primary features of Basecamp include to-do lists, writeboards (web-based text documents), milestone management, messaging system, file sharing, Campfire integration and time tracking.

Basecamp offers its users some additional tools. You can find APIs and Widgets under "Extras" directly on Basecamp. This time there is not an uncountable amount of extensions to find, but I´m sure other interessting things will follow. The more user there are, the more developer it attracts. And under approximately 250.000 User are surely some nifty developer hands.

So all in all Basecamp is appreciatet for its simple and easy to use style. The text in the right collumn displays you help and useful fetaures all the time. The design is fully scalable due to your browsersize and the whole prjectplan can be branded with your logo and your color scheme via CSS.

But Basecanp is not the only project management tool on air.  Manyothers try more or less succesfull to gain marketshare of the very interessting enterprise 2.0 software market. Active Collab is an alike designed open source tool witch runs on your own server instead of browser based. The advantage you just need to buy the software and don’t have the monthly cost like at Basecamp. In deed Basecamp offers a free account but, honestly no one can run an real project on such a small base except you pay a monthly fee between 12 and 99 US$.

But not all of reviewers rate this tool as a good possibility to manage your work. David Armano from the logic + emotion listed the top ten reasons why Basecamp sux. I don’t want deny it to you:

1. 37 Signals seems to be more interested in offering lots of fancy color schemes than in meeting its customer’s needs
2. 37 Signals rolls out changes without any external customer feedback and without notifying anyone. And if you don’t like them, you don’t get configurability, you just get told your voice doesn’t count because 37 Signals likes them, thank you very much.
3. Jason Fried has his own ideas about what to do with BaseCamp, customers needs be damned.
4. No GANTT Charts: No visual respresentations whatsoever. No not ever.
5. Jason Fried’s favorite response to practically every feature request is "No. sorry. (end of discussion)"
6. Many of the Basecamp users on the forums treat Basecamp as their cult and Jason Fried as their leader. Don’t make a suggestion that Jason doesn’t like or you’ll be heckled by all of Jason’s disciples.
7. The tiny team at 37 Signals keeps launching other services: Backpack, Tada List, Writeboard, and three more before the end of 2005 instead of focusing on meeting BaseCamp customer needs.
8. Roapmap?  What roadmap?
9. 10Mb File Attachment Limit.
10. You can’t split or merge projects, so be extra careful that you don’t make a mistake in how you organize your Basecamp projects…
11. Three words. NO PROJECT TEMPLATES!!!  Enter everything manually.
12. And the worst one is, they hold your hostage data!  You can’t even export it, contrary to their FAQ "Can I get my data out if I want to discontinue using Basecamp?" that implies you can. BEWARE: Once you get in, you can’t get out!!!

All in one it is a application that polarizes and is worth to dicuss. Concluding I would say Basecamp convinces with its easy intuitive usability. Therefore we included it in our card deck of top 52 web2.0 companies. When it comes to real big projects the one or other would miss some essential functionalitis.