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Does BaseCamp have long term users? or a million tyrekickers?

Filed Under (Misc Thoughts, Online Marketing, ProWorkflow.com) by Julian Stone on 22-02-2008

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Disclaimer: I’m not knocking this company, just interested to know if the numbers are true… Their numbers seem to paint a grim picture of their users as being tyrekickers rather than long term users. Basecamp - please correct me if I’m wrong.

I’m curious. I went to http://www.basecamphq.com today and saw some numbers that got me thinking.  Here’s the screenshots.

basecamp.gif
Does this seem a little odd to anyone? It looks like their average user breaks down like this:

  • Has Created 0.7 projects
  • Has created 6 To-Do’s
  • Has sent 4 messages
  • Has uploaded 3 files
  • Has tracked 4 hours

I’d like the guys at Basecamp to comment on this post as I’d be interested to know what the average user account looks like? I’m sure they’re doing well and the average user uses the system a lot heavier than that. Basically, the numbers on their website are painting a picture that the average user has used BaseCamp for one day! That can’t be right…

Although not a fair comparison (as we’re at a higher level of functionality), but still interesting, I’ve taken a screenshot of some average user stats from customers of the http://www.proworkflow.com solution - our web based project management software.

pwf-stats.gif

This paints a picture of heavy extended use of ProWorkflow over a long period of time (and yes these numbers are provable).

There was no real reason for this post other than to tell people to always consider the numbers marketed on software company websites’ carefully. My suspicion of BaseCamp is that they’re doing better than the numbers portray and they should update these numbers on the website…

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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com

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37Signals. So people think they should build free BaseCamp alternatives?

Filed Under (Business - General, Business - Software, Misc Thoughts, Responses to Articles, Software Development) by Julian Stone on 07-02-2008

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Original Post: Being 37signals for free
http://wisdump.com/business/being-37signals-for-free

After reading this post I felt I should speak my mind a bit in the comments section. They’s discussing how easy it would be to copy BaseCamp’s project Management Software product and offer a free version. I thought I should point out a few things in defence of them, www.ProWorkflow.com and other software providers who are trying to offer value-based solutions in a market flooded with price-driven customers. Here’s my comment:

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“Our solution is called www.ProWorkflow.com - project management software and we have many thousands of users in the 1-100 user level. I can tell you from experience that copying the code and building a similar tool is only a small part of it. Think about 37s’s overheads, back end management systems, networks, marketing commitments (paid and social), security, support, sales, backups, billing, 24/7 requirements, load balancing, monitoring etc. All this comes at a cost to 37s (or in our case, to us).

You’re fooling yourself if you think you can put all that in place and then offer it for free. Serious companies like us and Basecamp & others, put great infrastructure in place to protect customers’ precious data and provide great service offerings.

I see some people in this list complaining about the cost of the service. Remember that it’s a ‘Service’, not a ‘product’. You can easily replicate the product, but to recreate the service requires infrastructure and this comes at a cost.

On the point I said about people complaining on price - wanting free tools… We charge $15 per user per month for ProWorkflow. This amounts to 0.50 cents a day! Small price for efficiency I reckon. To be completely honest, if a company can’t afford 0.50 cents a day to pay for project management software to create efficiencies (and save money/time), then the problem isn’t the cost of the solution (Basecamp, ProWorkflow etc). The real problem is that your business is either not making any money, or you simply don’t think the solution provides value.

Think about this for a sec. Would you rather spend 0.50 cents a day for a robust solution to protect your important data? or for the sake of 0.50 cents, look for a free tool, but run the risk that the solution may let you down, go under, perform badly, not be backed up etc!

How much do you value your business? Some people on this list obviously don’t think their own businesses are worth a few cents a day! Sheesh! ;-)”

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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com

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