Hey Basecamp. Great at talking. Quiet on tracking.
Basecamp keeps a team calm and clients in the loop. Progense answers the questions Basecamp leaves open: is this on schedule, where did the hours go, and who signed off?
14-day trial · clients always free · no credit card
No timeline, no computed status
Hill Charts show a feeling of progress, not a date-driven status. There's no Gantt to see slippage.
Approval is just a conversation
Clients comment and say "looks good" in a thread — there's no structured sign-off that locks the work.
No budgets or alerts
Time tracking is a paid add-on and there's no budget burn or overage alerting at all.
What Basecamp is great at
Basecamp is a genuinely lovely, opinionated tool — radically simple, calming to use, with predictable flat-rate pricing at scale and free unlimited client access. For a team that wants message boards, to-dos and docs without ceremony, it's excellent, and we admire the restraint. Progense keeps that client-friendly spirit but adds the tracking layer Basecamp deliberately leaves out: a real timeline, computed status, a client sign-off gate, and time + budget. (Coming from Basecamp? An importer is on the way.)
Progense vs Basecamp, where it counts.
| Features | Recommended Progense | Basecamp |
|---|---|---|
| Status computed from dates | Automatic | Hill Charts only |
| Client approval required to complete | Built in, locked | Conversational |
| Formal scope-request audit trail | Built in | In message boards |
| Client/guest seats | Free, uncapped | Free unlimited clients |
| Native time tracking | Automatic | Paid add-on |
| Budget tracking + alerts | Built in, 50–100% alerts | None |
| Gantt / timeline | Project → task | None |
| Built for client-facing agencies | Purpose-built | Comms-first |
No credit card · 14-day trial
Built for agencies. Over-engineered for honesty.
Every decision in Progense exists for one reason: to tell the truth about where your projects actually are. Not to make you look good on a Monday morning slide. To show you — and your clients — reality.
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Free for 14 days, no card.
