What users complain about in Basecamp - Project Management

Hard to use

I find this app to be extraordinarily outdated difficult to use and navigate. It’s not intuitive. The icon looks like it needs an update. It’s terrible. It looks like an Atari game.

I feel like I’ve lost a loved one.

I run a (somewhat notable) UX and product design studio. We’ve used basecamp as a team since BC3, but I myself have used it off and on since basecamp 1 and the Highrise days. Basecamp 5 truly is heartbreaking. It feels like they spent ~two decades fine tuning their product and then, perhaps at a tyrannical CEO’s whim, decided to gut it and reassemble it into a Jackson Pollock. The home page, once a calm and orderly portal to your work, is now noisy on the right and filled with random utility buttons on the left. The bottom nav is less intuitive than the BC4 nav. There’s still a lack of capability to plan out one’s individual work for the week. Todos and kanban/card table tasks are still inexplicably separate types of objects rather than being two views of the same object, which they really are. And, there’s still very limited timeline functionality with the anemic “lineup” which has been shoved away in a corner. Hint - if users aren’t using one of your features, it doesn’t automatically mean they don’t want it; it may mean you haven’t built enough for it to be useful. The worst part of all of this is the change is foisted onto users with no choice, and feedback to basecamp largely seems to fall on deaf ears with a “we know better” attitude or dismissive “we’ll think about this for BC6 in a few years”. The switch to BC5 feels like we’ve lost an old friend and sadly we are working to move on to another tool - which in itself is a feat.

The app freezes on iPhone

I’ve already provided this feedback and you can go to Reddit to see that the mobile app is slow, it freezes and causes the phone to heat up significantly. I am repeatedly deleting the app and reinstalling it as advised by support - but is there any desire from this company to fix the issue?

Was great, new design tanks productivity

Basecamp is one of those things that the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. My company is a huge user and it works well for us. But they recently gave the UI a complete redesign. Since then I have seen company usage completely drop off. Why? The new UI makes sense on paper, but is completely impractical in the real world. It’s too different, nobody knows where anything is or how to get to it. In a word, it sucks. Where’s my stuff, how do I get to it, where is the home button? (Oh sometimes its not there, it’s a feature)

Why this calendar?

I absolutely hate the way the calendar is formatted. Why not a normal monthly calendar that you can actually read?

After update

After their latest update, editing, or adding notes in the Basecamp has being an absolute nightmare. When using speak to text, it absolutely does not accept all the input that is spoken. This worked perfectly fine on the previous main software version.

Basecamp 5 sucks so bad. My crew is in the midst of our busiest season and biggest event of the year, and we have resorted to PEN AND PAPER because this app, where we had previously been doing ALL our task management (silly us), has become unusable. Tech point person has sent probably a dozen tickets at this point. We are having strife within the group because of uncertainty around who's doing what and how to locate outstanding tasks. I am so unbelievably disappointed.

App keeps crashing

Searching is not working well with Decent Diaspora. Painfully slow and freezes the app while search starts after typing first search letter. App is also constantly crashing after latest update.

Loved since 2010, but the new update is BAD

I’ve been a loyal and enthusiastic user since 2010. I literally would have HALF the business if it weren’t for Basecamp. BUT this new update (Basecamp 5) is… not good. Too many changes! I can’t find what I need! The Mac desktop app is now SO slow that I’m just using the browser interface. The iPad app doesn’t even open but doesn’t tell me it can’t run on my 5-year old iPad. The iPhone version is working, but I don’t like the GUI changes! Can I please go back to Basecamp 4 or Basecamp 2, please? (I do like that you ditched that horrible yellow logo, though!)

Basecamp 5 is a mess

Ruined the app and website. Calendar is awful. File display is a mess.

recent update is unusable. I can't even click on the send button in any pings without constantly needing to close and reopen the app. pings feel like an afterthought in the web version too. it's just a mess, don't like the new logo at all.

Before the recent update this was 5 stars - we LOVED basecamp and used it across our company daily. The new update has caused all my staff to be frustrated, when trying to simply find a project - and try to make changes, forget it. Unfortunately we will start looking at an alternative. I wish Basecamp would give customers the option to revert back to the old version.

Annoying

I’ve tried adjusting my notification settings and still get a lot of annoying and useless announcements and notifications from Basecamp. I barely want to be notified when work messages me the last thing I want is a million notifications about stupid things I don’t care about.

Please add support for older ios ipad/iphone versions on Basecamp 5

This is a work app, therefore mandatory for some. Not everybody can afford/wants newer phones. It’s not a high resource app. Please add support for older devices. I’m trying not to tank your ratings but please help us out.

New update is GARBAGE!

We have been using this app for our sign shop over the past 6 years. This new update has made it impossible to find information using a smart phone. Would not recommend. Please change it back!!!!!!

Update is terrible

The app was good before this new update now it’s terrible. It’s hard to navigate, the auto correct is non existent so you have to manually capitalize letters which doesn’t sound like a big deal but is tedious and something that wasn’t an issue before. They made changes for the sake of making changes when it was completely unnecessary

Post Update

Basecamp 5 update has killed the app for me, so many bugs, the changes in UI making it harder to read and operate. Freezing every 30 seconds, things won’t load at all, terrible.

Organization and app functionality is borderline unusable

The most recent update (late May 2026) made this app virtually unusable. A random number of projects shows up - not ones you’ve selected or just the top 10. There is NO PLACE to scroll through a full list of projects anymore to find the one you need. Instead, you have to know the name of the project (that your teammate made, if they made one) and search it. Absolutely awful if you’re using this as team project management.

Horrible update to 5.0

This update and redesign is horrendous and now you spend more time clicking through to find what you need. Time to go back to Dropbox. Don’t waste your money. Sad as I am 10 year user for my company, brokers, sales and graphics team and they all really hate it.

SUCKS

This app sucks! I’ve asked my managers to choose a different one multiple times bc of all the important messages I miss!! They only send some notifications not all. The new update is kinda hard to navigate too. It was a little difficult before the update too so I don’t know how they think this new update makes things easier for their users. If you’re a manager/business owner looking for an app for your employees I wouldn’t recommend this one.

Performance Issues All over

Key pages I need to use like Manage people, calendar, are either extremely slow to load or unusable all together since it doesn’t load at all. Lot of glitches too with projects not showing

Update is a mess! The user interface is so confusing. I can no longer find my bookmarks; I can't see how my groups are communicating; I have to hunt to get to messaging. It was never a great app to use in the first place, but the update has made things so much worse. I hope that my organization will find a different app to use, but for now, my hands are tied, and I will absolutely miss valuable information because of the update.

They changed the homepage for the worse with no option to change it back then asked me to rate it so here I am. Awful choice. Edit: The changed it again, the new layout is even more terrible, it's a shame I can't give this another one star rating. If any business owner sees this, don't make your employees suffer through a terrible user experience.

New Update Is Bruta

I cannot find anything after this new update….. like literally nothing. 😢😢😢 Absolutely killing my work flow, virtual unusable. App was decent beforehand.

Going backward

This program used to be ok to use for checking drawings but since the update it has become difficult to view files and is now more confusing. It needs a better layout as most workers use their phones on site, not a computer.

Worst update

Bring back the older basecamp! The new logo and update is horrendous. Nothing seems organized anymore, pings and messages are hidden in the corner. Overall a BIG turn off on basecamp’s end. Looks like y’all rushed it and everyone I’ve talked to hates it.

Worst update ever

They completely ruined the platform with the Basecamp 5 update. My homepage is now cluttered with a million different tabs and buttons yet the interface can’t maintain a copy and pasted hyperlink. I genuinely want to know who even asked for these changes

Was great now it's bad after the new update, fonts are too small nearly impossible to read on mobile, hard to find things. doesnt work with legacy browsers. been using it for years and I am disappointed.

Basecamp version 5 is awful

The new update to Basecamp is terrible. It lags and things that used to be simple to find are now complicated. I hate the home page! Now my cards are tiny and in only two columns. This sucks when you have a lot of project cards. No me gusta. And the skeuomorphic design? Why???

New Design Is Brutal

The new updated design and layout isn’t so bad on mobile, but on desktop the entire layout is insanely narrow and no where near as comfortable to navigate. Instead of having my pinned projects on the home screen all in one place I actually have to scroll now to get to some of them. This new layout is a big miss in general. 👎🏻

New update (Basecamp 5) sucks.

Looks cluttered and can’t customize as much. They got rid of the icons and switched to file format. I had everything color coordinated per protocol and priority. The small color dot next the file is barely visible. Support team, can we have the option to swap back and forth to icons and file format .

Terrible redesign

I don’t know why they decided to redesign the app. It’s awful. We use it within our business and we train people how to use it. And then Poof! everything is moved and we need to do another training session. There was nothing wrong with it before. This sucks.

Hate the new logo

Not a fan of the new update

Update 5/25

The new update is so complicated. Should’ve stated how it was before

Latest Update Sucks

Hard to navigate, just it back. Literally what are you doing

Not a fan of the app update

I’ve been using Basecamp for a year. With the new update, the app dashboard page has very little functionality. It is just a long list of projects, instead of cards. Plus, the keyboard stays up and covers half the screen. I liked the previous version where the projects I was subscribed to showed up and all others were hidden. Plus the project icons were easier to navigate and see the project at a glance. Now, you are stuck with this list of projects you can’t organize or reorder. The only thing you can do is put a star by it to bring it to the top of the list. Ugh! Not a fan.

The new update SUCKS

The desktop version is fine, but the app, which the majority of my company uses, is waaaay less intuitive and it’s unhelpful for how we do business. We can’t group our projects anymore, so it’s much harder to find our projects. I’m upset :( im glad they tried to do something new, but this needed more testing before going live.

Omg hATE the update forced to do it!

I just updated because I was told I had to do it in order to keep my service. I am very upset for some reason. I’m forced to look at a six week miniature calendar now and making everything tiny and there seems to be no option for reverting it back to four weeks for each month. I do not like the layout. I have to do more clicks now to get into the calendar and I have to try to figure out what I’m doing every day because it’s so stupid and tiny. I don’t understand why you would change something that was working so well and I have come to depend on Now! You have made it less user-friendly. I’ll have to start looking for another platform and that’s gonna be a real hassle. If I didn’t have so much stuff on there, I would switch apps tonight but now I’m going to have to take my time and transfer everything over to a new app. Do not get this app. I am really upset about this. I cannot believe you would change this drastically and make it so unfriendly to users. The Calendar no longer has times on it so all you can see is Long list of events but you can’t see the time so you literally have to click on each one to see what time the event or the appointment is at this is going to make my life so much more difficult and I’m going to miss appointments because of this. I’m going to tell everyone I know because I belong to lots of business groups and I highly recommended Basecamp in the past but I’m going to tell all of them to stay away from this app the fact that you would do this to long-term uses is really disturbing.

BC 5 Update

New update is absolutely awful! Removed ability to link outside sources. The setup is not friendly. Colors are dull. Colors helped me group my projects, but now they are so dull it’s not helpful in the least. Notification section is not convenient. Home dashboard is too small. This is an awful setup for someone who has an incredibly busy workday with several different projects. All my co workers feel the same!

Bugs on mobile

Downloaded and started to use it. As soon as I open a card (iPhone 16 Pro) the page layout breaks. It’s not mobile friendly and the colours are all off. I can’t even read it. Hopefully they fix this, in which case I’ll have a second attempt.