Why do you use 37Signals products? Simplicity, UI, Hype?

I like the simplicity and minimalism I don't have to spend time learning another interface as theirs is stripped down and minimalist.<p>It's also easy for me to use with less technical people. As it's not overwhelming unlike some similar tools, they can start using Basecamp straight away. I don't have to sit down and give them a walk through.<p>I also like how it's flexible. I don't have to adjust my workflow to their software.

My company uses Basecamp to manage projects. It's the only project management tool we've stuck with over five years of experimentation.<p>I have to attribute this to Basecamp's simplicity: it doesn't do a lot of the things we want, but we can fake it for the most part. Instead of prescribing how we should be managing our projects, Basecamp takes as little information as possible and lets us decide how to use it.<p>So, basically, we use it because it solves problems we need solved. Same reason we use anything else.

I looked at LiquidPlanner and Wrike recently in a comparison of Basecamp. They are nice products but they make things complicated. In my opinion, Basecamp is excellent for working with multiple clients/stakeholders on small, self-contained projects.<p>For collaborating on projects with clients, 37S makes a product that has limitations but the overall user experience makes it better than their competitors.<p>LP and Wrike both share serious access/security flaws (LiquidPlanner grants global access to anyone who is shared a workspace (clients,projects,folders) and Wrike allows anyone who is shared a virtual project folder to go on and share it with anyone - (who can easily delete the entire virtual project folder and all its children). These open, Web 2.0 collaborative ideals don't work well with a company focused on multiple client projects (all of which must be confidential).

I've been using Basecamp since 2005 - simple, responsive UI, stable.<p>If you haven't read their manifesto on keeping things simple, you should - the 'lack' of features is intentional.

Less features than what? You criticize their products, yet offer no viable alternative. A better question would be "why do you use X instead of Y", where X is a particular 37 signals product, and Y is an alternative that you like better.<p>Personally, I use Backpack after trying (and not liking) a whole bunch of other solutions for todo lists. I tried<p>- Outlook<p>- Pen and paper<p>- Simple text file<p>- Command line todo tool (Lifehacker)<p>- Remember the milk<p>- Google tasks<p>and I'm probably forgetting something, it's been a while.<p>I use Backpack because it's:<p>- Incredibly simple and intuitive to use<p>- Offers organization system that makes sense (pages, notes and lists - I use nothing else)<p>- It's easy and fast to find anything I want<p>- I can use it everywhere - on my phone, desktop, and the web. I use the web-based client at work and at home, also Mac desktop widget at home, and Satchel on my iPhone. The synching is seamless everywhere.<p>I'm not going to dignify the "RoR hype" with a response.

I think the reason is all the things you mentioned, and more.<p>Most of the other project management software still seems sterile, and you have no sense of who is creating it. As far as features go, if everyone on a team isn't using a feature, that feature doesn't exist anyway.<p>With the high profile of 37signals team, you get a sense that if anything was drastically wrong with the software, the user base will be able to hunt down Jason Fried and get the thing working again. If they're not gonna fix it, Jason Fried will be the first person to say so.<p>Thats straightforward, and people use straightforward as a proxy for 'good.'

I use Highrise (free version) for task management, although since that's all I use it for I'm working towards shifting those to Google Mail/Calendar Tasks. I do however like the fact you can get some of the task/reminder feeds in Backpack and Highrise as iCalendar feeds - not enough applications use this.<p>As far as my experience with the apps has gone they're nice, and they do work well, but I don't believe they're worth the hype. It might be that I haven't seen enough "bad" software but I've seen simpler web apps that work just as well.

It (Basecamp) is simple enough that our clients can use it. Enough said.

I'm not a big Basecamp fan - I'm forced to use it for work where we have 40+ projects running on it and sometimes for larger clients when they have their own Basecamp setup.<p>Maybe we don't use it to its fullest but all it ends up doing is archiving conversation threads and being a file repository. Just looking now there are 3 month late todo items that I don't think will ever get closed. After a while every project seems to drift off of it and end up using a combination of email + bug tracking.

Because 1) the product is good enough for my needs and 2) because I know them and 3) I expect them to still be there in 5 years. There are probably tons of other similar products out there with the same simplicity and reliability (or even better), but why would I want to change to something that is not extremely better?

The minimalism and design sensibility is nice, but the real reason we use them is that they're (a) hosted and (b) a reliable, proven company. You could launch a 10x better Basecamp or Campfire, but I don't believe you're going to be in business a year from now, so I'll stick with 37s.

We use Basecamp and Highrise because I haven't seen anything better. And by better I don't mean "has more features".<p>The products are simple and obvious in their nature. That is why we use them.

If you're so curious, perhaps your time would be better spent actually trying their applications, rather than "watching various videos and seeing the growth".

Simplicity and excellent usuable UI design. And ofcourse the RoR hype helps a little