I've been investigating project management solutions lately, both for myself and for a client. Of course, the big player in this field, and a favorite among Digerati, is 37signals' Basecamp product. It's adored. Venerated. Worshipped. However, a new contender entered the field about a month ago called activeCollab, and it's attracting fans and stirring up the pot a little bit.

activeCollab is only in 'alpha' release, so there are obviously some kinks to work out, but it's definitely usable and people are already putting it in production environments. Take a look at some of the buzz. It has 1459 Diggs. Some people are refering to it as a 'Basecamp Clone' as well as a 'Basecamp Killer.' I'm not sure either of these labels really fit the bill. First of all, even though activeCollab shares a lot in common with Basecamp, the creator, Ilija Studen, has definitely taken his own approach to the functionality, making the 'clone' label a little unfair. As 37signals' Jason Fried himself points out, "[Calling activeCollab a clone] would imply it had exactly the same features, design, and implementation. That's obviously not the case. This is competition."

As for being a 'Basecamp Killer,' I think it's a little too quick to be using words like that. There are going to be audiences for each product. Not to mention that, at this point, Basecamp is a superior product. It is more stable and offers more functionality than activeCollab. (In my installation of activeCollab, a couple of features don't work, including uploading files and sending email. But part of this may be because I'm installing on IIS, which isn't recommended.) So Basecamp still has an edge on activeCollab, but it's also a product you have to pay for. And the fees are not inconsequential.

activeCollab is still under development and, while what has been released so far is excellent, there is much more work to be done. Still, there are two things that separate activeCollab from Basecamp which could make it desirable to many users. First, you can install it on your own servers. Second, a fully-functional installation is free. For people like me, these are Great Things. I like anything that I can run on my own servers. (Call me a control freak. It just feels better when I host things myself.) And the fact that activeCollab is free, well that doesn't hurt much, either. Let me be clear, if activeCollab sucked, I wouldn't even mess around with it, regardless of whether or not it was free. But activeCollab doesn't suck. It's pretty freakin' good already, and will probably only get better. I'm willing to pay for quality products, and I will gladly donate to activeCollab when a working 1.0 version comes out.

So, for my own use, I'm leaning on the side of activeCollab. I can do with the minor technical glitches, and while I like Basecamp in general, I've always felt 37signals' pricing was a bit high. That said, I'd still recommend Basecamp to anybody who needs greater functionality and can afford it, or for whom installing the activeCollab code is either not possible or not desirable. For those people, Basecamp will continue to be the way to go, probably for a while to come.

Right now, 37signals can get away with inflated pricing because they have something helping them out called 'hype.' But products like activeCollab will help balance all that out. Now, what would really stir things up is if Basecamp released code that developers could install on their own servers (and use for free), and if activeCollab offered fee-based hosted accounts. That would make things pretty interesting.

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