Basecamp

Raised as a usability problem by 29 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2008–2025), in 28 threads.

People raised many different problems with Basecamp, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 28 complaints

Scattered tickets across projects, chats and boards; hard to find where things are2025-04-24
Work scattered across many message boards, chats, and kanban boards2024-04-16
Interface is considered a nightmare to use, worse than Jira2023-03-24
Existing users receiving invite links are pushed toward creating a new account2020-06-29
Search takes seconds to load with no loading feedback2018-01-03
Hard to tell what products are offered; only one product is visible at first2017-12-27
Hybrid apps have non-native, crappy UI and UX with feature lag2017-09-11
UI is painful to use, custom widgets, and slow on slow connections2017-03-17
Emailing a client requires a confusing separate interface that feels like witchcraft2017-02-20
Hard to drill down into task details like creation date and creator2016-11-17
Gets cluttered and hard to navigate, so finding things is painful once busy2014-11-10
Can't tell whether the user presence count display is intentional or a glitch2013-11-16
Create-project plus icon is hard to spot and lacks visual emphasis2013-06-30
Calendar always requires scrolling down to see everything2013-05-13
Icons look clickable but just scroll to the top of the page2013-02-12
Campfire is nearly impossible to use from a mobile browser due to unresponsiveness2013-02-12
Admins can't easily remove members or rename lists; those tasks are harder than for regular users2013-01-02
Noticeable pause after clicking makes the interface feel laggy2012-03-14
Sheets add unneeded chrome and shift the main content area down and right2012-02-16
Overview page is so confusing the commenter never uses it2012-02-16
Mixes up Textile and Markdown formatting because the two are similar2011-11-07
App is so slow to respond that the interface can't hide it2011-06-26
Basecamp feels too slow and heavy for quickly assigning tasks to people2011-04-13
App hasn't meaningfully changed since launch, leaving how users interact with it weak2011-04-10
Clients don't get notified of file uploads, only messages, and don't understand the difference2011-02-15
Replies go to Basecamp not the sender, and must be formatted specially, breaking email expectations2010-10-27
Couldn't find a clear login box on the website2009-10-26
Replying from email notification to Basecamp message was so difficult user never did2008-07-09