Basecamp: A Clear and Present Brand

Basecamp™ is again causing a stir in the online project management space by recently announcing they will be moving all of their existing customers from their old site address to a new site address at basecamphq.com. To make matters more controversial, they’ve also announced they’ll be branding the new site address with a small logo.

In defense of this move, they write:

We’ve talked with a lot of folks over the years and discovered that many people who use Basecamp don’t know they are using “Basecamp.” They think they’re using “projectpath” or “clientsection” or “grouphub” because that’s what their account’s domain name is.

This is a very understandable reason for making this move. It happens to us all of the time. Our web-based project management app is named “Intervals,” however, we often have customers refer to it as “Time Task,” “Project Account,” or “My Intervals.” Is this our fault? Well, it certainly isn’t our customers’ fault. It’s just one of those conundrums currently hanging over the online Software as a Service marketplace. One way we’ve tried to decrease customer confusion of our brand is to offer the intervalsonline.com domain as an option when creating an account.

While we are often thinking of new ways to get our name and brand across clearly to our customers, we would never resort to branding the app for paying customers, or forcing them to a new domain name. Not that it’s wrong to do so, but it’s something we’ve promised our customers we would never do from the beginning. There is simply too much value to our customers in having their own project management space to go and mess with a good thing.

And it sounds like some Basecamp customers are feeling the same. Some of them have stepped up the heat in the Customer Forums Important notice regarding your Basecamp web address post. Again, in defense of this move, they say:

We’d like to give you the option to use your own domain, but right now it’s not technically possible since all Basecamp sites are SSL. And since they are secure, each site needs a secure certificate which is a pretty complicated process to manage for each customer.

Intervals does this quite easily using wildcard SSL certificates. You can purchase and install them, one per each domain, and create as many SSL plans on the subdomains as you would like. I’m assuming this is how Basecamp handled SSL plans before, and I’m surprised they are not continuing to do so moving forward. The most complicated part of the process we’ve encountered is remembering to renew the certs for each of the domain names.

Update: As pointed out in the comments, I misread the information about the domains and SSL. Basecamp was referring to top level domains, and not subdomains. In that light, I don’t know who would be crazy enough to try and support SSL for unique domains. However, I still think it’s too big a change for Basecamp to get rid of domains like grouphub.com, etc. For customers who have come to appreciate or rely on the anonymity of the interface, this will be a difficult transition.

The decision to move everyone over to new site addresses sounds like it was done for good reason, but it does not sound like the best solution to the problem. I am surprised that the creative minds at Basecamp, who have been an inspiration to ourselves and many other web-based project management tools on the market, did not think of a more creative solution.

As stated on their site, the driving reason for this change is to make it easier for them to manage the product. This makes a lot of sense and is good reason to rope in new customers moving forward.

A single domain name makes signup simpler for our customers, communication more consistent for us, and infrastructure easier to maintain for everyone’s benefit.

But to require existing customers to make a significant change in the way they’ve been using your product for the last four years? You need a better reason then the one they give.

Perhaps the real reason for this change is the one found reading between the lines of announcements, forum ventings and blog posts. They have a serious branding issue on their hands, and it isn’t just their customers who are confused. Have you seen how many Basecamp knockoffs are on the market today? Without a clear and present brand, Basecamp is likely to continue suffering customer confusion in the marketplace.

In the meanwhile, it reinforces our decision here at Pelago to create Intervals not only as an alternative to Basecamp, but also a more comprehensive project management workflow application, offering more features such as invoicing and advanced reporting. If anyone ever confuses Intervals with Basecamp, we know we’ve done something wrong.

And to the creative minds at Basecamp, we wish you the best of luck with your transition. You are trying to solve one of the great branding mysteries of offering SaaS. We’ll be watching to see how it goes. Maybe we’ll learn a thing or two about clarifying our own brand.