Basecamp vs Redmine

Thinking of swapping Basecamp for the open-source Redmine? Here’s the honest trade-off.

6k Ruby GPL-2.0 3 days ago

What you give up vs Basecamp

  • Dated UI compared to modern tools like Linear or Jira
  • Many capabilities require third-party plugins of varying quality
  • Manual setup (Ruby, database, web server) is non-trivial
  • No official mobile apps or managed hosting

What you gain

  • • Full data ownership — self-host Redmine on your own infrastructure.
  • • No per-seat SaaS bill (Basecamp: flat fee that still rules out self-hosting).
  • • Open-source code you can audit and extend (GPL-2.0).