About our Products

Basecamp turns project management on its head. Instead of Gantt charts, fancy graphs, and stats-heavy spreadsheets, Basecamp offers message boards, to-do lists, simple scheduling, collaborative writing, and file sharing. So far, tens of thousands agree it's a better way. Farhad Manjoo of Salon.com said “Basecamp represents the future of software on the Web.” Here's what other people think about Basecamp.

Backpack is the alternative to those confusing, complex, “organize your life in 25 simple steps” personal information managers. Backpack's simple take on pages, notes, to-dos, and cellphone/email-based reminders is a novel idea in a product category that suffers from status-quo-itis. Backpack is so flexible you'll use it for everything. David Pogue of the New York Times said, “Backpack is a cool organization tool. How very cool," and Thomas Weber of the Wall Street Journal said it's the best product in its class.

Writeboard lets you write, share, revise, and compare text solo or with others. It's the refreshing alternative to bloated word processors that are overkill for 95% of what you write. John Gruber of Daring Fireball said, “Writeboard might be the clearest, simplest web application I've ever seen.” Web-guru Jeffrey Zeldman said, “The brilliant minds at 37signals have done it again.”

Ta-da List keeps all your to-do lists together and organized online. Keep the lists to yourself or share them with others for easy collaboration. There's no easier way to get things done. Over 100,000 lists with nearly 1,000,000 items have been created so far. USA Today awarded Ta-da List with a “Hot Site of the Day” award and people are using it right now to keep track of their favorite movies, grocery lists, people they need to call back, and plenty more.

And for the developers of the world we offer Ruby on Rails. Rails is a full-stack, open-source web framework in Ruby for writing real-world applications quickly and easily. Rails takes care of the busy work so you can focus on your idea. Nathan Torkington of the O'Reilly publishing empire said “Ruby on Rails is astounding. Using it is like watching a kung-fu movie, where a dozen bad-ass frameworks prepare to beat up the little newcomer only to be handed their asses in a variety of imaginative ways.” Gotta love that quote.

About our Company

We're a privately-held Chicago-based company committed to building the best web-based software products possible with the least number of features necessary. Our products do less than the competition — intentionally. We've been in business since 1999 and love what we do. Our Signal vs. Noise Weblog is read by nearly 20,000 people every day.

We believe software is too complex. Too many features, too many buttons, too much to learn. We build products that do less, work smarter, feel better, let you do things your way, and are easier to use. We pay enormous attention to the details and overall customer experience of our products.

While our products are mainly built for small businesses and individuals (we call this group the Fortune 5,000,000), companies of all sizes use them every day. From 1 person to teams of 3-5 people to companies of 5000. Everyone loves simple tools that help get the job done and then get out of your way. That’s what our products do.

Get in touch

Press inquiries, new business development ideas, and general questions, comments, and concerns should be sent to Jason Fried, the company founder, via email.

The Buzz

“Basecamp and Backpack were awarded Best of the Web 2005 awards by the editors of BusinessWeek.”
-BusinessWeek

“37signals’ Basecamp and Backpack are the future of software on the web.”
-Farhad Manjoo, Salon.com Cover Story

“The best example [of online organizer tools] is a service called Backpack (which has been drawing attention among bloggers who focus on productivity tips).”
-Thomas Weber, Wall Street Journal story

“Basecamp is the most useful web app I’ve ever used - the closest thing to perfection I’ve seen yet in that class of software.”
-Needmore Designs

“Absolutely bloody fantastic. I’ve used Basecamp for less than a week and it’s invaluable. It’s so well designed and it features precisely what I need to manage a bunch of different projects... But it’s genius is in its lack of structure - and the focus on communication rather than overt process. And fab client access and views from their perspective. Essential.”
-Guy Dickenson

“Backpack is perfectly conceived and the most elegantly executed web app I’ve seen. Period. I’m excited again about keeping things organized at work and at home. I plan to be Backpack-ing a lot every day.”
-Richard Bird

“For years we have heard that online applications will grow in use. We have been told that local applications will go away. Gmail started me thinking that this may be true, Backpack has made me a believer. The user interface is superb; truly a wonderful online application.”
-Lyle Troxel

“We’re just mindboggingly amazed at how absolutely delicious your system is. Really. It’s just too cool. You guys rock. Really, it’s that good.”
-Jean Marc

“As a hint about what Backpack can do, and just how ridiculously simple and awesome it is, let me say this: I am about to leave the house, but I really want to continue playing with this all day, so I will.”
-Tangentialism

“First, let me say that I am absolutely delighted with Backpack! I’m so glad I was browsing David Pogue’s Posts and found his enthusiastic endorsement. I’ve spent the last 3 days working out strategies to completely revamp and streamline my record-keeping and information-storage strategies for my work, personal interests, and scholarly projects. As a librarian, someone in the information organization and retrieval business, this is particularly exciting!”
-Glenn Ellen Starr Stilling

“We’ve just started using Basecamp, and the reaction from our clients and team has been singularly amazing. For the first time, a project management and collaboration tool that people will actually use - not just because it does the job in a simpler and better way, but because it’s also genuinely a pleasure to use and interact with.”
-Dom Rodwell

“Basecamp has already been key to winning a project, being the main thing that differentiated us from a very close competitor, and it’s had a massive, positive impact on our working practices, even after just a couple of weeks.”
-Simon Rudkin

“37signals has done it again. First Basecamp changed the way I work and now Backpack has changed the way I live! It took about 10 minutes to decide to sign up for a paid plan and half that time was looking for my credit card!”
-Hunter Hillegas

“Even though all this functionality is ’out there’ in different applications by themselves, Backpack is perfectly usable and elegant. I could very well put up a public wiki or something for collaboration, but it won’t match Backpack’s ease of use. It’s the little features that make my day... Backpack’s interface is excellent.”
-Ankit Solanki