Best European Alternatives to Basecamp

Looking for a European alternative to Basecamp? Basecamp is a popular all-in-one project management and team collaboration tool, but it's based in the US and processes your data on American servers. For businesses and teams who value privacy, GDPR compliance, and data sovereignty, European collaboration alternatives offer compelling options.

We've curated the best privacy-focused project management and collaboration tools built in Europe. These alternatives provide powerful team collaboration features while keeping your data protected under European law.

8 Alternatives
100% GDPR Compliant
How we rank these tools — 4-step process
  1. 1
    European ownership, verified

    The company is headquartered and incorporated in the EU, EEA or Switzerland, and processes customer data in Europe. A US parent company disqualifies a tool from this page regardless of where its servers are.

  2. 2
    Category fit and hands-on review

    What the tool actually does, who it suits, and where it falls short — checked against the vendor’s own documentation, changelog and pricing page rather than its marketing copy.

  3. 3
    Compliance and pricing check

    GDPR posture, hosting location and the prices quoted on this page are verified against the vendor’s public pricing before publication, and re-checked when we revisit the category.

  4. 4
    Position on this page

    Placement on this page can be paid, and that can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. It never buys a good review: a tool that fails the checks above is not here at any price, and payment does not change the shortcomings we write about. A vendor can ask us to correct a factual error — not to remove a criticism.

Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a vendor. Paid placement can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. Editorial policy

Why Choose a European Alternative to Basecamp?

GDPR Protection

Your team communications and project data stay in Europe, protected by strong privacy laws.

EU Data Centers

Data processed and stored exclusively within the European Union.

End-to-End Encryption

European tools offer encryption for messages and files that Basecamp doesn't provide.

Team Collaboration

All-in-one platforms combining chat, tasks, and files like Basecamp.

Best European Alternatives to Basecamp

We've curated the best privacy-focused project management and collaboration tools from European companies. Each alternative has been evaluated for features, privacy, and GDPR compliance.

Stackfield

All-in-one collaboration with end-to-end encryption from Germany

#1 for replacing Basecamp
Germany

Zenkit

Flexible workspace with projects, chat, and wiki from Germany

#2 for replacing Basecamp
Germany

OpenProject

Open-source project management with team collaboration from Germany

#3 for replacing Basecamp
Germany

Teamleader

Work management with CRM and invoicing from Belgium

#4 for replacing Basecamp
Belgium

MeisterTask

Beautiful task management and documentation from Austria

#5 for replacing Basecamp
Austria

Teamwork.com

A European alternative to Asana, monday.com, Basecamp

#6 for replacing Basecamp
Ireland

Vikunja

A European alternative to Todoist, Trello, Asana

#7 for replacing Basecamp
Germany

awork

Project management from Hamburg with tracking built in

#8 for replacing Basecamp
Germany

Key takeaways

  • Basecamp has no per-user fees: $299 a month covers unlimited users, so for a large organisation it is cheaper than anything here.
  • 37signals LLC is in Chicago and Basecamp offers no European region at all, so storage and jurisdiction have the same answer.
  • No Gantt, no dependencies and no time tracking is a design position rather than a roadmap gap.
  • Stackfield is the only tool here that also puts chat and tasks in one product, and it encrypts both end to end.
  • For a team under ten, per-user European tools cost less than Basecamp's flat fee; above roughly forty, they cost more.

Why people leave Basecamp

Start with the thing most comparison pages get wrong about Basecamp: it is not expensive. There are no per-user fees at all. Freelancer is $25 a month for up to twenty people, Studio $59, Pro $99, and Unlimited is $299 a month for unlimited users and projects. For an organisation of a hundred, nothing on this page is cheaper.

So the reason to move is not the invoice. It is that 37signals LLC is in Chicago, which puts the company and everything in it within reach of the CLOUD Act, and Basecamp does not offer a European region to soften that.

The second reason is a disagreement rather than a defect. Basecamp deliberately has no Gantt chart, no task dependencies and no time tracking, because its makers think those things make teams worse. If you agree, it is the calmest tool in this market. If your work has a critical path, you are arguing with a design decision rather than waiting for a feature.

  • An American company holds the whole account 37signals LLC operates from Chicago. There is no EU data centre to select, no residency add-on on an enterprise plan, and no regional option in settings. Where Jira offers residency from Standard and Asana from Enterprise, Basecamp offers none, so the storage question and the jurisdiction question have the same answer here: the United States.
  • No dependencies, no Gantt, no time tracking These are not gaps waiting to be filled; 37signals has argued for years that they are harmful. For a small team running projects that mostly go in sequence, that opinion is liberating. For anyone who has to show a client when the third milestone lands and what it costs, it means keeping a spreadsheet beside the tool, which is exactly what a tool is supposed to end.
  • The flat price cuts both ways Unlimited at $299 a month is excellent value for a hundred people and poor value for eight. A small team pays a flat fee whether they use it fully or barely, where per-user tools scale down with them. Several tools here are free at that size, including two you can self-host with no seat limit.
  • It works best when everyone is inside it Basecamp's Message Board, Campfire and Check-ins replace email and chat inside a project, which is its real strength. It also means that clients, contractors and the finance team either come inside or miss half the conversation. Organisations that could not get everyone in end up with Basecamp plus a chat tool plus email, which is the situation Basecamp exists to prevent.

What you have to replace, not just match

Work out which promise you are keeping, because Basecamp bundles three things that most tools sell separately.

There is project organisation, which every tool here does. There is communication, the message board and chat that replace email inside a project, and only one tool on this page includes that. And there is the philosophy: fewer features on purpose.

If you want all three, Stackfield is the closest match and it adds something Basecamp cannot offer, which is that the provider cannot read any of it. If what you actually needed was the Gantt chart Basecamp refuses to build, OpenProject is the honest answer and it is a different kind of product.

The alternatives compared

European Basecamp alternatives, in the order this page ranks them, compared on headquarters, pricing and jurisdiction
PositionToolHeadquartersPricingJurisdiction
#1 Stackfield Munich, Germany From €4.99 per user per month EU (Germany)
#2 Zenkit Karlsruhe, Germany Free plan / from about €9/user/month EU (Germany)
#3 OpenProject Berlin, Germany Free Community Edition / Cloud from about €5.95/user/month EU (Germany)
#4 Teamleader Ghent, Belgium From about €50/month (Focus) / €66/month (Orbit) EU (Belgium)
#5 MeisterTask Munich area, Germany Free tier / from about €6.50/user/month EU (Germany)
#6 Teamwork.com Cork, Ireland Free up to 5 users / $9.99/user/month (Basics) / $24.99 (Accelerate), billed yearly EU (Ireland)
#7 Vikunja Lübeck, Germany Free self-hosted / €4 per month personal, €5/user/month for an organisation EU (Germany)
#8 awork Hamburg, Germany From €5/user/month billed annually (€8 monthly), Standard €12, Professional €22 EU (Germany)

How each alternative compares to Basecamp

#1

Stackfield

the one that keeps the conversation with the work

Munich, GermanyFrom €4.99 per user per month#6 in Knowledge Base & Intranet

  • Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Basecamp is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
  • Where the data sits. Germany (EU).
  • Source code. Closed source, as Basecamp is.
  • Independently checked. GDPR, end-to-end encryption.

Best for: Teams who would miss the message board more than the to-do lists

Stackfield is built by Stackfield GmbH in Munich and hosted in Germany, and it is the only tool on this page that puts chat and tasks in one product the way Basecamp does. Project conversation stays attached to the project instead of scattering into a separate messaging tool.

It then goes somewhere Basecamp does not. Everything is encrypted end to end with AES-256, so messages, tasks and files are unreadable to the company running the service. Basecamp encrypts in transit and at rest and holds the keys, which is normal and also means 37signals can read what is in your account.

At €4.99 per user per month it is cheaper than Basecamp for a team under about sixty and more expensive above it, which is the arithmetic that decides most of these moves.

What Stackfield does better than Basecamp

  • End-to-end AES-256 encryption, so the provider cannot read messages, tasks or files, which Basecamp by design can
  • German company and German hosting, where Basecamp offers no European region at all
  • Chat and tasks in one product, the part of Basecamp that most alternatives quietly drop
  • Task dependencies and deadlines that Basecamp refuses to add on principle

Where Stackfield is a step down from Basecamp

  • Priced per user, so above roughly sixty people Basecamp's flat $299 is cheaper
  • No Gantt chart, so it does not solve that complaint either
  • End-to-end encryption limits search across content and makes integrations harder
  • A smaller integration catalogue and a smaller community than Basecamp's

Standout against Basecamp. It is the only tool here that replaces Basecamp's whole promise, work and conversation in one place, and the only one where the supplier cannot read either.

stackfield.com Visit Stackfield
#2

Zenkit

the one that adds structure without adding weight

Karlsruhe, GermanyFree plan / from about €9/user/month#6 in Project Management

  • Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Basecamp is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
  • Where the data sits. Germany (EU).
  • Source code. Closed source, as Basecamp is.
  • Independently checked. GDPR.

Best for: Teams that liked Basecamp but kept needing one more view

Zenkit comes from Axonic Informationssysteme GmbH in Karlsruhe and is hosted in Germany. The same records can be a board, a table, a calendar, a mind map or a hierarchy, so different people can look at the same work in different shapes.

Against Basecamp that addresses a specific frustration. Basecamp gives you to-do lists and a schedule, and anyone who wanted to sort, filter and group ends up exporting to a spreadsheet. Zenkit turns that spreadsheet into one of the views.

It does not replace the message board, and it does not have a real Gantt chart. It is the middle option on this page: more structure than Basecamp, far less weight than OpenProject.

What Zenkit does better than Basecamp

  • German company and German hosting, against a Chicago company with no EU region
  • Table, calendar, mind map and hierarchy views over the same records, where Basecamp has lists and a schedule
  • A free plan for small teams, where Basecamp's paid tiers start at a flat fee
  • Notes and databases in the same suite for the documents Basecamp keeps in Docs & Files

Where Zenkit is a step down from Basecamp

  • No chat, so the message board and Campfire have to move to another tool
  • No real Gantt chart or dependency handling
  • From about €9 per user per month, so above roughly thirty people Basecamp is cheaper
  • Less opinionated than Basecamp, which for some teams is the point of Basecamp

Standout against Basecamp. It gives the person who kept a parallel spreadsheet a real table view, which is the most common private complaint about Basecamp.

zenkit.com Visit Zenkit
#3

OpenProject

the one that has everything Basecamp refuses to build

Berlin, GermanyFree Community Edition / Cloud from about €5.95/user/month#5 in Project Management

  • Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Basecamp is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
  • Where the data sits. Germany (EU) or self-hosted.
  • Source code. Open source, where Basecamp is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.

Best for: Teams that left because the work has a critical path

OpenProject is AGPL-licensed software from OpenProject GmbH in Berlin, free to self-host with no seat limit or hosted from Germany from about €5.95 per user per month.

It is the exact opposite of Basecamp by design. Gantt charts with baselines, task dependencies, critical path, budgets, time and cost tracking: every one of the things 37signals argues teams are better off without. If that argument never convinced you, this is where you go.

It is also the only tool here you can run entirely on your own infrastructure, which answers the jurisdiction question outright rather than moving it to a German supplier. The cost is that a team used to Basecamp's calm will find this a lot of software.

What OpenProject does better than Basecamp

  • Gantt charts, dependencies, baselines and critical path, all of which Basecamp declines to offer
  • Time and cost tracking against budgets, where Basecamp has neither
  • Self-hostable under AGPL with no seat limit, so no provider holds the data at all
  • German company and German hosting on the cloud edition
  • Free at any headcount when self-hosted, where Basecamp's flat fee applies from the first month

Where OpenProject is a step down from Basecamp

  • No chat or message board, so Basecamp's communication half goes elsewhere
  • Much heavier, and the calm that made Basecamp worth keeping is gone
  • Someone has to own the installation, upgrades and backups if self-hosted
  • Above roughly fifty users the hosted edition costs more than Basecamp Unlimited

Standout against Basecamp. It is the only tool here with a real critical path, which is the single feature Basecamp has spent a decade explaining why it will not build.

openproject.org Visit OpenProject
#4

Teamleader

the one for agencies running client work in Basecamp

Ghent, BelgiumFrom about €50/month (Focus) / €66/month (Orbit)#4 in CRM

  • Which law reaches it. EU (Belgium). Basecamp is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
  • Where the data sits. EU.
  • Source code. Closed source, as Basecamp is.

Best for: Teams whose projects arrive as quotes and leave as invoices

Teamleader NV is Belgian and EU-hosted, built around the sequence an agency runs on: lead, quote, project, time, invoice. Plans start from about €50 per month.

Basecamp is popular with agencies and has no idea what a quote is. Client projects live in it as to-do lists while the commercial side sits in accounting software and a spreadsheet, and the two are reconciled by hand every month.

If your Basecamp is internal work rather than client work, this is the wrong tool on the page and one of the three above it fits better.

What Teamleader does better than Basecamp

  • Quotes, invoices and time tracking as real objects, where Basecamp has none of the three
  • Belgian company with EU hosting, against a US company with no European region
  • One system from lead to invoice, so the monthly reconciliation stops
  • Priced per company rather than per seat, which is the same shape as Basecamp's pricing

Where Teamleader is a step down from Basecamp

  • Not a project tool in Basecamp's sense: no message board, no Campfire, lighter on collaboration
  • Aimed at small and mid-sized businesses, so governance is light for large organisations
  • No self-hosting and no end-to-end encryption
  • Wrong fit entirely if your projects are internal rather than billed

Standout against Basecamp. It is the only tool here that knows what a quote is, which is the half of an agency's work that Basecamp has never modelled.

teamleader.eu Visit Teamleader
#5

MeisterTask

the one that keeps the restraint

Munich area, GermanyFree tier / from about €6.50/user/month#1 in Project Management

  • Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Basecamp is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
  • Where the data sits. Germany (Frankfurt).
  • Source code. Closed source, as Basecamp is.
  • Independently checked. ISO 27001, GDPR, CCPA.

Best for: Small teams who liked that Basecamp does not do very much

MeisterTask is built by MeisterLabs GmbH near Munich, hosted in Frankfurt, and certified to ISO 27001 alongside GDPR and CCPA compliance. It is the smallest tool on this page and the only one with an externally audited security certificate.

It shares Basecamp's instinct without sharing its shape: a board, automations for stage transitions, time tracking, and nothing clamouring for attention. For a team that valued Basecamp for what it refuses to do, that restraint is the reason it belongs here at all.

It ranks last because a team leaving Basecamp is usually leaving for something specific, encryption, structure, a Gantt chart or invoices, and MeisterTask supplies none of those. If you are leaving purely because of the company's address, it is the easiest landing.

What MeisterTask does better than Basecamp

  • ISO 27001 with external audit and Frankfurt hosting, where Basecamp offers no European option
  • German operating company, so no US corporation holds the account
  • Time tracking on paid plans, which Basecamp declines to offer
  • Cheaper than Basecamp for teams under about fifteen people

Where MeisterTask is a step down from Basecamp

  • No message board and no chat, so Basecamp's communication half has to go somewhere
  • No Gantt chart or dependencies, so it does not answer that complaint either
  • Priced per user, so a large organisation pays far more than Basecamp's flat fee
  • The free tier caps at three members per project

Standout against Basecamp. It is the only tool here with an audited ISO 27001 certificate, and the only one whose pitch, like Basecamp's, is how little it asks of you.

meistertask.com Visit MeisterTask
#6

Teamwork.com

the one that keeps the flat-fee logic and adds the invoice

Cork, IrelandFree up to 5 users / $9.99/user/month (Basics) / $24.99 (Accelerate), billed yearly

  • Which law reaches it. EU (Ireland). Basecamp is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
  • Where the data sits. AWS, in both US and EU regions.
  • Source code. Closed source, as Basecamp is.
  • Independently checked. ISO/IEC 27001:2022, SOC 2 Type 2.

Best for: Agencies who liked Basecamp's pricing but need to bill from it

Teamwork Crew Limited has run from Cork since 2007, holds ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and SOC 2 Type 2, and builds for client services: billable time, retainers, budgets and invoicing beside the projects.

Against Basecamp it answers the thing Basecamp deliberately has no opinion about. Basecamp organises the work and the conversation and stops there, so the money lives in accounting software and a spreadsheet. Teamwork closes that loop.

On price the comparison is not automatic. Basecamp charges no per-user fee at all, $299 a month for unlimited users, while Teamwork is $9.99 per user per month. Below about thirty people Teamwork is cheaper; above that Basecamp is, and the gap widens fast.

What Teamwork.com does better than Basecamp

  • Billable time, retainers and invoicing as objects, none of which Basecamp has
  • ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and SOC 2 Type 2, where Basecamp publishes no comparable certification
  • Irish company, against a Chicago company with no European region at all
  • A free plan for five users, and real project scheduling with dependencies

Where Teamwork.com is a step down from Basecamp

  • Priced per user, so above roughly thirty people Basecamp's flat $299 wins
  • Hosted on AWS across US and EU regions, so a US provider is in the chain
  • No message board or group chat of Basecamp's kind
  • Considerably more product than Basecamp, which was the point of Basecamp

Standout against Basecamp. It is the only tool here that turns the project into an invoice, which is the gap every agency on Basecamp fills with a spreadsheet.

teamwork.com Visit Teamwork.com
#7

Vikunja

the one that costs nothing at any size

Lübeck, GermanyFree self-hosted / €4 per month personal, €5/user/month for an organisation

  • Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Basecamp is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
  • Where the data sits. EU for the hosted version, or wherever you run it.
  • Source code. Open source, where Basecamp is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.

Best for: Small teams for whom Basecamp's flat fee is the expensive option

Vikunja is AGPLv3 task management, free to self-host with no seat limit, or about four euros a month hosted in the EU. Lists, kanban, gantt, a calendar and an API.

Against Basecamp the arithmetic is the argument, and it runs the opposite way from the usual. Basecamp has no per-user fee, which makes it excellent value at a hundred people and poor value at six, because a small team pays a flat fee for capacity it does not use. Vikunja is free.

What it does not have is the half of Basecamp that people actually stay for: the message board, Campfire, check-ins. If the conversation is what you would miss, Stackfield at the top of this page is the answer instead.

What Vikunja does better than Basecamp

  • Free self-hosted at any team size, where Basecamp charges a flat fee from the first month
  • AGPLv3, so the code and the server can be entirely yours
  • German jurisdiction hosted, or no provider at all self-hosted, against a Chicago company
  • Dependencies and a gantt chart, which Basecamp refuses to build on principle

Where Vikunja is a step down from Basecamp

  • No message board, no chat, no check-ins, which is most of what Basecamp is
  • A one-person business rather than a company
  • Self-hosting means somebody owns the upgrades and the backups
  • No client-facing features at all

Standout against Basecamp. For a team under about ten it is the only option here that costs nothing, which inverts the usual argument that leaving Basecamp is expensive.

vikunja.io Visit Vikunja
#8

awork

the one that answers who is free next week

Hamburg, GermanyFrom €5/user/month billed annually (€8 monthly), Standard €12, Professional €22#8 in Project Management

  • Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Basecamp is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
  • Where the data sits. Germany, on Microsoft infrastructure.
  • Source code. Closed source, as Basecamp is.
  • Independently checked. ISO 27001.

Best for: Teams who left Basecamp because nobody could see the load

awork is built by awork GmbH in Hamburg and hosted on ISO 27001 certified Microsoft servers in Germany. It plans work in phases, records the hours against them, and shows how loaded each person is before the week is committed.

Basecamp has no time tracking and no capacity view, by design: 37signals has argued for years that time sheets make teams worse. Whether you agree is the whole question. If you run client work and have to answer whether you can take the next job, the opinion costs you money.

It keeps more of Basecamp's calm than the other capable tools here. It is a small product with a clear shape, not a platform with a configuration screen.

What awork does better than Basecamp

  • Time tracking and a workload view, both of which Basecamp declines to offer
  • German company and German servers, where Basecamp has no European region
  • ISO 27001 certification
  • Project phases and dependencies, so work that has an order can be planned

Where awork is a step down from Basecamp

  • No message board or chat, so Basecamp's communication half goes elsewhere
  • Priced per user, so a large organisation pays far more than Basecamp's flat fee
  • Microsoft infrastructure underneath a German company
  • No free plan, only a trial

Standout against Basecamp. It supplies the two things 37signals refuses to build, time tracking and capacity, without turning into the kind of software Basecamp exists to avoid.

awork.com Visit awork

What actually breaks when you switch

The to-dos are easy and the conversation is not. Basecamp exports an account archive in HTML covering projects, messages, documents and files, which preserves the record but is not a format any tool here imports. To-dos usually need converting to CSV by hand or with a migration service.

Message board history is the real decision. Years of threads do not move into another product, so almost everyone keeps the export as an archive and starts clean. That is a choice the team has to agree to, not a technical step, and it is where these migrations stall.

And check the arithmetic before you commit. Basecamp charges no per-user fee, so a hundred-person organisation moving to a €6.50 seat is multiplying its bill by ten. If jurisdiction is worth that, fine. If nobody has done the sum, do it first.

Will moving off Basecamp save money?

Usually not, and anyone telling you otherwise has not looked. Basecamp charges no per-user fee: Unlimited is $299 a month for as many people as you like. At a hundred users that works out at about $3 a head, below every paid option on this page.

Below roughly forty people the arithmetic flips, and under ten it flips hard. factro is free to ten users, MeisterTask and Zenkit have free tiers, and OpenProject and Taiga are free to self-host with no seat limit at all.

If your reason for looking is cost, do the multiplication before you move. If it is jurisdiction, accept that the change may cost more and decide whether it is worth it.

Does anything here replace the message board and Campfire?

Stackfield, and it is why it ranks first on this page. Chat sits in the same product as the tasks, so project conversation stays with the project rather than scattering into a separate messaging tool.

It goes further than Basecamp on one axis: everything is encrypted end to end with AES-256, so the provider cannot read the messages or the files. Basecamp encrypts in transit and at rest and holds the keys.

The rest of this page assumes you already have a chat tool. If you do not, budget for one, because that is the hidden cost of leaving Basecamp.

Can I get a Gantt chart after switching?

Yes, and it is the most common reason a Basecamp account starts looking. OpenProject has proper Gantt charts with baselines, dependencies and critical path, plus budgets and time tracking, none of which Basecamp will ever add.

MeisterTask and Zenkit have timeline views, which are enough to show sequence but not a dependency network.

Be clear which one you need. A timeline that shows when things happen is a different product from a schedule that recalculates when something slips.

Is the simplicity worth keeping?

For plenty of teams, yes, and this page is not arguing otherwise. Basecamp's refusal to add features is the reason its users stay for a decade, and replacing it with something more capable often means replacing calm with configuration.

The tools here that keep that spirit are MeisterTask and Stackfield: both are opinionated, both are small, and neither will hand you a settings screen with forty options.

If you liked Basecamp for what it refuses to do, do not move to the most capable thing on the list. You will end up rebuilding the restraint by hand.

Which one to pick

If what you would miss is the message board, Stackfield is the only real answer here, and the end-to-end encryption is a genuine gain over what you have rather than a consolation.

If you are leaving because the work has dependencies and a budget, OpenProject is the tool, and self-hosting it removes the provider from the question entirely.

If your Basecamp is client work, Teamleader replaces the half that Basecamp never modelled, and its per-company pricing keeps the shape you are used to.

And if you are only leaving because the company is in Chicago, keep the restraint: MeisterTask or Zenkit, both German-hosted, both small, neither asking you to rebuild how your team works.

Frequently Asked Questions

Stackfield if the message board and chat are what you would miss, since it is the only one here that has both and encrypts them end to end. Zenkit if you want flexible views without complexity. OpenProject if you finally want the Gantt chart Basecamp refuses to build. Teamleader if your Basecamp is client work with invoices attached. MeisterTask if you want the simplest board possible.

There are no per-user fees. Freelancer is $25 a month for up to twenty users, Studio $59, Pro $99, and Unlimited $299 a month billed annually with unlimited users and projects. There is also a free tier. That flat structure means the cost per head falls as the organisation grows, which is unusual in this market.

No. There is no European region to select and no residency add-on. 37signals LLC operates from Chicago, so both the storage and the jurisdiction answer is the United States. That is a plainer position than Jira, which offers EU regions from Standard, or Asana, which offers one on Enterprise.

Because its makers do not want it to. 37signals has argued publicly for years that dependency charts and time sheets encourage the wrong behaviour in teams. It is a stated position rather than a backlog item, which matters when you are deciding whether to wait for a feature or move.

Yes. Basecamp provides account exports containing projects, messages, to-dos, documents and files in HTML, which preserves the record but is not a format other tools import directly. To-dos usually need converting to CSV by hand or through a migration tool, and message board history typically lives on as an archive rather than moving into the new system.

MeisterTask and Stackfield come closest in spirit, both deliberately small. Zenkit is flexible rather than simple, which is a different thing. OpenProject is not simple at all and does not pretend to be. If simplicity was the reason you were on Basecamp, treat that as a selection criterion rather than a nice-to-have.

Unless you choose Stackfield, yes. Basecamp's Campfire and Message Board cover the conversation that surrounds a project, and most tools here assume that lives in Slack or Teams. Count that subscription when comparing prices, because it usually cancels out whatever you saved.

For a large organisation, almost certainly. Basecamp Unlimited is $299 a month regardless of headcount; a hundred seats at €6.50 is €650. For a small team it is the other way around, and for a team of ten factro costs nothing at all. The size of your organisation decides the answer, not the country of the supplier.

Longer than the data suggests, because the hard part is the conversation. To-dos and projects convert in a day or two. Years of message board threads do not move into another tool, so the usual approach is to keep the Basecamp export as an archive and start clean, which is a decision the team has to agree to rather than a technical step.

Who worked on this review

Three people touch every comparison page: one writes it, a second edits it, and a third checks the compliance and pricing claims against the vendor's own documentation.

Ingrid Halvorsen
Written by

Ingrid Halvorsen

Managing Editor · Oslo, Norway

Runs the review process and decides when a page is ready to publish or needs another pass.

Sebastiaan Smits
Edited by

Sebastiaan Smits

Founder & Editor · Netherlands

Selects the tools, writes the reviews, and checks where each company is actually established.

Marta Kowalczyk
Fact-checked by

Marta Kowalczyk

Senior Analyst, Infrastructure & Developer Tools · Warsaw, Poland

Covers hosting, developer tooling and the practical side of moving workloads to European providers.

Read our editorial process for how we source, verify and update these pages — and how we keep affiliate income separate from what we recommend.

Explore More European Alternatives

Discover privacy-focused European alternatives to other popular US tech services.

Monday.com Alternatives ClickUp Alternatives Slack Alternatives Browse All Categories