Why I Recommend Basecamp Over CompanyCam for Project Photos

I wrote about Com­pa­ny­Cam in more detail in the post: Is Com­pa­ny­Cam Good For Painters a few months back. In short, Com­pa­ny­Cam is a sim­ple app used to take pho­tos of projects, col­lab­o­rate about the pho­tos and have one place where all your pho­tos can be stored and orga­nized by job name. It is very easy to use. One of the key fea­tures of Com­pa­ny­Cam is how it helps to geo-tar­get the loca­tion of the project. You can read more about that in my prod­uct review. I had a num­ber of my clients begin using Com­pa­ny­Cam in 2017. It ful­filled a need at the time and still does for many of them. It is an easy way to take project pho­tos and talk about them as a team. The painters in the field caught on quick and start­ed mark­ing up the pho­tos, doc­u­ment­ing their job progress and so forth. It pro­vid­ed more checks and bal­ances hav­ing a sim­ple, easy to use project pho­to app. This is one of the key rea­sons a paint­ing com­pa­ny should have a process for tak­ing pho­tos besides just for mar­ket­ing pur­pos­es. You nev­er know when a prob­lem might sur­face. This is where Com­pa­ny­Cam or any qual­i­ty pho­to app can shine. You want to be able to have every pho­to time­stamped and if pos­si­ble, geolo­cat­ed. I’m writ­ing this post for those who are already using Base­camp 3 and Com­pa­ny­Cam as two sep­a­rate pro­grams or for those who are still try­ing to fig­ure out what is best for tak­ing job pho­tos. Com­pa­ny­Cam is an incred­i­ble pho­to app. You won’t be dis­ap­point­ed. In say­ing that, I have a cou­ple key rea­sons why I would sug­gest choos­ing Base­camp 3 as your go-to app over Com­pa­ny­Cam for tak­ing pho­tos of your projects. 

1. Base­camp is far less expen­sive. Base­camp 3 is only $99 a month for unlim­it­ed employ­ees. It works well on a desk­top com­put­er, Android, and iPhone mobile devices. Com­pa­ny­Cam is cur­rent­ly $12 per user. If you have 10 painters using the App, it is $120 a month. 
2. Time­stamp, His­to­ry & User: When you upload a pic­ture or file with­in Base­camp, it will auto­mat­i­cal­ly time­stamp the image, pro­vide a his­to­ry of changes and who post­ed it. The only thing it does not do like Com­pa­ny­Cam, is pro­vide the exact loca­tion (geo-map). Here is a hint for iPhone users though: Every pho­to you take (if the set­ting is on, is Mapped. You can click on a pho­to with­in the Pho­to App, swipe down and see the loca­tion of the pho­to of when/​where you took it (See exam­ple))
3. One Less App To Use and Learn: Let’s face it, with the grow­ing amount of gad­gets and apps on the mar­ket, less is still bet­ter. Even though Com­pa­ny­Cam does one thing very well, Base­camp does a lot more and has many of the same fea­tures as Com­pa­ny­Cam. That is why I think it is a bet­ter use of your com­pa­ny’s time and resources to use few­er apps. Base­camp is get­ting more mobile friend­ly as well. I am a beta tester of the app and hap­pen to be one of the top mobile users of Base­camp. I am just as pro­duc­tive using Base­camp remote­ly as I am on a desktop.
4. Col­lab­o­ra­tion is Eas­i­er: Pig­gy­back­ing on the 3^rd rea­son, Base­camp 3 is an inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­gram that has, easy to use, task and project man­age­ment built into it. 3 years ago, I could see painters using Email, Tex­ting or Yam­mer, Base­camp 2 (old­er ver­sion) and Com­pa­ny­Cam to com­mu­ni­cate and run projects. Now you can do all of that by using Base­camp 3. Base­camp allows you to stay in touch with your entire team and stay orga­nized. You will have all com­mu­ni­ca­tion, includ­ing your pho­tos, in one place. So if a cus­tomer ever rais­es an issue, you can review your Base­camp com­mu­ni­ca­tion and pho­tos (by date, by user, etc.) and get to the bot­tom of it quickly.

Note: I am not going into all the fea­tures of Base­camp in this post. I have writ­ten more about that in this post: Base­camp 3 for Com­mu­ni­cat­ing with Your Team. This is just to answer the ques­tions I received from one of my clients this month. Yes, I had a client ask me if they could use Base­camp instead of Com­pa­ny­Cam. Their field employ­ees vot­ed on it and said Base­camp was eas­i­er and the pre­ferred the App for pho­tos! So I did some test­ing and research for this paint­ing com­pa­ny just to make sure I was right! Heck, and it will save them sev­er­al hun­dred a month as well.