BetterMeans

Full Review

Bettermeans is a project management app, but after testing it out I don't think it's fair to group it along the same lines as Basecamp and other project management apps. Throughout the entire experience, Bettermeans felt much more results oriented and task focused. Basecamp is a great app, but I think it's very easy to dump a bunch of ideas onto the app and then execute poorly. Bettermeans is set-up in a way to fight that mentality.

A quick broad overview before we get into the app. Bettermeans is meant to be used with multiple users working on multiple workstreams. Every workstream has discussion boards, file-sharing, wikis, and the dashboard (which I'll get to soon). Users can be invited to particular workstreams, so stratifying your workforce is not a problem. At any time if you want to know the pulse of the workstream just go to the Activity tab - that's where you'll find a comprehensive overview.

Now lets get to the dashboard, because as Bettermeans says, "that's where the magic happens". The dashboard is setup panel style (users of Social Media apps will be used to this), and there vertical panels for New tasks, Open tasks, Tasks in progress, and completed tasks. The panels are chronological, so the names also describe the way Bettermeans is meant to be used. I tested out the app by setting it up for our daily work hear at Headstartup - writing reviews on the best apps out there.

We have a shared bucketlist between us that's continually growing, so I thought it'd be good to try it out on Bettermeans. So the first thing I did was add each app we want to review as it's own task. I had the option to categorize each task, as well as assign a level of difficulty on it. Once I had that list going, everyone at HS could vote on the tasks and difficulty level, and push them to the "open" panel.

From the open panel any user within the workstream is free to start the task. For our purposes this is great, because we don't need two people reviewing the same app - Bettermeans makes doing that as easy as one click. Within each task users can set to-dos, update the task definition, and add to the comment thread. This is the part of Bettermeans that's more traditional project management app, but it's well integrated into the overall mentality of "getting things done".

So that's the gist of how the app functions. Once a task is done, users can vote on aspects like how proportionally project work was distributed, and how difficult the project actually was. This could come in handy when trying to determine compensation or just keep general tabs on employees and efficiency.

There are four versions of Bettermeans, and everyone can try the free 30-day trial. Basic ($25/month) supports up to 5 private workstreams, 10 private users, and 1GB of storage. Better ($50/month) supports 20 workstreams, 25 users, and 5GB of storage. Super ($100/month) supports 100 workstreams, 60 private users, and 50GB of storage. And Go Nuts ($200/month) is appropriately named - it comes with unlimited workstremas and users and 100GB of storage.

The Bottom Line

I love the dynamic feel of Bettermeans - while trying it out I was inspired to actually carry out the sample tasks I was making - that natural feeling isn't something I feel with every project management app. Kudos to Bettermeans for really getting that part down. There are certainly omissions - there's no calendar and not very much support for invoicing. But for us here at Headstartup, Bettermeans is a great fit - and I think that'll hold true for many startups/small businesses.

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