5pm Might be a Good Time for Project Management
May 7th, 2008 (2:00pm) Jason Harris 16 Comments
There are many online project management offerings on the web including Projjex (previously covered), Basecamp, and Zoho Project.
A relatively new entrant to the market is 5pm, a product is built by a very small team. Even without venture funding, the 5pm team has built a visually attractive project management utility, but how does it stack up to the competition?
Signing up for 5pm is easy – they offer a 14 day trial and there is no “wait for your email” to verify your account. The signup and onboarding processes is very quick and painless, giving off a great first impression.
Like Projjex, 5pm delivers the familiar Project/Task view you’re used to seeing in project management software. 5pm is easy on the eyes and features many pop-ups offering contextual how-tos and tips on usage.
There are tabs for projects, timelines (gantt charts), reports, and user (resource) profiles. The right hand pane is a contextual menu that refreshes whenever you click an item on the left. For example, if you click on a project name, the right hand pane will display details on that project, eliminating an extra click to retrieve this useful information.
5pm has built in some very useful features surrounding projects and tasks. Each project has its own RSS feed and direct link. The company has also built in iCalendar support for projects which gives you calendar integration with any calendar software the supports this format including Apple iCal, Google Calendar, Mozilla Sunbird, and others. Projects can be grouped, given deadlines, and status.
Additionally, 5pm allows for client login with the ability to restrict rights for different audiences. All items in your 5pm projects are searchable for easy access. You can upload documents and files and attach them to tasks. For report portability and customization, 5pm has made it possible to export reports to CSV.
A feature that really stands out is their email integration. Not only can you email from 5pm to a project member, but that person can update the progress of a task, simply by replying to the email address provided for the project.
5pm has many features that are found in various project management utilities and combines it with a fantastic look and feel. The company should spend more time building a dashboard for project managers to get a pictorial way of tracking their projects.
Overall, the site is useful and worth potential users giving the 14-day trial a run through. Their prices are a bit steep, especially considering competitor Projjex allows for unlimited users/clients on a project.
5pm’s plans begin at $14/month that allots you 5 users, 10 open projects, and 150 Mb of file storage. The most expensive plan is $84/month and gives you 40 uses and 80 open projects with a gig of storage space for files.
Tags: 5pm, basecamp, project management, zoho
16 Comments Post your own comment
Jessica says: May 7th, 2008 6:27pm
Jason, this is a great find and a good article! I do agree on the “fantastic look and feel”. Definitely worth playing with.
And I loved the references to the “Office” movie (the online demo)!
David says: May 7th, 2008 10:20pm
The company I work for uses this software for project management, it is a god send!
We switched over from Basecamp to 5pm and the only thing we complain about is the name.
Basecamp to me felt to heavy in collaboration workspace vs GTD methodology. 5pm feels much faster / smother updating projects / tasks.
gary says: May 8th, 2008 4:52am
we are using goplan.org and loving it, its simple, smart, and not cluttered
Laura says: May 8th, 2008 6:45am
Now that I have finally added another person to my company I went through a big evaluation of many PM tools, including this one. I ended up with wrike because to me the killer feature is being able to organize things however I want, instead of being limited by # of projects. I have many clients at the same time because my projects tend to be smaller, so I actually do have 8 active clients right now. Add that to my internal projects and the list fills up fast. 5pm definitely looks like a good option though, and appears to have some improvements over basecamp.
Rohan says: May 8th, 2008 9:11am
For simple task management, here’s an option – http://www.statuswiz.com
Alice says: May 12th, 2008 6:28am
Jason, since you are interested in project management tools, you might want to have a look at Wrike. It offers much more for project management than other tools, as it offers an opportunity to view your tasks and projects differently. Here’s what I mean. It’s worth you look.
Max says: September 15th, 2008 1:46am
We are using 5pm and loving it
framed art wall decor says: October 31st, 2008 6:19am
5pm rocks.
WebWorkerDaily » Archive Web Work 101: 10 Apps You Can’t Do Without « says: March 1st, 2009 9:02pm
[...] 5pm [...]
Web Work 101: 10 Apps You Can’t Do Without « mensonblog says: March 2nd, 2009 7:15am
[...] 5pm [...]
Michael says: April 22nd, 2009 5:22pm
5pm really sucks, their project management software is a load of crap, they basically robbed me. I would not recommend them to anyone.. I was a little weary when I read a similar review, but when i selected someone I thought that It may not be true.. but now Here I am, unsatisfied..
I give thier product 2 / 10…
P.S.
THEIR SERVERS ARE REALLY SLOW AND LAGGY.
Gantter Puts MS Project Online says: April 23rd, 2009 4:02pm
[...] as it lacks all of the collaborative features that you’d really want from a PM web app, like 5pm or Basecamp. You can’t even create an account; if you want to save your plan you have to [...]
5pm Team says: April 24th, 2009 6:11am
Michael, can you contact our support about your complains? We don’t have in our records any customer reporting a “robbery” (if in fact you are a real customer). In fact, our customers are pretty happy with our service and the speedy interface, especially on Firefox and Safari.
-5pm Team
MilestonePlanner, an Online Planning Board says: April 28th, 2009 1:01pm
[...] covered lots of great project management apps here on WebWorkerDaily, from collaborative tools like 5pm to estimating and planning tools like Gantter. However, these tools are quite complex if all you [...]
MilestonePlanner, an Online Planning Board [WebWorkerDaily] | BYOHosting.com Blogs says: April 28th, 2009 2:22pm
[...] covered lots of great project management apps here on WebWorkerDaily, from collaborative tools like 5pm to estimating and planning tools like Gantter. However, these tools are quite complex if all you [...]
Jim Anning » Blog Archive » Milestone Planner Video on Web Worker Daily says: April 29th, 2009 2:41am
[...] lots of great project management apps here on WebWorkerDaily, from collaborative tools like 5pm to estimating and planning tools like Gantter. However, these tools are quite complex if all you [...]