Stepsie walks into the project management market


    How a bunch of Australians and an Italian ended up owning and running a company based in Estonia I do not know, however that company has today opened its doors to the public and we’ve been invited in to take a look around. So come meet Stepsie, a project management application that aims to tackle its creators problems with Basecamp, a competing app.

    Stepsie Ideas Architect Jono Chatterton explained to us that it was while using Basecamp that he and some friends because frustrated with it and decided to build their own project management tool instead. The company may be set up in Australia but the idea was born in Norway and to quote Jono, “all the design and coding magic has happened” in Estonia, where he is currently based.

    The idea might only have found life one year ago but their vision is already welcoming users. Using Stepsie the first thing that becomes apparent is how the name links with their vision of how a project should be managed. Every project is broken down into broad steps which are then given refinement by tasks which are the practical jobs that need to be completed, steps… Stepsie.

    Each step holds a number of tasks, its own discussion board and lists of files so that locating information or material is kept simple. There are a couple of other nice features as well; a simple search function for finding things without having to manually hunt through old logs and details; a privacy feature so you can hide steps and make them visible only to those who need to see them; SSL encryption and communication directly to the Stepsie team for customer support.

    Monthly prices for the program range from $19 to $99 depending on the number of people in a company using it, and the amount of storage they need. There’s a 30 day free trial to see if it would be of use, and as a nice touch, a free student version and a single cost solution if Stepsie was only going to be needed for one project.

    Jono and his team have identified Basecamp as a direct competitor and believe that their creation is an improvement over it, however that is not their only competition. It will be interesting to see how Stepsie is able to compete with the broader range of productivity applications out there, many of which it feels like we’ve covered as well in the last year. Still, as an example of good Estonian coding and design, we can’t help but hold a soft spot for them.