Nowadays it seems like working in a team is just as easy to do online as it is when you’re all in the same office. Basecamp has set the benchmark for collaborative Web services, and it’s no surprise that rival sites are now springing up. The latest, Goplan, allows teams and individuals to collaborate through tasks, file management, real-time chat, online calendaring, and many other features.
Rather handily, the app allows users to choose which features to activate for each project, making for an unclutted environment in the user interface. In an effort to ensure maximum uptime (a problem Basecamp users often complain about) Goplan takes advantage of Amazon’s EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) and its S3 (Simple Storage Service).
In terms of pricing, the service compares well to 37signals’ Basecamp, with a personal account offering 12 projects and 100MB of storage for $10/month. The monster unlimited plan is $100/month with unlimited projects and 8GB of storage. Fear not though, for lighter users, there’s a free package facilitating two projects and up to 5Mb of online storage. We noticed, however, that Goplan doesn’t offer a free trial of its meatier products like the 37signals range does. Nevertheless, the launch of Goplan represents yet another step forward in the evolution of remote working.
