Why BoardBell?

Synopsis:  While emails and spreadsheets are insufficient for effective work management, behemoth platforms like MS Projects and JIRA are unreasonably complicated and expensive. BoardBell is simple, intuitive, and affordable. In addition to task boards, it includes team chat for context-aware collaboration.

You can get started with BoardBell for free. If you have any questions, please contact support@boardbell.com or call +1-302-480-1597. We'll be happy to help.

Emails Are Letters, Not Management Tools

If you're using emails to manage your business, you'll find that despite being CC'd on almost everything, important documents tend to go missing. An employee claims "I didn't get that email.", and all hell breaks loose. If you forget to mark an important email as unread, you'll likely forget to follow-up on it.

After all, emails are just electronic letters. Your email inbox is designed for collecting and viewing incoming emails. It isn't really designed as a work management platform. While you can send and receive emails, there's no built-in functionality for assigning tasks to team members or managing due dates.

In BoardBell, you can directly attach files to tasks, where they'll easily be found and never go missing. You can assign tasks to relevant team members and clearly indicate due-dates.

Spreadsheets Deal With Numbers, Not Tasks

Spreadsheets are great for number crunching and report generation. But they're not suitable for task management or remote work. For example, while you can add an 'Assigned To' column to the spreadsheet, team members will not receive automatic notifications when a row/task is assigned to them. After assigning a task to a team member, you'll need to separately notify them.

Additionally, who's supposed to keep the spreadsheet up to date? The file can easily get marooned on an employee's computer. Even if you use a cloud-based solution like G-Sheets, you still can't discuss specific tasks within the spreadsheet. For discussing a task, you'll probably need to use WhatsApp/email, where you'll need to re-narrate the task-background.

When you assign (or reassign) a task in BoardBell, the relevant team members are automatically notified. As work progresses, the progress is reflected on the task board, in real-time.

WhatsApp Pings Are Easy To Miss And Lack Context

Due to the constant barrage of incoming messages, it's easy to miss an important messages on WhatsApp, Slack, or other chat tools. And before someone has a chance to answer your question, the team's conversation may have moved on to an entirely different topic. Now, you'll need re-ask your question in a different group, or maybe ask it via email.

Also note that text messages lack context. To be able to properly discuss an important task or issue, you'll have to first send the relevant background. And this is true for lots of tasks. Thus, a lot of time gets spent in laying the foundation for discussion, instead of actually discussing the task at hand.

Everthing in BoardBell is context-aware. When discussing a task, you can add comments directly on that task. This way, there's no need to re-narrate the background. Everyone can see everything that was said before.

MS Project & JIRA Are Too Complicated

MS Projects, JIRA and similar behemoth platforms have complex setup procedures, labyrinthine configuration options, and a dizzying array of buttons and toggles. Before your team can properly use these platforms, team members will need to undergo extensive training. No wonder then, that these platforms have official academies/certifications.

If your organization has 1000+ employees, paying for extensive employee training and procuring highly configurable project management infrastructure might be the right move for you. But for SMBs with fewer than 100 employees, that's probably not the best option. SMBs are likely to get overwhelmed by detailed configuration pages and complex interfaces.

BoardBell is simple, minimal and intuitive. You can get comfortable with the platform in minutes and no tedious training is necessary. It is built specifically for SMBs, doing away with features required exclusively by large companies.

Trello & Asana Quickly Become Expensive

Trello, Asana, and similar platforms are a bit simpler than the previously mentioned behemoths, but they quickly become expensive. Most typically, such platforms charge on a  'per user per month'  basis, and are generally priced around $10 per user per month. This may seem affordable at first, but as your team grows, it quickly becomes expensive.

At $10/user/month, a 10-member team will cost $100/month. And by the time your team grows to 20 users, your bill would have increased to $200/month, which amounts to $2,400/year. BoardBell employs a flat pricing structure. The Business plan includes 100 users and is priced at $79 per month, flat. Whether your team has 20 members or 40, the price remains the same: $79/month.

With BoardBell, you get a simple and versatile platform at an affordable price. In our opinion, it's simpler than Trello, Asana and the others. You can get started for free, so why not sign up and see for yourself?

Questions?

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact support@boardbell.com or call +1-302-480-1597. Our friendly support staff will be happy to help.