Usually, I stumble upon a cool app, play with it for a few days and then write the review. In this case, it’s a bit different. I have been following Brightpod right from the start (which I guess is little over a year ago) for two main reasons.
First, it’s from the team of DeskAway, a fairly successful project management app that has been around for a long time now. Personally, I consider it to be a real project management solution in a sea of stripped down task management apps. So, I was looking forward to see how they execute their new venture in the Web 2.0 era.
And second, the app targets a niche – marketers – which is a strange thing for a SaaS app. Usually, the goal is to shoot for the stars and go about fighting a ton of competitors, and end up grabbing a negligible piece of the pie. However, Brightpod from many angles appears to cannibalize the potential customer pool of their flagship product. So, it makes for an interesting case study if you are a cloud business enthusiast like me.
Alright, the story time is over and now we are off to the fun part – taking Brightpod for a spin!
Pricing
Plans and Pricing
Number of pods (workspaces), users and storage determine the price of plans that range from $19 to all the way up to $399. Three out of four plans have the ability to recover deleted stuff from their pods and users in those plans are offered one hour every month by team Brightpod to help them make the most out of the app. Just wonder how is the latter different from a typical demo!
The Workflow
I quickly signed up for a free account and was redirected to a minimalistic pod management page. These days I give a +1 for an uncluttered interface that doesn’t make the learning curve steep for the user. Brightpod has got that right and the tooltips add to that effect rather nicely. I know, tooltips can get annoying at times. Thankfully, if you close one tooltip, they are all taken off the screen. Good thinking!
Creating a Pod
I’m going to skip the standard project creation steps for obvious reasons and let’s straight ahead check out the workflow from a bird’s eye view. It all starts with the creation of a pod (a project) and that involves filling up a simple form. There is an option to specify the end date for the project as well if you have a very specific deadline.
Brightpod offered me the option to select an existing workflow instead of creating one from scratch. A workflow template could save a ton of time, but I decided to evaluate that later on. Next, you go about creating milestones and associate tasks to them.
Tasklists and Tasks
Instead of mindlessly adding tasks to a milestone, I loved the way Brightpod arranges tasks with task lists. The kanban like layout make organization and management of tasks a breeze. Creating subtasks and rearranging them by simple drag and drop doesn’t look like such a chore when there is a ton of work to be shared with the team.
Workflow Templates
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Workflow Templates
Marketing campaigns involve tasks that are mostly similar irrespective of the project or the brand the campaign is run for. Except for the message that’s unique to the brand, the steps involved in getting the message out are identical to a great extent. That’s the idea behind the Brightpod workflow templates.
A Sample Google Adwords Campaign Workflow Template
Each template has an exhaustive list of tasks organized under task lists that’s common for a particular campaign. Some might find a couple of tasks in the template trivial, but you can check them off the list real quick. Without doubt, this is a huge time saver and is a major USP of Brightpod. I hope they come up with more workflow templates and fine tune existing ones.
Final Thoughts
Brightpod is the need of the hour for marketers. It’s time they are freed from the clutches of inflexible, generalist project management apps and the annoying spreadsheets to stay on top of things. Brightpod has all the bell and whistles of a project management app and a simple workflow that doesn’t make you go mad.
From the looks of it, Brightpod uses Twitter Bootstrap, of which I am a big fan. However, due to the widespread usage of this frontend framework, the design elements make the app look like a MVP at times, rather than a product from a premier outfit. Of course, it’s very much possible that it won’t be noticed by nine out of ten people. However, a quick UI refresh should make Brightpod truly unique in all respects.
That’s the only complaint I could come up with the app. I even went over the workflow all over again to spot at least one more, but I couldn’t. So, if you are a marketer whose life is going in a crazy spiral, I strongly suggest you to give Brightpod a try!
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