Manymoon

Manymoon.com is an online project collaboration tool. Built on a social networking model, the site offers a complete online project management tool that supports unlimited users. The easy to use web interface allows users to create projects, assign tasks and track progress. Members of a project can easily update others about what they are working on by creating a Bulletin. Members can view a summary of all the Bulletins for a given project to track the progress of other members assigned to the project. The site offers integration with Google Calendar – you can tie your tasks and deadlines to your Google Calendar from within the application, and Google Docs – you can upload documents to your project directly from Google Docs. The Manymoon site offers a convenient top menu bar for navigation. The entries on the menu bar include Home (a user can view a summary of their projects and tasks and view all of the Bulletins related to a project), Profile, Connections (other project members), Create Project and Create Task. When Create Project is selected, the user is prompted for a description and given the option to invite Connections to the project. Next, the user is prompted to Create one or more tasks and assign them to Connections. Once a project is created, a summary of all of its activity can be seen under My Projects on the user’s Home page. San Francisco, CA-based Manymoon.com was launched in December 2008. There are many competitors to Manymoon.com. They include Office Live Workspace and Basecamp. The main difference between Manymoon and the other online project management tools is the social networking model that Manymoon is built on. The Manymoon application has a social networking look and feel, with the Bulletin and Update features offering information in a format more similar to Twitter or Facebook than most project management tools. Both Office Live Workspace and Basecamp are more established and have many more users than Manymoon. Manymoon has a very clean and uncluttered look. Navigation is intuitive and obvious, and page loads happen quickly. File uploads and downloads are also quick. The interface is very user friendly, with only a very small learning curve involved in using the site. There is no advertising displayed on the site. Registration for a basic account at Manymoon is free. The registration process asks for first and last name, email address and password. Validation of the email address is required. For premium membership payments, the site accepts PayPal only. PayPal accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover cards. A basic membership to Manymoon is free, and entitles the user to unlimited tasks, unlimited projects, unlimited users, Google Apps integration and document uploads. Storage space is limited to 5MB, however. There are two levels of premium membership available – Pro and Team. The Pro membership costs $5.00 per month per user and adds SSL encryption of data and up to 3GB of storage per user. The Team membership costs $10.00 per month and increases the storage limit to 5GB (shared by the team), and adds a custom logo display, a custom login page, and administrative tools. Manymoon is recommended to anyone who could use a free or inexpensive project management tool that is easy to use. Small projects can be successfully managed using a free account, and prices are very reasonable for the premium memberships, which allow for much larger projects to be managed. The site is very easy to use, almost as responsive as a dedicated desktop application, and works well with Google Apps.