Review: SpringSled

SpringSled is a new project management tool that looks really enticing–but does it stack up to their claims of “the world’s simplest project management tool”? Watch the video for more details, and here’s my notes: 

  • SpringSled is currently in beta, and you can sign up here
  • Except that once you get 5 sign-ups from your referral URL (thanks, cooperative friends & boyfriend who understand my rabid app obsession!), you get directed to Horizonate. Which I tested with a different email, and…you can sign up for without doing the whole invite business. I understand this is clearly a marketing and/or split-testing deal but it seems disingenuous and somewhat annoying to me.
  • If you do get 5 sign-ups, you get it free for a year; otherwise after the trial, it’s $5/month for one project, $20/month for 10 projects, and so on. I can only assume that’s for unlimited users because I don’t see a user limit listed anywhere. (I’d think so, because if that’s per user it’s kinda high.)

Marketing ish aside, here’s my notes on the features: 

  • It does have a very intuitive interface and should be easy for even the least tech-savvy person to pick up and learn.
  • It’s got an drag and drop interface, pulls tasks from different projects to give you a daily agenda (but that doesn’t include overdue tasks, which is an oversight), a calendar-based monthly and weekly view, the ability to assign tasks to other users, discuss on a project-level and attach files on a project-level.
  • There’s also per-project color coding, but the colors can’t be customized.
  • The use-case that comes into my mind for SpringSled is someone who has really, really un-tech savvy clients and just wants a way to keep them in the loop on projects without having to teach them Basecamp or Asana.
  • All in all, it’s a pretty solid, very lightweight visual task/project management tool.

If you’re looking for a fully developed, out of beta solution that’s got a similar look and feel (but arguably more features), I’d check out Sandglaz. If you’re stuck between the two, they both have free trials, so sign up for both and see which you like better!