I just started freelancing after being employed. At my previous job we used basecamp to manage time and what to do on projects. I like basecamp a lot but I'm trying to cut costs as much as possible now when I'm starting of.
So my question is simple; What are the free alternatives to basecamp for managing projects?
Open Atrium is a good solution if you are familiar with Drupal as it can be extended a hell of a lot with minimal effort. However it is still good to go with a bug tracker out of the box. It's quite polished so clients will be happy using it. I'm assuming you want something client - friendly like basecamp without being totally dumbed down to the point of uselessness.
http://openatrium.com/
The other one I would try is redmine. Their website isn't much but the software is top notch. Full of useful features which most software development shops would use like scm integration.
http://redmine.org/
If you look around you can get hosted solutions for both of these. Try sourcerepo.com for redmine. There are some smaller shops that do Open Atrium hosting.
I went through the exact same thing a few years back, and even tried Mingle. I found it great; very flexible and certainly the prettiest out there. But I ended up spending more time managing myself than doing the work; not good.
I've since settled on Fogbugz, and not looked back. It's true strength lies in dealing with the management of software projects though, so if you're after a general purpose "you need to comb your hair this morning" management tool / to-do list then it might not be the best fit. The best feature by far is it's ability to statistically analyse your previous task time estimates vs task time completions and apply them to upcoming deadlines. The result is that it predicts the real likelihood of meeting a project deadline with scary accuracy!
A more lightweight to-do list style service is Todoist. Amazingly minimal, but really flexible and useable as a result.
If you can self-host, there's ProjectPier.
There are a lot of similiar tools with a little lower pricing.
These guys appear to have something for free for a small project. http://projects.zoho.com/jsp/home.jsp
There is also project software from Teambox which happens to be open source as well (on top of the hosted freemium site), it rocks!
It's RoR and you can fork it from GitHub.
After trying out many mind-boggling software applications for PM, we settled for Worketc which really worked for our small business with flying colors. This software gives a CRM solution (http://www.worketc.com/CRM_Solution ) while also taking care of the more mundane tasks such as time-tracking and billing. A nice interface with your people from time to time can be refreshing. Worketc has turned me into a solicitous manager without overdoing it. Soon, enough, business growth, more sales, better life were within reach.