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Open-source alternatives to popular B2B tools

btw.so

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Re: Open-source alternatives to popular B2B tools

#31

Post by rapnie »

It looks like this startup is going to monetize findability, ease-of-installation, and hosting of quality open-source alternatives.

Would be very cool if either some of the revenue of their service would go to the projects they offer this way, or if they at least drew prominent attention to how we might offer that to the project ourselves.

In other words, offer commercial services that are truly in support of (F)OSS and not just benefiting and exploiting it (tragedy of the commons, etc.)

Re: Open-source alternatives to popular B2B tools

#32

Post by input_sh »

artemonster wrote: post #16

Everytime I look into B2B software space (I am a complete outsider, btw), I see that here and there always pop up some new company, offering something similar to competitors and what can be stiched together using open source (and almost free, not counting the support) tools. How these companies thrive? Why customers keep buying new stuff, when there are solutions already to most of the business neeeds out there (and…

Not enough resources? I work as a sysadmin in an org that highly prefers self-hosting (paid or non-paid, doesn't really matter). I spend a fairly considerable amount of time on updating services, updating plugins for our services, making sure backups work, integrating our SSO, testing updates on non-live environments etc etc.

You can't just set it and forget it. When you approach a dozen or so self-hosted projects, you have to dedicate resources to keep everything running and up to date. Therefore, we consciously off-load some of the stuff to third parties — sometimes just for a couple of rough months, sometimes for far too long, sometimes permanently. It's far from being our only responsibility.

Re: Open-source alternatives to popular B2B tools

#33

Post by zajkowskimarcin »

Great list, thanks for sharing and gathering! As people said, form to add suggestions would be great. E.g. we're using Umbraco CMS (https://umbraco.com/products/umbraco-cms/) for most of our content managed enterprise solutions and would be awesome to see it listed there. Many many more in my head as well, so might help curating it and growing it for the good of us all looking for OSS alternatives!

Re: Open-source alternatives to popular B2B tools

#35

Post by kilroy123 »

input_sh wrote: post #32
artemonster wrote: post #16

Everytime I look into B2B software space (I am a complete outsider, btw), I see that here and there always pop up some new company, offering something similar to competitors and what can be stiched together using open source (and almost free, not counting the support) tools. How these companies thrive? Why customers keep buying new stuff, when there are solutions already to most of the business neeeds out there (and…

Not enough resources? I work as a sysadmin in an org that highly prefers self-hosting (paid or non-paid, doesn't really matter). I spend a fairly considerable amount of time on updating services, updating plugins for our services, making sure backups work, integrating our SSO, testing updates on non-live environments etc etc. You can't just set it and forget it. When you approach a dozen or so self-hosted projects, y…

Interesting, I've always worked at places that prefer to pay someone else for the trouble and use a ton of third-party tools for all the things.

In the end, do you think the self-hosting route is worth all the trouble and costs?

Re: Open-source alternatives to popular B2B tools

#36

Post by throwaway744678 »

pinky07 wrote: post #19
deeptichopra wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep absolutely! We already have that. For eg: https://www.btw.so/open-source-alternatives/slack-alternativ...

You mentioned Odoo in CRM, but Odoo has apps in a lot of extra categories (that are not yet listed): - ERP: https://odoo.com (alternative to Ms. Dynamics, SAP) - Website Builder: https://www.odoo.com/app/website (alternative to Wix, SquareSpace) - POS: https://www.odoo.com/app/point-of-sale-shop (alternative to VendHQ, LightSpeed) - Kanban & Project: https://www.odoo.com/app/project - Human Resources / HR: https://ww…

Odoo (core) is indeed open-source, but some of the apps (modules) you mentioned are part of the "Enterprise" which require you to buy a licence.

Disclaimer: happy (paying) Odoo customer!

Re: Open-source alternatives to popular B2B tools

#38

Post by deeptichopra »

pratio wrote: post #20
Tajnymag wrote: post #15

Open Source Browser Alternative: Brave Really? No other browser comes to mind?

Haha yes, I didn't notice that firefox and chromium aren't mentioned at all

Yep, sorry. Made more sense to remove the browser category, so I've done that now.

Re: Open-source alternatives to popular B2B tools

#40

Post by jasode »

artemonster wrote: post #16

Everytime I look into B2B software space (I am a complete outsider, btw), I see that here and there always pop up some new company, offering something similar to competitors and what can be stiched together using open source (and almost free, not counting the support) tools. How these companies thrive? Why customers keep buying new stuff, when there are solutions already to most of the business neeeds out there (and…

>Is this still the case of idiot-managers doing decisions like "nobody was fired for buying IBM" (and now SAP, salesforce,

Enterprise software like SAP and Salesforce are gigantic comprehensive business process management tools for Fortune 1000 companies that can't be replicated by stitching together open source projects.

Even tech companies with expert domain knowledge of software programming like Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, etc all buy SAP licenses to use. Google recently switched from Oracle Financials to SAP. None of those tech companies are strangers to the open source ecosystem and yet they pay millions every year in SAP licenses.

Yes, a small business might be able to use an open source accounting package instead of paying $150 for Intuit QuickBooks. In contrast, no free software has the same scope and integration of SAP to save $millions.

Analogous situation with GIMP vs Photoshop. Why do so many pay for Photoshop when GIMP is free? Because as great as GIMP is... it is still missing many features that Photoshop has had for years. CMYK color support, layer effects, latest algorithmic filters, action macros without requiring script programming, etc.

This is the problem with most of these "open source alternatives to $TOOLS$" type of lists: they usually don't tell you what critical features are missing that prevent them from being realistic substitutes.

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