Live data from Hacker News

Open-source alternatives to popular B2B tools

btw.so

61–70 of 130 posts

Re: Open-source alternatives to popular B2B tools

#62

Some additional ideas: - Kanban - Kanboard ( https://github.com/kanboard/kanboard ) - Analytics - Matomo ( https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo ) - Content Management System - Grav ( https://github.com/getgrav/grav ) - Knowledge Base - BookStack ( https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack ) - Browser - Firefox ( https://github.com/mozilla ) - Image Manipulation ( https://github.com/GNOME/gimp ) - Observability Platfo…

N.B. KeePassX hasn't been maintained since 2016!

Use https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc instead. (They are compatible)

Re: Open-source alternatives to popular B2B tools

#63

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…

I live on both sides of this divide, so maybe I can offer my 2 cents:

* Created & maintain Gensim and other open source, used by thousands of companies for free.

* Created & sell an (unrelated) B2B product.

Yes, I've had B2B prospects who thought they could "stitch my product together using open source".

These people are invariably either low budget & high-maintenance, or unsophisticated = don't realize how much work the "just stitching" part is. Plus how little the stitched-together-from-open-source part actually is of the whole.

Good riddance of the former – go ahead and use open source, god speed. Your time is free, mine is not. The latter often come back after being burned & learning the ropes.

Maybe it helps to think of it this way: savvy companies are much more risk-averse than your typical open source hacker. They price in risk into their decision making. So your assertion of "almost free" is the root of the issue: a business sees the lack of business scaffolding (stability, continuity, legal, management…) and thinks "Expensive! We'll have to do this ourselves! Headache! Liability! Extra cost!".

Sure, "free code" helps, everybody likes free, but the code is not the only consideration.

Re: Open-source alternatives to popular B2B tools

#64
post #40

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,…

Gigantic part of products like SAP etc (maybe the main part) is their integration with local standards and legislation in every jurisdiction the company operates. Yes, writing code that can substitute their products is probably easy. Knowing what exactly to write is hard, especially for multinationals.

Re: Open-source alternatives to popular B2B tools

#66
Would be nice if the icons showed the product name on hover.

Also, no MS Office / Google Drive alternatives? ONLYOFFICE works great in this space, with MS Office format compatibility, online editors, file sharing, nice integrations with Nextcloud and a myriad of other cloud solutions.

https://www.onlyoffice.com/

For MFA, as for example a Yubikey alternative, Solokeys could work.

https://solokeys.com/pages/enterprise-orders

Re: Open-source alternatives to popular B2B tools

#67

Some additional ideas: - Kanban - Kanboard ( https://github.com/kanboard/kanboard ) - Analytics - Matomo ( https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo ) - Content Management System - Grav ( https://github.com/getgrav/grav ) - Knowledge Base - BookStack ( https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack ) - Browser - Firefox ( https://github.com/mozilla ) - Image Manipulation ( https://github.com/GNOME/gimp ) - Observability Platfo…

Bitwarden for password manager also. They specifically endorse enterprise usage.

https://bitwarden.com/

Re: Open-source alternatives to popular B2B tools

#68
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

No, all the apps above are part of Odoo Community. (So, open source)

Re: Open-source alternatives to popular B2B tools

#69

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…

I think a good way to get an understanding of this is to start a company yourself. You’ll quickly learn why businesses make the decision to pay for software instead of cobbling together open source. Let’s say you’re a small, but growing company doing $2M ARR. You absolutely could run your email marketing using an open source tool hooked up to Amazon SES and save a thousand bucks a month over something like Mailchimp.…

> If it wastes 8 hours of employee time per month, that’s another $1k a month lost… it’ll require expensive developer time (likely costing the company $1000-$1500/day per engineer all-in)

That's not universally true, of course. That money would buy you a week of developer time in most of Europe, and even a month of developer time in some developing economies.

Post reply on HN