I thought CRM choices were a management decision, not a developer one. How do you plan on overcoming that, when management will just go with Salesforce or Freshworks?
Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
191–200 of 317 posts
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#192Do you have a hosted version yet?
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
An open-source core is only part of it, because different users will need different data models for different business domains. One of the biggest challenges here will be: how can you allow tenants to run arbitrary plugins that (a) execute arbitrary sandboxed server-side code, and (b) can store arbitrary new data models and custom fields within your instance's centralized storage alongside the canonical model types,…
That's a very good point. In the early stage, we were thinking about a single tenant architecture which would make this questions way easier. However, I am a strong believer in multi-tenant architectures as they allow to scale while mutualizing the resources (I personally think it's single tenant at scale is non-sense in term of ecology) and we will invest into maintaining a multi-tenant architecture. So, as we go th…
>However, I am a strong believer in multi-tenant architectures as they allow to scale while mutualizing the resources (I personally think it's single tenant at scale is non-sense in term of ecology) and we will invest into maintaining a multi-tenant architecture.
Our products use multi-tenant architecture in the form of 1 database file per company, and a single database server for everyone (by default). It's great for data isolation, as we can't accidentally leak sensitive corporate data from one company's account to another (say, a missing WHERE). It's also great for indexing, as DB queries only touch small subsets of data. And it works well for most businesses (10-100 employees). For large companies (not that many of them), if we detect a lot of activity which stresses the main database server, we have infrastructure in place to migrate them to dedicated servers, transparently to users. It's worked pretty well so far.
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#194Really neat job guys!
Some people see it as an inferior version of Salesforce, which goes beyond a CRM. But for a dev who loves open source & is looking for something that does only what a CRM does, it looks surprisingly good!
I have to give it a try :D
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a very good point. In the early stage, we were thinking about a single tenant architecture which would make this questions way easier. However, I am a strong believer in multi-tenant architectures as they allow to scale while mutualizing the resources (I personally think it's single tenant at scale is non-sense in term of ecology) and we will invest into maintaining a multi-tenant architecture. So, as we go th…
>However, I am a strong believer in multi-tenant architectures as they allow to scale while mutualizing the resources (I personally think it's single tenant at scale is non-sense in term of ecology) and we will invest into maintaining a multi-tenant architecture. Our products use multi-tenant architecture in the form of 1 database file per company, and a single database server for everyone (by default). It's great fo…
Very interesting, this makes sense, it is definitely a direction we could go into. We are using Postgres and were also considering using 1 schema per tenant.
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
An open-source core is only part of it, because different users will need different data models for different business domains. One of the biggest challenges here will be: how can you allow tenants to run arbitrary plugins that (a) execute arbitrary sandboxed server-side code, and (b) can store arbitrary new data models and custom fields within your instance's centralized storage alongside the canonical model types,…
HubSpot recently launched something to do this by providing a Lambda runtime to generate components within the CRM dashboard. https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/cms/data/serverless-func...
+1, thanks for the link
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#197Really neat job guys! Some people see it as an inferior version of Salesforce, which goes beyond a CRM. But for a dev who loves open source & is looking for something that does only what a CRM does, it looks surprisingly good! I have to give it a try :D
Thank you, we put a lot of effort into providing a good user experience and a good developer experience. Feel free to jump in on Github issues!
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#198Do you have a hosted version yet?
Yes! https://app.twenty.com . It's still very early but we are happy to share it and to get feedbacks. We already have a few users that are using it on a daily basis and we are trying to get as much feedback as possible to prioritize our roadmap!
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
2 competitors which I think are getting things right on the UI front are Attio [1] and Folk [2]. It's not as powerful as Salesforce and the data structure is very loose, but they have done a good job with the user-experience. They are not open source though. [1] https://attio.com [2] https://www.folk.app
One of my requirements is that I must be able to host the database myself :-) (with a preference for Postgres)
No one’s going to sell you just a UI
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the feedback! We have been discussing this a lot. Here is one of the option we have in mind for the upcoming months and we would love to know if this could work in your opinion. Data ownership: a) Twenty makes the distinction between Twenty owned data models (People, Company, Pipeline) and your own data models. b) Let's say you use the cloud version: you can plug your own external database as a datasource.…
Good to see that you're spending quality thought on differentiating by reducing the lock-in problem generally associated with the software/service space you're aiming to compete in. My initial reaction is that the ideas you listed around data ownership and and extensibility hold considerable promise and allow a company to grow not only with you and your other customers, but also to create and grow competitive distinc…
Yes, as an engineer I am rooting for opensource and to build something that last beyond the company. I also think it will force us to install a good company culture centered around transparency and give back.
They are many example of successful businesses that are emerging while being fully/mostly opensource (Hasura is a good example).
It might be naive but we think it's the right time and we can get investors on board with that.
Thanks a lot for the warm wishes
And thanks for the typo! Fixed!