Open core, not open source, only for the Community edition, wait till you notice that you will need enterprise license since most powerfull features/addons are enterprise only and you end up paying more money for "open source" ERP than normal ERP
> you end up paying more money for "open source" ERP than normal ERP
That's not what I see on the market. Even the paying version of Odoo is way more affordable than traditional ERP:
- licenses are 5x lower than competition: https://www.odoo.com/pricing (avg 25€/user/month vs 180€ for Netsuite - Odoo has a "no-extra" / transparent pricing policy)
- On implementation service fees, Odoo is usually from 30% to 75% cheaper: more capabilities and easier to implement or customize.
As a result of capabilities + affordable, Odoo became the most used ERP in the world: 16m users (incl free ones), 200k+ clients. (Netsuite is 43k clients, Dynamics BC is 40k clients)
It’s an awesome start to a stack, you’re right though a typical seat based install runs average enterprises 25+k usd per year. I wish that someone would just make open oodo compatible plugins, because the big fundamental win is a unified data model built on open technologies.
I've been looking into switching our manufacturing business over to Odoo, replacing Dynamics GP + another mfg software. My impression is that it's very customizable, but may require some specialized expertise to implement correctly for one's environment. Enterprise would probably net save us money on just support contracts compared to our current setup.
"Open-Source" is a bit of a misnomer. The majority of the important modules are enterprise only. That said even enterprise is source-available for paying customers which is a breath of fresh air compared to the competition.
Having enterprise as open source gives additional freedom and cost savings in terms of technology roadmap. When you need something now, you can build in-house quickly or via external help. No fees to be just able to contribute to the roadmap and wait for 1-2 update cycles (typically 6-12 months) for other ERP systems.
We have been using Odoo for some specific processes in the company in the past.
There are some bright ideas based on strong fundamentals.
Regarding the strong fundamentals:
- A clever, extremely flexible, roles/permissions system. It is based on giving CRUD permissions to user roles, allowing to define access rules based on the fields (for instance a READ access with a record rule [('user_id', '=', user.id)] would allow to read only own records). In most of the software permissions are expressed in the code, in Odoo they are abstracted and enforced at ORM level.
- The custom ORM system is very strong and allows to create objects and fields at runtime. You can create a model and its fields and start using it right away without restarting the server.
Some of the smaller bright ideas:
- Records navigation is rather smart: the pagination system allows to manually define the records range to be seen avoiding the usual "records per page" dropdown; standard filters can be defined using the same domain syntax from access rules above (the filter for "My records" would be [('user_id', '=', user.id)]).
- Many views use kanban, I find them extremely practical to get a good overview, in particular for CRM opportunities and candidates screening processes.
I tried to get Odoo adopted at my company for about a year but eventually gave up in favor of a paid solution.
The thing is that what you really need to get something like this working is support (by phone, screen sharing etc.), and it came down to two options: either I permanently become Odoo support for everyone else, or we pay someone else to do it. All the companies offering Odoo support are very expensive, so any financial benefits to using Odoo are gone several times over. It was much cheaper to just switch to a paid solution that includes support in the monthly fee.
Besides that, the source code is a mess, so when I tried adding some basic customs functions it was a total headache even for very basic things. For some reason they've built their own front end framework which is clearly inspired by a very old version of React.
ERPNext has a very peculiar home-grown deployment system that is required to host it yourself. I didn't much like it when I looked into it a while back.
Last time I worked with Odoo (v15/v16, enterprise, self hosted) we had to send a dump of the production database over to you to be migrated to the new version and then it was sent back. The upgrade path for third-party and custom addons was not defined.
And since it is Odoo, everything is in that database: from employee's time tracking to customer support chats, from stock info to accounting data, from e-mail addresses to password hashes. I found this inacceptable but at that point we had no choice.
By having every services inside one tool, what are the new possibilities that Odoo can do easily that is hard to do with others suite of tools (where you’d need to connect together multiple independent services) ?
How close is Odoo to the Django Stack? In my mind, since both are python, I always thought it was some kind of Django fork,l. I bet I am wrong. So how came Odoo into being?
They are running a massive out-of-home media campaign in my city, they billboard even busstops in home-districts with lowered traffic speed in the suburbs :-))
I've built a couple of Odoo integrations for clients. For the longest time, they only offered XML-RPC as an external API. At some point they also added JSON-RPC, which is the same kind of suckage. But now they're suddenly planning to remove both in the next major version (to replace them with something different) with very little advance notice.
Their API documentation is virtually nonexistent. You have to basically reverse engineer their poorly documented models to get anything done, and those can change between releases. I suspect they deliberately under-document their changes in order to force people to pay them more money. At least I hope their official partners get access to better documentation.
Beware putting all of your eggs into this particular basket.
There is a current state of Odoo, but also the important thing is the trajectory it is on.
Two of its technology bets - Python and Postgres paid off very very well. As main Cloud Providers invested tens of billions to improve both Python and Postgres over the past decade, it really boosted the Odoo tech foundation.
if you go with Odoo, my best advice is to use Odoo Community and hire a good freelance developer or integrator.
In my experience, the Enterprise version is poor value: support is often absent or slow, and most of the “Enterprise-only” features are not magical—they can be developed or replaced with custom modules at a lower total cost if you know what you’re doing.
Odoo’s real strength is the unified data model and extensible core. If you control your stack and invest in competent development instead of licenses, Community can be a solid ERP foundation. If you expect a polished SaaS with strong vendor support, Enterprise will likely disappoint relative to its price.
Running Odoo in a fully isolated environment within a factory, in some less popular locations - is a very frequent request. And the Community edition does check the boxes.
Pair Community edition with some in-house/custom-built Replenishment solution, and you have a very decent solution for a Distributor or Retailer.
Enterprise modules are a good value too, as long as business processes and geography do match the regions it is developed for.
These guys have the dubious distinction of absolutely blasting tons of podcasts with the stupidest commercials I've ever heard. Basically at the level of "grondo has what plants crave", Odoo has what businesses need.
firekvz|1 month ago
pinky07|1 month ago
That's not what I see on the market. Even the paying version of Odoo is way more affordable than traditional ERP:
- licenses are 5x lower than competition: https://www.odoo.com/pricing (avg 25€/user/month vs 180€ for Netsuite - Odoo has a "no-extra" / transparent pricing policy)
- On implementation service fees, Odoo is usually from 30% to 75% cheaper: more capabilities and easier to implement or customize.
As a result of capabilities + affordable, Odoo became the most used ERP in the world: 16m users (incl free ones), 200k+ clients. (Netsuite is 43k clients, Dynamics BC is 40k clients)
Disclaimer: I am the founder of Odoo.
rekttrader|1 month ago
esperent|1 month ago
infogulch|1 month ago
"Open-Source" is a bit of a misnomer. The majority of the important modules are enterprise only. That said even enterprise is source-available for paying customers which is a breath of fresh air compared to the competition.
thatoleg|1 month ago
gmarcon|1 month ago
Regarding the strong fundamentals: - A clever, extremely flexible, roles/permissions system. It is based on giving CRUD permissions to user roles, allowing to define access rules based on the fields (for instance a READ access with a record rule [('user_id', '=', user.id)] would allow to read only own records). In most of the software permissions are expressed in the code, in Odoo they are abstracted and enforced at ORM level. - The custom ORM system is very strong and allows to create objects and fields at runtime. You can create a model and its fields and start using it right away without restarting the server.
Some of the smaller bright ideas: - Records navigation is rather smart: the pagination system allows to manually define the records range to be seen avoiding the usual "records per page" dropdown; standard filters can be defined using the same domain syntax from access rules above (the filter for "My records" would be [('user_id', '=', user.id)]). - Many views use kanban, I find them extremely practical to get a good overview, in particular for CRM opportunities and candidates screening processes.
esperent|1 month ago
The thing is that what you really need to get something like this working is support (by phone, screen sharing etc.), and it came down to two options: either I permanently become Odoo support for everyone else, or we pay someone else to do it. All the companies offering Odoo support are very expensive, so any financial benefits to using Odoo are gone several times over. It was much cheaper to just switch to a paid solution that includes support in the monthly fee.
Besides that, the source code is a mess, so when I tried adding some basic customs functions it was a total headache even for very basic things. For some reason they've built their own front end framework which is clearly inspired by a very old version of React.
unmole|1 month ago
ERPNext on the other hand is fairly mature and fully open source: https://frappe.io/erpnext
infogulch|1 month ago
LaurentD_Eldy|1 month ago
[deleted]
pinky07|1 month ago
luoc|1 month ago
What's the state here?
abysmal|1 month ago
Especially in a category like ERP that has a big integrator and reseller ecosystem.
ttoinou|1 month ago
number6|1 month ago
john61|1 month ago
KellyCriterion|1 month ago
They are running a massive out-of-home media campaign in my city, they billboard even busstops in home-districts with lowered traffic speed in the suburbs :-))
big_man_ting|1 month ago
aorth|1 month ago
hbarka|1 month ago
elric|1 month ago
Their API documentation is virtually nonexistent. You have to basically reverse engineer their poorly documented models to get anything done, and those can change between releases. I suspect they deliberately under-document their changes in order to force people to pay them more money. At least I hope their official partners get access to better documentation.
Beware putting all of your eggs into this particular basket.
Piisamirotta|1 month ago
It was quite bad experience, the API documentation is horrible as you mentioned.
monax|1 month ago
Exemple https://97044826-master-all.runbot256.odoo.com/doc/account.a... (login:admin pw:admin)
tuna74|1 month ago
isoprophlex|1 month ago
nicornk|1 month ago
thatoleg|1 month ago
Two of its technology bets - Python and Postgres paid off very very well. As main Cloud Providers invested tens of billions to improve both Python and Postgres over the past decade, it really boosted the Odoo tech foundation.
gnabgib|1 month ago
2019 Story of Odoo: Open-Sourced Competitor to Oracle, SAP (195 points, 74 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21865699
2014 Odoo: The new OpenERP (44 points, 44 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7750020
NicoJuicy|1 month ago
Nice to see them here! I played a bit with customizing V7. Was a pretty unique experience to see how it works internally
Everything could be changed. Which is basically an advantage and a disadvantage. Please try to adjust to the system if possible :)
maltris|1 month ago
abiwankenobi55|1 month ago
In my experience, the Enterprise version is poor value: support is often absent or slow, and most of the “Enterprise-only” features are not magical—they can be developed or replaced with custom modules at a lower total cost if you know what you’re doing.
Odoo’s real strength is the unified data model and extensible core. If you control your stack and invest in competent development instead of licenses, Community can be a solid ERP foundation. If you expect a polished SaaS with strong vendor support, Enterprise will likely disappoint relative to its price.
thatoleg|1 month ago
Running Odoo in a fully isolated environment within a factory, in some less popular locations - is a very frequent request. And the Community edition does check the boxes.
Pair Community edition with some in-house/custom-built Replenishment solution, and you have a very decent solution for a Distributor or Retailer.
Enterprise modules are a good value too, as long as business processes and geography do match the regions it is developed for.
toastal|1 month ago
foundart|1 month ago
https://www.dolibarr.org/ https://github.com/Dolibarr/dolibarr
ofrzeta|1 month ago
claytongulick|1 month ago
Been through the source code, interesting ideas in it.
orwin|1 month ago
carolynmichael|1 month ago
[deleted]
edsammy|1 month ago
[deleted]
khoda1222|1 month ago
[deleted]
robot-wrangler|1 month ago
fragmede|1 month ago