> licenses are 5x lower than competition

The competition licenses include support (like that netsuite €180 license). Odoo doesn't.

When you factor in finding another company to provide support them Odoo becomes easily equal in cost to other options. Or you have to do it yourself which is also very expensive (in time rather than money).

Also for some weird reason the Odoo forum is incredibly locked down. After a year of using it, I hadn't even earned enough trust to comment, let alone ask a question.

> That's not what I see on the market. Even the paying version of Odoo is way more affordable than traditional ERP:

The system looks well organized and clearly built by people with knowledge of the domain(s), but traditional ERP has significantly more depth in functionality, I don't think that comparison makes sense at this point in time.

> Disclaimer: I am the founder of Odoo.

Oh hey, it's my favorite pet peeve. When flagging a potential conflict of interest, the word is "Disclosure". "Disclaimer" means "I'm just a random guy who cannot assume responsibility for what they're saying", like in IANAL.

Yes, you get access to the github repo if you pay Odoo Enterprise

My experience as well. In 2018 we used odoo at a startup to avoid using systems like Monday and Jira. By 2019 we were back on those systems. My experience was so sour, that I heard an odoo ad on npr the other day and I didn’t even go back to see what has changed.

It’s a bit different, but if you compare it to solutions from the likes or Oracle, SAP, etc. it’s significantly less awkward to develop for.

You could just use docker and pretend like bench didn't exist.

You can crypt the data before sending to the upgrade platform. Before it was an external script, and since Odoo 16 you can use the `oboo-bin obfuscate` command, before running the upgrade script.

See `./odoo-bin obfuscate --help` to check how to crypt your custom data and uncrypt after upgrade.

It's not perfect (crypt specific columns rather than full DB) but, unfortunatelly, to operate our upgrade service, we need access to the database. Upgrades are complex and requires testing, fine tuning scripts to your specific use cases, etc.

The other alternative is to not use our services, but do it yourself using upgrade scripts from the community: https://github.com/OCA/OpenUpgrade

Open Source is more a development model than a business model. It helps to evolve faster, but it's not a value for the end-user.

Today, we have way more free trials on the saas, than download of the open source version.

Our clients (entrepreneurs, CFO, logistic, HR ...) don't care that we are open source: they just want the best product, at a good price.

But it helped us grow our partner network of IT companies. For them, open source is a real value.

Just an example: when I send an email marketing campaign with Odoo, I have all the stats attached: the usual # clicks, open rate, ... but also # Leads, # Orders, Revenues.

Because Odoo as it all:

- You send an email with link tracker (Email Marketing App)

- The visitor goes on website (Website App)

- He fills a form that creates an opportunity (CRM App)

- 4 weeks later a sales make a quotation (Sales App)

- After Delivery (Inventory App)

- We send the invoice to the customer that books revenue (Accounting App)

So, you get the revenue for every email sent. Imagine that power for everything. (eg. stock is common between eCommerce, CRM, POS - Wommunication on whatsapp, SMS, chat, emails are centralized for helpdesk, ...)

But the main advantage is convenience. Once you use Odoo, everytime you have a need, you can install an app in one click that fully integrates with your stack. No need for developers to integrate, to call vendor to buy software, ...

The complexity of an IT stack grows with the square of the number of software components it contains. Most Odoo clients run everything on Odoo, eliminating the need for integrations and significantly reducing overall complexity.

Odoo SA (my company) has 6700 employees: we only use 2 software to run everything: Odoo and Google Workplace.

It's not a fork of Django, even thought the stack has similarities: Python, ORM on top of Postgresql, Modules. We use werkzeug (it's been a long time I checked Django, not sure they are on it too), but the rest of the stack is Odoo's own framework: ORM, Templating (QWeb), API, etc.

But it's not comparable to Django:

- Odoo is built for management application: think CRM, Accounting, Project Management, ... a strong backend

- Django is often used as a framework, Odoo for end-users apps (even though our framework is super advanced)

- Odoo has a CMS (website builder) too but with a focus on being end-user friendly, like Wix, or Squarespace but for businesses (eCommerce, Jobs, Events, ...)

- the javascript client of Odoo is huge whereas Django is minimal

- Odoo has it's own ORM optimized for speed and complexity of an ERP

- templating engine based on XML rather than inline python instructions

Here is a 2 minutes overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbso3NVz3p8

Wow, do they have already that reach?

Honestly, before they started their ad campaign here, I had never heard of them. Though the product looks very mature. Could be a "small SAP" competitor.

Use the /doc url on your database. To test: https://demo.odoo.com/doc

I'm aware. And it sucks. It's a poor description of an object model, it barely explains how things interact or what their significance is.

Dunno if Odoo is more ERP or CRM but... if you speak about Microsoft Dataverse/Dynamics 365 Sales/Customer Engagement and such, the documentation, the tools the API the underlying foundation are just excellent.

Yup, came here to offer the same sentiment on the SMB ERP systems I've worked with.

Dolibarr is used by 1 million of users (so not as much as Odoo with 16m users).

Similar to Odoo in a lot of point but full opensource, more affordable than Odoo and easier to use and customize. Has less external addons (1200 vs 40000) than Odoo but external addons are rarely required. Odoo would be a better choice if you have a very large company with an internal team of developper, Dolibarr will be easier and cheaper if you have less than 5000 employees.

Disclaimer: i'm on old Odoo integrator, now Dolibarr developer.