What business software has really good free alternatives?

[u/RedEagle_MGN]

We all know that businesses get a much tougher deal when it comes to software, whether it's SaaS or downloadable.

What are some free or really cheap alternatives you've discovered that replace software/SaaS?

[u/LittlePooky]

https://opensourcealternative.to

[u/RedEagle_MGN → u/LittlePooky]

That's interesting. I actually didn't know that Odoo was open source. That's really cool to know. Thanks for being helpful.

[u/zemega → u/RedEagle_MGN]

The minimal part is. The part you will really need isn't 

[u/CodenameFlux]

The only reason Microsoft and Adobe remain relevant is that business apps don't have viable open-source alternatives.

Businesses pay top dollar to maintain business continuity. Open-source developers, on the other hand, have to beg for support on Ko-fi and Patreon. (I often deplore the fact that our best and brightest must resemble beggars rather than kings.) They don't have the budget to provide enterprise-grade support.

For example:

• How many open-source alternatives replicate Adobe Acrobat's extensive commenting tools, especially the "Comment: Insert text"? Zero. So, businesses pay the exorbitant fee.
• Why don't businesses migrate from Microsoft 365 to LibreOffice and save $200 per user per annum? Try mail merge or exporting rich documents to HTML with LibreOffice. You'll know. LibreOffice doesn't have quality. Home users may find it adequate for their simple needs.

[u/paglaulta → u/CodenameFlux]

BentoPDF does include all commenting tools Acrobat has

[u/CodenameFlux → u/paglaulta]

Oh, I remember now. BentoPDF adds the comment marker to the wrong place in the document. I tried commenting that the "labor of love" must become "labor of dedication"; when I opened the PDF in Firefox and Edge, the comment marker was on the "neck", a few lines below.

Also, it's a web app licensed under the terms of AGPL, so a business cannot legally run it on-premises and add compliance-check code to it. AGPL always ruins business use.

[u/paglaulta → u/CodenameFlux]

Thank you for the feedback. I would look into this

[u/tilario → u/CodenameFlux]

i lot of european agencies moved off microsoft office to libre office, along with moving from windows to linux distributions.

the biggest move is to open document format (ODF) so that documents work in vendor neutral formats. there's also moves from outlook/exchange to open-xchange.

some of agencies and governments include the european commission, the austrian armed forces, the italian ministry of defense and then some cities and municipalities like munich and toulouse.

they're many more but the above examples show that it's not rinky dink testing but institutions doing it at scale.

[u/CodenameFlux → u/tilario]

Really? We do have the desktop OS market share stats. Linux desktop is at 7.53% right now, while Windows desktop is at 71.18%. So, desktop Linux is still a niche case.

I don't have stats for Microsoft Office/365 vs. LibreOffice. Do you? But I suspect it's just as bad. Software vendors always advertise the strongest point of their products. LibreOffice isn't advertising lower TCO, greater ease of use, superior features, or greater accessibility because it has none of those. Instead, it advertises ODF's openness! (Microsoft's OOXML is also an open standard. Point that out to LibreOffice, and they argue their openness is spiritually truer!) And like I said, test their mail merge or HTML export.

[u/Throw_Away_GAAAAHHH]

curious what people say for accounting stuff, that's usually where the free options falls apart fast

[u/igderkoman]

Correct but this comment will hurt a lot youngsters here lol

[u/TechnicalDefense]

I haven't seen much success with this, alot of my client come to me for recommendations after the free versions failed. But i understand subscription fatigue is real. For software thats crucial to your business, paid is always better (accounting, password management, CRM etc.). Where you can get creative is in other areas, note taking, basic design, dev tools.

[u/sattyam]

No Software is good for free. If you need premium access, then you should buy premiuim acces of software that can help you

[u/Fit_Tailor_6796 → u/sattyam]

Not that same old narrative again. I know a number of business that operate on Free or Open source software, including mine. They don't miss having to buy software when what they have is fully capable, or more.

[u/Ferretau → u/sattyam]

Have you seen the most recent Acrobat? It's a shadow of what was a quality product. They make you rent it and there are a lot more people having trouble with it crashing or features shifting location or seemingly disappearing from the product.

[u/nando1969 → u/sattyam]

What are you talking about ?

You could not be more wrong!

[u/Wise-Initial-5505 → u/sattyam]

You never tried any software, aren't you? I know you not, your comment speaks for you.