Rob Sherwood Open-source and Linux specialist Been breached?
alternatives

Open-source alternatives

Honest reviews of open-source tools that can replace the paid ones you use now. Tested in my own lab, with the drawbacks included.

The software is free to use. Setting it up, hosting it and keeping it secure are not, so every review shows what the paid tool costs beside what it costs to have the open-source one run for you.

Where I'd start

The five switches that save small businesses the most money and hassle, in order.

All the alternatives at a glance

Every paid tool I've looked at, its open-source options, and my honest take.

Paid tools and their open-source alternatives
Instead ofOpen-source optionsLicenceMy take
Zendesk FreeScout, Zammad AGPL-3.0 Top five. FreeScout and Zammad compared: a shared support inbox and helpdesk, hosted in the UK with no per-agent fees.
Dropbox and Google Drive Nextcloud AGPL-3.0-only Top five. Nextcloud with Collabora: files, sharing and documents edited in the browser, hosted in the UK with no per-user fees.
1Password and LastPass Vaultwarden AGPL-3.0-only Top five. Vaultwarden: a self-hosted, Bitwarden-compatible password manager for the whole team, with no per-user fees.
DocuSign Documenso, DocuSeal AGPL-3.0 Top five. Documenso and DocuSeal compared: send documents for signature from your own server, with no per-user fees.
Google Analytics Matomo, Plausible Community Edition, Umami GPL-3.0, AGPL-3.0, MIT Top five. Matomo, Plausible and Umami compared: privacy-friendly website analytics hosted in the UK, usually with no cookie banner needed.
Acronis and Veeam restic, BorgBackup, UrBackup BSD-2-Clause, BSD-3-Clause, AGPL-3.0 restic and Borg are what I use for servers; UrBackup suits office PCs. Excellent, as long as someone tests the restores.
Adobe Acrobat Stirling PDF MIT Stirling PDF covers most office PDF jobs in a browser. More of the project is now paid, so check what you need is in the free part.
Airtable Baserow, Grist MIT, Apache-2.0 Baserow feels closest to Airtable; Grist is a smarter spreadsheet. Good for teams that have hit Airtable's record limits.
BambooHR Frappe HR, OrangeHRM GPL-3.0, GPL-3.0-or-later Good for staff records and holiday booking, for teams that have outgrown spreadsheets.
Bitly Shlink, YOURLS MIT Shlink and YOURLS are both simple and reliable. A small, cheap win if you use branded links.
Business VPNs WireGuard, NetBird, Headscale GPL-2.0, BSD-3-Clause WireGuard is fast and simple; NetBird and Headscale make it easy to manage across a team. A strong switch.
Calendly Easy!Appointments GPL-3.0 Fine for simple booking. Calendly is cheap, so this is more about owning the data than saving money.
ChatGPT Team and Business LibreChat, AnythingLLM, Ollama MIT LibreChat or AnythingLLM give you the chat; Ollama runs open models on your own hardware. Open models are good but not ChatGPT, and need a decent server.
Datadog and New Relic Grafana, Prometheus, Zabbix AGPL-3.0-only, Apache-2.0, AGPL-3.0 Grafana with Prometheus is the standard pairing; Zabbix is the all-in-one option. Powerful, but needs someone who knows it.
Evernote Joplin, Trilium Notes AGPL-3.0-or-later, AGPL-3.0 Joplin is the easy choice and syncs through Nextcloud. Trilium suits people who want a personal knowledge base.
Figma and Canva Penpot MPL-2.0 Penpot is the real open-source rival to Figma. Designers used to Canva templates will find it more technical.
Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 email mailcow, Stalwart GPL-3.0, AGPL-3.0-only Possible with mailcow or Stalwart, but email is the hardest thing to self-host well. For most small businesses I'd keep paying for it.
Grammarly LanguageTool LGPL-2.1 Self-hosted LanguageTool is a good private spelling and grammar checker. Its premium style suggestions are not part of the open-source version.
Harvest and Toggl Kimai AGPL-3.0 Kimai is mature, simple and does invoicing too. An easy win for small agencies.
Hootsuite and Buffer Postiz, Mixpost AGPL-3.0, MIT Postiz is the most active project. Social networks change their rules often, so expect the odd broken connection.
HubSpot Twenty, EspoCRM, SuiteCRM AGPL-3.0, AGPL-3.0-or-later Promising, but these projects move fast and licences have quirks. Best for teams who want to own their CRM data.
Intercom Chatwoot MIT Chatwoot does most of what a small business uses Intercom for, at a fraction of the cost. A strong switch.
Jira OpenProject, Redmine GPL-3.0, GPL-2.0-or-later OpenProject is the most complete; Redmine is old but rock solid. Worth it for teams who live in tickets all day.
Lansweeper and IT asset trackers Snipe-IT, GLPI AGPL-3.0, GPL-3.0 Snipe-IT is simple and pleasant to use; GLPI adds a helpdesk. Very handy before a Cyber Essentials assessment.
Mailchimp Listmonk, Mautic AGPL-3.0, GPL-3.0-or-later Big savings on large lists, but sending your own email well (and staying out of spam folders) takes care.
Microsoft Office LibreOffice MPL-2.0 LibreOffice is excellent for everyday documents. Complex Word and Excel files can lose some formatting, so test yours first.
Miro Excalidraw MIT Excalidraw is lovely for quick diagrams and workshops, but lighter than Miro. Fine for most small teams.
Monday and Asana Plane, OpenProject AGPL-3.0, GPL-3.0 Capable tools, but teams get attached to how they plan work, so switching needs buy-in.
NetSuite and Sage ERPNext, Odoo Community GPL-3.0, LGPL-3.0-only The biggest savings and the biggest projects. Best tackled once the basics are in place.
Notion and Confluence BookStack, AppFlowy MIT, AGPL-3.0 BookStack is a great, simple team wiki. Replacing everything Notion does is harder.
Okta and Auth0 Keycloak, authentik Apache-2.0, MIT Keycloak is the heavyweight; authentik is easier to live with. Worth it once you have five or more apps to log in to.
Pingdom and Statuspage Uptime Kuma MIT Uptime Kuma is simple, pretty and does the job. One of the easiest switches on this list. Run it somewhere other than the server it watches.
Shopify WooCommerce, PrestaShop GPL-2.0-or-later, OSL-3.0 WooCommerce and PrestaShop are mature, but you take on security and updates. Shopify is good value for many small shops; switch for control, not just price.
Slack Zulip, Mattermost Apache-2.0, AGPL-3.0 Mature and capable, but Slack is cheap per user and teams love it. Best where chat history must stay under your control.
Squarespace and Wix WordPress, Ghost GPL-2.0-or-later, MIT WordPress runs much of the web; Ghost is cleaner for blogs and newsletters. Both need updates and care, which is where I come in.
TeamViewer and AnyDesk RustDesk AGPL-3.0 RustDesk works well and the self-hosted server keeps connections off third-party relays. Popular with small IT teams.
Trello Wekan, Kanboard MIT Kanboard is light and dependable; Wekan is the closest look and feel to Trello. Good value once Trello's paid plans add up.
Typeform and SurveyMonkey LimeSurvey, Formbricks GPL-2.0-or-later, AGPL-3.0 LimeSurvey is the veteran for serious surveys; Formbricks is the modern one. Good where responses contain personal data.
WeTransfer Gokapi, PsiTransfer AGPL-3.0, BSD-2-Clause Gokapi and PsiTransfer do the job, but these projects are small. If you run Nextcloud, its share links cover this already.
Zapier Activepieces, Node-RED MIT, Apache-2.0 Activepieces is the friendliest; Node-RED is for the more technical. Saves real money once you run a lot of automations. (n8n is popular but not open source.)
Zoom and Microsoft Teams Jitsi Meet, BigBlueButton Apache-2.0, LGPL-3.0 Jitsi is easy for the odd call; BigBlueButton suits training. If you already pay for Microsoft 365, Teams is hard to beat on price.

Licences checked against each project's own repository. Want one of these set up, or a tool that isn't listed? Ask me.