Guide · Open source
Open-source alternatives to the software small businesses rent
What's good enough to replace a subscription, what isn't, and when switching actually saves money.
Add up every subscription your business pays for and the number is usually a surprise. Ten or fifteen tools, most charged per person per month, most going up every year, and a fair few that nobody can remember signing up for.
For a lot of them there's a free, open-source alternative that does the same job. Some are genuinely as good as the paid product. Some are good enough. A few aren't worth the hassle. Here's our honest list. Between us, we've been running open-source software on Linux servers since the nineties, and we use some of these every day.
What "open source" actually means for a business
Open-source software is published with its code open for anyone to use, change and run. You don't pay a licence fee, and there's no per-user charge. You can host it wherever you like, including in the UK, so your data stays where you can see it.
The catch, and it's a real one: free software isn't free to run. Someone has to host it, keep it updated, back it up and fix it when it breaks. With a subscription, the vendor does that and charges you for it. With open source, you (or someone you pay) do it instead. Whether that's a good deal depends on how many people you have and how much the subscription costs.
Licences matter too. Many of these tools use the AGPL, which can mean sharing your changes if you modify the tool and let other people use it. For a business just running the tool for its own staff, that rarely matters, but check before you customise anything.
What to try instead
| Instead of | Try | Good at | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive | Nextcloud | File sharing and sync, shared calendars and contacts, editing documents in the browser (with Collabora or OnlyOffice added) | Needs decent hosting to feel quick. Very large files and huge folders need some tuning. |
| 1Password, LastPass | Vaultwarden, or Bitwarden self-hosted | Shared team passwords, browser and phone apps, two-factor login | Vaultwarden is a community-built server for the official Bitwarden apps. It's widely used, but it isn't made by Bitwarden itself. |
| Zendesk, Freshdesk, Help Scout | FreeScout | A shared inbox for support@ or info@, with assignments, notes and canned replies. Feels a lot like Help Scout. | Some extras, including the API, are paid one-off modules. Still far cheaper than per-agent pricing. |
| Slack, Microsoft Teams chat | Mattermost | Team chat, channels, threads, file sharing, phone apps | The free ways to run it have limits (Team Edition is losing single sign-on, and the free Entry mode limits visible message history). If you already pay for Microsoft 365, Teams is effectively included, so check before you switch. |
| DocuSign, Adobe Sign | DocuSeal or Documenso | Sending documents for signature with an audit trail | Self-hosted DocuSeal is free for the core product, but embedded signing needs its Pro plan. Check it meets any rules in your sector before using it for regulated documents. |
| HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive | Krayin, EspoCRM, SuiteCRM | Contacts, companies, deals, tasks and email, and all of them can be shaped around how you sell | Out of the box they're plainer than the big names. The value comes from setting them up properly. |
| Power BI, Looker Studio | Metabase | Dashboards and reports on top of your own databases, for your own staff | Showing each of your customers their own interactive dashboards needs a paid plan. |
| Google Analytics | Matomo, Plausible | Website visitor stats with the data kept on your own server. Both can be set up to need fewer cookie consents. | Fewer links into Google Ads. Talk to whoever runs your ads first. |
| Mailchimp | Listmonk | Newsletters and mailing lists of any size, for the price of the sending | Needs a separate sending service (such as Amazon SES), and someone who understands email deliverability. |
| Calendly | Cal.com (self-hosted), Easy!Appointments | Booking links that check your calendar | Self-hosted Cal.com takes more setting up than most on this list. |
| Zoom | Jitsi Meet | Video calls in the browser, with no account needed for guests | Big calls need a well-specified server. For most small firms, the Teams or Meet you already pay for is fine. |
| Trello, Asana, Monday | Kanboard, OpenProject | Task boards and project tracking | Less polished. Worth it mainly if per-user fees are adding up. |
| SurveyMonkey, Typeform | LimeSurvey | Surveys and forms of almost any complexity | The admin screens are busy. Your respondents won't notice. |
Editions and pricing change. The notes on Nextcloud, FreeScout, Mattermost, DocuSeal, Metabase and the CRMs were checked against each project in October 2026; follow the links for the detail. Rob also writes longer, neutral reviews of the alternatives at rob-sherwood.co.uk.
Where we wouldn't bother
This matters more than the list above.
- Email. Don't run your own mail server. Getting email delivered reliably is a full-time job these days, and Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace do it well for a few pounds a person.
- Accounts. Stick with Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or FreeAgent. Your accountant knows them, and Making Tax Digital support matters more than saving a subscription.
- Payroll and HR with legal requirements. Same reasoning. The vendor keeping up with the rules is what you're paying for.
- Anything only one person uses. If it's a single licence at a few pounds a month, the time spent running an alternative will cost more.
When it pays off
A rough rule we use: open source starts to make sense at around ten users, or sooner when a tool charges a lot per user. A cloud server big enough for a handful of these tools costs tens of pounds a month, not hundreds (see AWS Lightsail's prices, for example), plus a little for off-site backup storage. The bigger cost is the time to keep them patched and backed up, which is a few hours a month if it's done properly.
The sum is easy to do for your own business. For each tool, multiply the price per user by the number of users and by twelve. Do it for your three biggest per-user subscriptions and compare the total with a server and a few hours a month.
The other benefit is harder to put a number on. When you run the software yourself, nobody can double the price, scrap the plan you're on or decide your data now lives in another country.
How to switch without chaos
- Start with one tool. Pick the one with the biggest bill and the least complicated data. Password managers and help desks are often a good first move.
- Run both side by side for a few weeks with a small group before moving everyone.
- Move the data properly. Most of these tools have importers for the big names. Check what doesn't come across (history, attachments, permissions) before you cancel anything.
- Set up backups and updates from day one. This is the bit people skip, and it's the bit that bites. An unpatched, unbacked-up open-source server is worse than the subscription you left.
- Turn on two-factor login for everyone, the same as you would on the paid version.
- Cancel the old subscription only once you've checked you can get your data back out of the new one.
Make a shortlist, then decide who runs it
List every subscription, what it costs a year and how many people use it. Circle anything over a few thousand pounds a year that's on the table above. That's your shortlist. Then decide who's going to keep the replacements running, before you switch, not after.
The software is the easy bit. The hard bit is that someone has to host it, patch it, back it up and answer the phone when it misbehaves, for years. If nobody in the business owns that kind of thing today, swapping subscriptions for open source just moves the problem.
That's the part we do, so take this with a pinch of salt. We set these tools up on UK servers, shape them to fit how you work, and keep them updated and backed up, either on their own or as one part of Your tech department.
Open-source questions
Yes, when it is kept up to date and well hosted. Much of the internet runs on open-source software. The risk is not the software being open, it is an install that nobody patches or backs up.
The licence is free and there are no per-user fees. Hosting, updates, backups and support still cost time or money, so the saving depends on how many users you have and what the subscription costs.
Nextcloud is the usual choice. It handles file sharing and sync, calendars and contacts, and with Collabora or OnlyOffice added it can edit documents in the browser.
Yes. Most open-source tools export in standard formats, which is one of their strengths. Check the export before you commit, as you would with any software.
Yes. Because the code is published, it can be extended and connected to your other systems. The right way is through the add-ons, plugins and APIs the project provides, so your changes survive updates.
Paying too much for subscriptions?
Send us your list and we'll tell you which ones are worth replacing.
Which tools you pay for, roughly how many people use each, and what you'd most like to stop paying for. If the subscription is the better deal, we'll say so.
What we will cover:
- Which subscriptions have a good open-source alternative
- What it would take to switch
- Who keeps it running afterwards
Rather talk now? Book a call or ring 01474 639 089.
We reply within one working day.
