There is a liberating feeling which comes packed in with all open-source software. Open-source software is the ultimate space for creatives and the ultra-diligent to craft software to their specific needs and then share those tools with the greater world. Often led by non-profits or community collectives, open-source software is one of the most major achievements in the tech space and has the potential to be the same in the small business sphere; while small businesses offer catered, curated alternatives to the corporate big players, open-source software plays the same David against Silicon Valley.

February is Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) month and is dedicated to celebrating these open-source tools and to help spread awareness around the free software available .  In recognition of FOSS February, enjoy this curated list of tools created specifically for the needs of the small business business community, built from the ground up to become robust competitors to expensive, big-name software.

LibreOffice

Businesses big and small all bow to Microsoft, right? Absolutely not: LibreOffice is an open-source Office alternative that has been making massive waves in the digital document space for good reason. LibreOffice is a “community-driven” collection of programs built as a clear replacement to the Microsoft Office 365 Suite. Operated by The Document Foundation, this collective of creators invites all users to rework and improve LibreOffice for the benefit of the greater community. There is almost no small business that couldn’t benefit from this collection of tools; from accountants to store clerks, everyone must deal with a document or spreadsheet eventually. LibreOffice is fully compatible with Microsoft file types and has been continually tweaked to fit near-all document types making it not much of a concession at all to switch. For those companies looking for an alternative to monopolistic players like Microsoft or have documents too sensitive for cloud storage with Google Docs, LibreOffice is a massive game changer.

MariaDB Foundation

One of the first of its kind and now one of the most popular, the MariaDB Foundation is an open-source relational database. Countering titans like Google Drive and beyond, MariaDB is a non-profit and open-source platform for cloud storage. Incredibly, the tools from MariaDB are so cutting-edge that massive websites like Wikipedia and WordPress have taken advantage of MariaDB server space.  While MariaDB is a dauntingly open-source platform, there is a massive amount of tutorials and learning resources on their website built to get even the most basic Windows user savvy. Even if your company doesn’t store a massive amount of information or actively interface between multiple terminals, taking advantage of non-profit cloud storage allows small business owners to enjoy full transparency about their data storage that is usually not afforded by commercial database systems.

Jitsi

I dare anyone reading to toss a stone; I guarantee it will hit at least five people begging for a Zoom alternative. Enter, Jitsi, the video conferencing tool with all of Zoom’s best features but also boasting an incredibly active community of developers constantly improving this free software. Instead of shelling out $149 for even the most basic Zoom business package, consider Jitsi which recently surpassed 20 million monthly users and participated in a European Commission-sponsored hackathon where some of Zoom’s most popular features like polls and breakout rooms were among the community-created highlights. Small businesses who strictly use Zoom internally among a small group of employees should highly consider using Jitsi as an alternative, as the two pieces of software are drifting very close to becoming functionally identical.

GnuCash

GnuCash is an incredibly feature-rich piece of accounting software that, like all of the software on this list, simply begs to require a monthly-fee, or some other ticket to ride. Yet here we are: this accounting software has a genuinely impressive amount of functionality. Customer and vendor tracking, invoice and bill payment, tax and billing terms, statement reconciliation, scheduled transactions and much more is all included in GnuCash. Small businesses no longer have to keep their QuickBooks subscriptions up-to-date or become incredibly crafty with spreadsheets in order to bookkeep. GnuCash even aims its tools at small businesses directly, claiming that they can even manage payroll.

OpenCart

OpenCart is a bafflingly powerful open-source ecommerce platform. Not only is OpenCart (as the name hints) open-source and free, but there is also no limit whatsoever to the number of products or categories you can list for your ecommerce store. OpenCart has continued to evolve with community development and now has several features – such as integrated customer ratings and rewards point system integration – making it possibly superior to paid ecommerce platforms. Unlike most of the software on this list, OpenCart is also exceedingly simple to install on your existing web store. 

Unlike other software on this list, an ecommerce platform appears to be directly at odds with the spirit of open source software (being that ecommerce is all about, well, commerce). But, truly, OpenCart is one of the best examples of where open source software can thrive. Ecommerce is the perfect meeting of the web developers who make open source software a reality and the web merchants who bring the space to life; both parties have an inherent reason to seek out better software solutions for ecommerce and what better way is there to develop that software than through cross collaboration!

ERPNext

ERPNext is a CRM, accounting, and human resource software bundle which has near-anything a small business could need in those spaces; what it doesn’t have, however, is a price tag. ERPNext is an open-source miracle which, if used to fill the three solutions it advertises, could save small business owners a hefty sum in annual or monthly licensing fees. Human resources is a heavy drag on small businesses in the first place but ERPNext’s powerful attendance tracking, expense claim, recruitment, and payroll capabilities make the tool a wiry, agile thorn in the heels  of industry leaders. This, of course, is only a piece of what ERPNext offers to users. ERPNext’s CRM tools are a great starting point for small businesses who want to begin lead capturing and tracking presales but haven’t yet developed a strategy. ERPNext’s intuitive tools even include a small business guide to CRM making it easy to get up and running.

Considering Open-Source 

While some may say open-source software solutions are born from frustration with commercial options, this is often not the case. While certainly Microsoft can employ multiple thousands of software developers and pay them a steady wage to churn out top-of-the-line digital solutions, open-source projects have the incredible advantage of the minds and vision of the thousands upon thousands of developers who donate their time and effort to make a solution which they could never have finished themselves. No corporate brainstorming session can beat the multi-thousand brained one that happens each day in the digital background on every piece of software on this list. So when considering new tools for your business, don’t forget to look into the open-source versions.  They may just be exactly what you need.