pinky07

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.

Odoo is not an alternative to Gmail. (We have a spreadsheet app, but more for reporting purposes)

1/ Upgrade are super complex: requires a service, not just a script

2/ We used it to monetize Odoo Enterprise

Upgrade: Even after 1000+ upgrades, we still run into issues regularly as every environment is different (set of modules, customizations, community apps, ...). So we need to test the database, and fix scripts when necessary. If we would just provide scripts, it would cost us a lot in support for issues... and a bad customer experience. At least, by having the control we can ensure a smooth customer experience; it just works - and you don't see everything we do behind. (most of the time)

Monetization: The open core business model is hard, when your goal is to do a maximum open source. Our main competitor being Odoo Community, we charge 5x less than competitors for a better software. (25€ vs 180€)

So, we had to pick a few apps and services to monetize Odoo Enterprise, like the accounting app, or the upgrade service.

Fortunetally, there is OpenUpgrade (scripts from the community) so that there is no lock-in on the upgrade. (you spend time with open-upgrade or go to Enterprise and we do it)

On the service side, we onboard 14.000 new clients per month. (need a lot of sales too for that). Projects varies from a 5 users company (4 hours of service), to 5000 users. (1 year implementation for a team of 5)

The spread in people is more or less: 30% developers, 30% consultants, 30% sales.

In addition to our 6700 employees, we also have a large partner network: 200k FTE working on Odoo (selling, developing, doing services). They developed 50k apps, and onboard tens of thousands of companies per month.

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.