In this ever-growing digital world, businesses can now rely on Open-source software to create and manage professional business environments, generate leads, capture data, track analytics and automate business operations. Automating business operations with free and open-source tools is one sure way small businesses and start-ups can survive, compete and build a paperless business with little funds.
Here is a list of free and open-source tools from CMS, Email Marketing, SMTP servers, Form building, Ticketing, Invoicing systems, Servicedesk, Discussion forums, Social networks and Web Analytics you can use to build and automate any kind of business online.
The advancement of technology is a significant driver for human development and business operation in the world. But unfortunately, it’s doubtful that there’ll ever be another breakthrough in the world that will be made possible without Software.
This is because every advancement and development in this present age depends upon Software to function; Software is the backbone or an invisible foundation on which every present or future technological advancement stands. But behind the development of every Software are the open-source communities.
The vast increase in the availability of open-source software around the world and how many industries are widely adopting open-source software have led to numerous business opportunities for individuals and entrepreneurs. I will discuss using open-source software to automate and build a successful online business. Establishing a remote business has become critical with new web technologies and frameworks. Without a web presence in this present age, no customer-oriented business can remain relevant for a long time.
Furthermore, the recent Coronavirus Pandemic compelled everyone to consider it. As a result, establishing remote or paperless business processes is more critical than ever. There are numerous viable options. However, the most cost-effective strategy in setting up an internet-driven business is to use free and open-source software to automate business processes online.
Any business, from a startup to a well-established organization, can benefit immensely by adopting open-source software to automate business processes. In this article, I have critically handpicked the most advanced and enterprise-level open-source any business from the automotive industry to retail can rely on to build a successful online presence.
I carefully explained each open-source software you can use in automating your business process from lead capturing to sales and marketing; with links to the official website for downloading them.
Here are Open-source software you can use to automate business operations.
Most businesses now rely on Open-source tools to create and manage professional business environments, generate leads, capture data, and automate every business process. Share on XTable of Contents
Content Management System Platforms
Creating, managing, and organizing Content for Business Websites, such as Homepages, Product Pages, and Landing Pages is the primary focus of every business because brands display their products and services to customers on these pages.
Web pages are an outlet where customers can view, learn more, and shop for their desired products on a business website. For a business to showcase products and services to millions of prospects, there’s a need for a Content Management Platform, popularly known as CMS Software.
Content Management Systems are software that aid in the control of the structure, layout, and flow of content, it aids in building websites and publishing content, sometimes without touching a line of code. There is numerous popular open-source software in various languages that fall under the category of Content Management Systems. Here are our top recommendations in this category.
Django CMS is a modern web publishing platform built with the Django framework. This well-built high-level Python web framework encourages rapid web development and stunning, elegant design. Django makes it easier for developers to build better web applications quickly with less code. With this free and open-source tool, businesses can take web applications from concept to completion as promptly as possible. Want to build a stunning web project for your business? Django CMS got you covered.
PyroCMS -is a simple-to-use and flexible CMS and a developer platform built using Laravel, a PHP web application framework. The PyroCMS sophisticated modules allow users to create custom dashboards, assets, pages, interfaces such as posts users, content variables, and many more. Pyro makes it simple for developers to create and build robust websites and applications quickly. Pyro isn’t just a CMS; it is a potent engine and app development platform.
Umbraco – is a flexible ASP.NET Content Management Framework that provides the quickest methods to create an online presence for businesses with ready-to-use design templates. In addition, it comes with an intuitive user interface and rich features dashboard that allows users to build updates, publish, and update content easily. This free and open-source content management system (CMS) will enable you to create beautiful, responsive websites and data-driven apps for your business.
Drupal – is a free and open-source CMS that can be used to build simple websites to complex web applications. It’s loaded with thousands of free modules and themes to help you build any sophisticated business website quickly. Drupal is a robust content management tool that can help any business deliver a message to customers, grow a brand, and build a loyal community around any business. Ready to build a website that soars? Try Drupal.
Joomla – is a free, open-source content management system that helps you quickly build stunning and dynamic websites and applications. If you’re looking to create simple websites or elaborate software, Joomla allows you to build both. In addition, an enormous user base and an active developer community make Joomla the ideal platform for your next app.
WordPress – is a free and popular open-source content management system. Its popularity among CMS tools makes it power over 39% of the website on the internet today. In addition, this free-to-use software allows anyone with no coding experience to build websites and blogs in 30 minutes.
Discussion Forum Software
Discussion forums are valuable online resource centres from a business point of view because it allows business owners to discuss with their customers about products and services offered by the company. It will enable a company to provide a candid view of the topic related to their products or services and encourage the customers or audience to participate in such discussion.
Want to create a discussion forum around your business to build a community of loyal followers and increase your business visibility? Here are our top open-source software recommendations in this category.
phpBB – is the world’s most popular open-source discussion forum software. It incorporates all the modern features you anticipate from the top discussion forum software. phpBB is a system for constructing and digitally managing web forums based on the PHP language to build communities of users with specific interests. It is one of the most popular tools on the web and has all kinds of advantages, such as easy integration with other platforms.
Discourse – is a free, open-source discussion forum software. It’s the most robust and reliable discussion platform with rich features for effective community discussions. It is designed for building community discussion platforms, mailing lists, or chat rooms for your team, clients, fans, supporters, or friends.
Flarum – is an open-source, free and straightforward discussion forum for your site. Flarum is a quick, easy-to-use discussion forum packed with all the incredible features to build a thriving community.
Vanilla Forum – is a free, open-source discussion forum developed using PHP. Vanilla is a robust customer-centric platform to build a social bond with customers and improve your product or service with customer feedback.
NodeBB – is an Open-source discussion forum software with cutting-edge features for building communities, promoting products and services, and engaging your audience in real time. With NodeBB, you can create a modern interactive online community all for free.
You can build specialized discussion communities, opinions, or technical discussions around your business with any open-source discussion forum software mentioned above. These open-source software provide comprehensive business support for an active discussion platform with which you can create a forum for your company to provide support and facilitate discussion with your customers. Thanks to the tremendous power of open-source software.
ServiceDesk Ticketing and Customer Care System
A ServiceDesk ticketing system is a tool that tracks the customer’s issues so that your support staff can address the issues promptly. In addition, it gives your team the tools they require to be successful in their work, such as answering questions and collaborating with other team members.
The ServiceDesk ticketing system serves as the focal point of your support staff. It provides your team with the apt tools to perform their tasks effectively and satisfy your customers. Without customer satisfaction, your business is shaking with numerous alternatives around. With a ServiceDesk ticketing system, you can seamlessly serve customers with required support operations anywhere in the world while you assess and optimize the customer experience for your business.
Here is our top open-source ServiceDesk Ticketing system:
OSTicket is an extensively used open-source support ticketing system. It seamlessly integrates requests made through email, phone, or web-based forms into a web-based interface that is easy to use for multiple users. You can manage, organize, and archive all questions and answers to support in one location while offering your customers the best customer experience. You can also extend its functionality to fit your business requirements with available plugins.
UVdesk is an open-source e-commerce and multichannel free ticketing system with integration with your favourite Marketplace, e-commerce store, Website Upfront forms, and Email. It also has CMS extensions that let you connect with your preferred CMS. With its extension framework, you can modify and extend UVdesk functionalities to fit your business needs to deliver more accessible and effortless customer support.
Zammad is a free, open-source helpdesk system with a stylish appearance and even social media integration. You can integrate Zammad with various popular social media sites, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, and many more. This makes Zammad an exclusive customer service software that integrates ticket management with social networks. As a result, your support team can use various communication channels on one platform to receive the client’s inquiries via email, telephone chat, social networks, and email.
FreeScout is an open-source ticketing, Helpdesk, and Email Management system packed with slack integration, push notifications, telegram notifications, white-labelling, real-time reports, workflows & SLA. This free tool can provide cutting-edge customer support for your business.
Helpy is a free and open-source ticketing software combined with the knowledge base and community discussion features to deliver a robust customer support experience. With the Helpy embed widget, users can contact you from any page of your website.
A helpdesk system based on ticketing allows customers to create private tickets for the issues they are experiencing while also assisting business owners in keeping a systematic track of customer issues so that the ball is never dropped. All the open-source ticketing systems mentioned above will help you set up a ticketing automation system for your business and help you handle all your complaints effortlessly, free of charge.
Digital Marketing and Automation Software
Marketing automation tools help companies and business owners reduce the most tedious tasks of modern-day sales and marketing positions, from automating the lead qualification process to establishing an online hub for campaigns. Marketing automation is all about reducing the complexity of a world that is becoming far too complicated and rapidly.
Marketing automation tools automatically allow businesses to manage marketing processes and multifunctional campaigns across multiple channels. With a marketing automation system in place, it is easy for companies to create effective digital marketing strategies without sending every email, message, and campaign manually.
Business owners can also target customers with automated email, web, social, and text messages. Marketing Automation tools can help businesses identify potential customers, develop the best content, and automatically initiate actions based on timetables and user behaviour on their website.
Under this category, here are our top open-source marketing automation systems.
Mautic – is the most robust free, open-source marketing automation software that gives you complete control over your marketing emails, landing pages, workflows, and the measures for your marketing activities. It automates getting and supporting leads from landing pages, forms, and contacts. It sends workflow emails, instant messages, notifications, and social network tracking and integrates with your website, CRM, and all the popular social media.
This free marketing software comes with cutting-edge features required from world-class marketing software like lead generation, campaign building, contact segmentation, email builder, A/B testing, page builder, lead nurturing, and more. With Mautic, you can boost your company sales, improve customer retention, and track all your business marketing activities.
CiviCRM – is a powerful web-based CRM system that enables organisations to track and control information about and interactions with individuals and organisations that make up their community. It is an Open-source software for managing relationships with constituents, and integration with popular CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Backdrop makes it a robust marketing automation system.
CiviCRM is parked with various features, such as Case Management, Event Management, Contribution Management, Peer-to-Peer fundraising, grants management, Advocacy Campaigns, and many others. It’s specifically designed for non-profits, civic sector organisations, mission-based organisations, and political and campaigning groups.
SuiteCRM – is an open-source customer relationship management tool that serves the needs of small to large businesses. SuiteCRM allows users to develop business process models and design automatized, flexible actions that you can schedule to execute at any point. Users can also design sales pipelines and template quotations for customers, monitor pricing strategies, manage contracts and monitor the progress of leads. With SuiteCRM, you can boost your sales, engage customers and build relationships with your customers through self-service portals unique to your business.
Odoo – is a powerful open-source business application that covers all your business needs, including eCommerce, CRM, Point of Sale, Marketing, Billing & Accounting, Warehouse Management, Website Builder, Project Management, Human Resources, and Manufacturing. In addition, it is the most advanced marketing automation system suitable enough to run a successful paperless business. It allows you to customize your sales processes, statistics reports, and forecasts and prepares your automated marketing campaign process to increase sales.
EspoCRM – is a high-end open-source software for managing customer relationships that lets users enter, review and analyze their company’s relationship with customers and their associates. It’s an efficient and flexible online CRM system that can quickly analyze customers’ behaviour and actions. Furthermore, EspoCRM is parked with insane sales automation features such as Lead generation, opportunities assessment, email integration, and Accounts Management. As a result, it’s the most powerful marketing automation software suitable for education, gaming, entertainment banking, retail, and the tourism and manufacturing industries.
With any marketing automation software mentioned above, businesses can quickly set up marketing strategies and collect customer data through many channels like emails, website visits, app usage, social media, etc. To increase revenue and maximize efficiency, you can use any marketing automation software listed above to automate your online marketing campaigns and sales activities. Marketing automation software allows you to handle repetitive tasks effectively, increase conversion rates and reduce human error in business.
Email Marketing and Automation Software
Email marketing software enables users to create, send, and track to click and open rate of all emails sent. Using email marketing software for effective business operations will allow you to automate marketing or transactional email sending based on user behaviour and increase ROI and engagement since the email is more personalized to their interests. Email marketing software is a cost-effective marketing tool for almost any business. It allows companies and business owners to keep close contact with their customers.
Under this category, here is our top email marketing open-source software.
phpList – is a robust open-source mailing list and email marketing solution. It allows users to send their subscribers emails, newsletters, and marketing campaigns. Whether you want to send marketing emails or update your blog subscribers with your new content, phpList gives you the power to do all that for free. It has powerful features such as email analytics, list segmentation, content personalisation, and bounce processing.
Mailtrain – is a Mailchimp alternative with a heavy focus on email marketing. With this free, open-source email marketing solution, businesses can improve customer engagement with targeted emails on promotions, create campaigns, segment users and update customer data to grow their business.
Listmonk – is a high-end free and open-source newsletter and email marketing solution. With Listmonk, you can create dynamic email templates, manage your subscribers and assets, and delivers your campaigns through highly configurable, multi-threaded SMTP queues. With this powerful and elegant email marketing software, you can also send WhatsApp messages, SMS, FCM notifications, and many more.
MoonMail – is a robust open-source email marketing and newsletter solution that supports bulk emailing via Amazon SES. With MoonMail, you can create and edit a list of email addresses, send marketing campaigns, view analytics, track open emails, and link clicked within an email. You can also schedule campaigns to be sent at a given time and date.
OpenEMM is one of the best professional, web-based open-source software for email and marketing automation. It allows business owners to manage and connect with customers via email. It is a complete solution for business that wants to create and send newsletters and service emails.
Mailman – is a free, open-source mailing list software; it’s a robust solution for managing electronic mail discussion and e-newsletter lists. Mailman supports built-in archiving, automatic bounce processing, content filtering, digest delivery, spam filters, and more.
Email marketing is one of the backbones of every digital business activity. Every organization needs email marketing solutions to send business updates, the latest blog posts, and promotional activities. There are countless email marketing solutions like Mailchimp, but the more your email list grows, the more money you pay. With these open-source solutions, you don’t have to pay anyone; you own your data without limiting the number of lists you can keep.
SMTP Servers or Emails Delivery Platforms
An SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) email server is a software application that allows users to send, receive, and manage email messages. SMTP is a protocol used for sending emails from one server to another, and it’s a fundamental component of the email communication process. An SMTP email server facilitates the routing, delivering, and relaying of email messages across different domains and networks.
If you’re running an online business and want to send out emails to your readers whenever you have new content, products available or important updates to share. Just like you use your email account, such as Gmail, to send and receive messages, your online business also needs a way to send emails to your readers’ inboxes. This is where an SMTP server comes in.
Think of the SMTP server as a reliable messenger that takes the emails you create about your business and delivers them to your readers’ email addresses. An SMTP server is like a middleman that ensures your emails reach their destinations correctly.
Here are our best hand-picked open-source SMTP servers you can use to power your email marketing software.
Postal SMTP is an open-source email-sending platform designed to simplify and streamline the process of sending large volumes of emails, often used for marketing campaigns, notifications, and communication. It’s not just an SMTP server; it’s a comprehensive email delivery solution that offers features beyond basic email sending. With Postal SMTP, you can create mail servers/users for multiple organisations, access outgoing/incoming message queues, real-time delivery information, and built-in features to ensure emails get delivered to your recipient inboxes.
Why you should use Postal SMTP
- Reliability: Postal SMTP is like a trustworthy assistant. It ensures your emails get to your readers’ inboxes and not lost in the SPAM.
- Efficiency: Instead of sending emails one by one, Postal SMTP handles batches of emails quickly, saving you time and effort.
- Analytics: Postal offers detailed analytics and tracking features. You can monitor metrics like email open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and engagement, which can help you understand the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.
- Cost-Effective: Postal SMTP is open-source; it’s more affordable and easy to manage for business owners than paid SMTP servers.
- API Access: You can integrate Postal with any email marketing applications or services; it provides an API (Application Programming Interface) for programmatic interaction and automation.
- Scalability: Postal is built to be scalable, which means it can handle increasing email volumes as your needs grow.
- Community and Support: Being open source, Postal has a community of developers and users who contribute to its development, troubleshoot issues, and provide support.
- High-Volume Email Sending: Postal is designed to handle high volumes of email messages efficiently. Any business can use it, no matter the size of your email subscribers or users.
Exim is a widely used open-source mail transfer agent (MTA) that plays a crucial role in email delivery. As an MTA, Exim is responsible for routing, delivering, and relaying email messages between different mail servers on the internet. Exim serves as the engine behind the scenes, facilitating the movement of email messages across the vast network of interconnected mail servers. It’s a highly customisable mail server for email routing and delivery; you can tailor Exim to suit your specific requirements, making it suitable for various email setups, from simple to complex. It’s the number one choice for enterprise-level email servers for organisations because of its flexibility.
It has some cutting-edge features, including Sendmail compatibility, cPanel Support, Flexible Configuration, and huge open-source community support. Exim is like a framework with its application language to setup complex configurations. It has an advanced multi-step mail processing logic helps it solve complex use cases. Exim is a powerful, customisable, and reliable mail transfer agent essential to the global email infrastructure. Its easy-to-configure feature, security focus, and support for industry standards have contributed to its popularity among organisations seeking robust email solutions.
Mail-in-a-Box is an open-source, self-hosted email server solution designed to make it easy for individuals and small businesses to set up and manage their own email infrastructure. It simplifies the process of creating a private email server while ensuring security, privacy, and control over email data. Mail-in-a-Box provides a complete package with various components required for a functional email server.
It’s known as an All-in-One Solution; It supports multiple open-source components, including Postfix (SMTP server), Dovecot (IMAP and POP3 server), Roundcube (webmail interface), and more. This ensures you have everything you need for a complete email system in one package.
Mail-in-a-Box offers webmail and supports IMAP/SMTP, making it super easy to sync across your mobile devices. It also supports contacts and calendar synchronization. It comes with HTTPS TLS support and automatically generates and renews certificates using Let’s Encrypt, a free SSL certificate provider.
Mail-in-a-Box also supports an admin RESTful API, which makes it easy for you to perform administration operations like adding new email accounts or suspending an existing email account through some external dashboard.
Postfix is a robust free and open-source mail transfer agent (MTA) that is used for routing and delivering electronic mail. It is an alternative to the widely used Sendmail MTA. Postfix is a reliable and flexible MTA with extensive features and capabilities. Some key points about Postfix include junk mail control, DB support, log management, etc. It has wide support for databases like MySQL, Memcache SQLite, PostgreSQL, and LDAP.
Postfix adheres to established email protocols and standards, ensuring it works seamlessly with many email clients, servers, and services. Its reliability and robustness are top-notch. It can handle high email volumes efficiently, making it suitable for small-scale setups and large enterprise environments. Postfix can be scaled to accommodate growing email traffic, which is crucial for organisations that experience increased communication needs.
Courier MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) is an open-source mail server that specializes in handling large volumes of email efficiently. It’s well-regarded for its modular design, flexibility, and high performance, making it an excellent choice for businesses and organizations that need to manage significant amounts of email traffic.
Courier MTA is built to handle a high number of email deliveries, which makes it suitable for both small businesses and large enterprises. It can easily scale as your email needs grow. One of Courier’s standout features is its modular design. Each component of the mail server—such as SMTP, IMAP, and POP3—is a separate module.
Courier MTA supports encrypted connections via TLS (Transport Layer Security), which ensures that emails are transmitted securely. It also offers features like SMTP AUTH, allowing for secure authentication of email clients. The flexibility in configuration means that it can be tailored to suit a wide range of environments, from simple mail servers to complex systems with multiple domains and users.
Courier MTA includes robust mail filtering capabilities, enabling administrators to implement anti-spam measures and content filtering directly within the MTA.
Web Analytics Software
If you are running an online business, collecting data on where your visitors or customers come from, when they land on your website, the technology they used, how long they stayed and what they do on your website is crucial. Monitoring and analysing website traffic is important for the success of any online business. Google Analytics has long been a go-to tool for many businesses, but there is a growing interest in open-source web analytics tools. These tools offer a compelling alternative, providing similar functionalities while emphasising privacy, data ownership, and flexibility.
Open-source web analytics tools offer a range of features similar to proprietary solutions like Google Analytics. They allow you to track important metrics such as website traffic, visitor behaviour, conversions, and more. Here are popular and robust open-source web analytics tools for monitoring and analysing your website performance
Matomo is a comprehensive web analytics solution that offers a wide range of functionalities, features, and integrations for monitoring and analysing website traffic and performance. Its focus on data privacy, customizability, and real-time reporting makes it a compelling choice for businesses and organisations looking for an alternative to proprietary analytics tools like Google Analytics.
Matomo tracks visitors to your website, providing information such as their geographic location, referral sources, and browsing behaviour to help you understand your audience and tailor your content and marketing strategies accordingly. With Matomo, you can set up goals to track specific actions that visitors take on your website, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. It also allows you to track and analyse online transactions. You can monitor metrics such as sales revenue, conversion rates, and average order value to gain insights into your e-commerce performance. Matomo also provides real-time reporting, allowing you to see up-to-date information about your website traffic and performance.
Open Web Analytics (OWA) is another robust open-source web Analytics software designed to track and analyse website traffic. It provides a range of functionalities and features that make it a popular choice for businesses and website owners looking to understand their audience and improve their online presence. Open Web Analytics offers features that beat Google Analytics in measuring a website’s performance. Open Web Analytics is a powerful and versatile web Analytics solution to help businesses understand their audience, improve website performance, and make data-driven decisions.
OWA collects various data, including page views, clicks, and visitor information. It can track visitor behaviour in real time, providing insights into how users interact with a website. OWA allows you to track specific events on your website, such as clicks on a particular button or form submissions. For e-commerce websites, OWA provides features to track sales, revenue, and conversion rates. It also allows you to set up, and track goals, such as newsletter sign-ups or asset downloads.
This powerful web analytics tool also supports tracking multiple websites from a single installation, making it ideal for agencies or businesses with multiple websites. Aside from the usual analytics and reporting functions of OWA, it also provides heat maps to show pages visitors interact with the most. OWA also offers various integrations to enhance its functionality and compatibility with other tools and platforms.
AWStats is a free and open-source log file analyser that provides detailed statistics about visitors to your website. It analyses log files from web servers and presents data in graphical or tabular formats. AWStats is a powerful open-source web analytics tool that provides detailed insights into website traffic and performance. Although the AWStats interface lacks the most modern look and feel, it is built with cutting-edge technology to track anything on your website.
AWStats provides comprehensive statistics on website visitor activity, including unique visitors, pages viewed, hits, and visit duration. It also tracks visitor location, browser, operating system, and referring URLs, allowing you to understand your audience better. It also offers detailed insights into website traffic, including traffic trends, peak hours, and bandwidth usage. It helps you identify popular pages and content, as well as potential bottlenecks and performance issues on your website.
One of the unique features of AWStats is its ability to track search engine referrals and keywords people use to find your website. This information can help you optimise your content for better search engine visibility and organic traffic. AWStats can also tell you the number of times your site is bookmarked, track the pages where visitors enter and exit your sites, and keep a tally of the most popular pages on your site; and also identify and report web crawlers, robots, and spiders visiting your site.
Plausible Analytics is a lightweight, open-source and privacy-focused web Analytics tool. It offers simple and clean insights into website traffic without using cookies or tracking scripts. Plausible Analytics prioritises user privacy by not using cookies or tracking personal data. It focuses on providing aggregate data to maintain user anonymity. It offers a clean and intuitive dashboard that displays key metrics such as visitors, page views, bounce rate, and average visit duration. It tracks and categorises traffic sources, including direct, referral, organic search, social media, and paid campaigns. This helps you to understand where your website traffic is coming from.
Plausible also provides real-time data updates, allowing website owners to monitor traffic as it happens. You can set up custom goals to track specific actions on your website, such as newsletter sign-ups or product purchases. It also supports event tracking, allowing users to track interactions such as button clicks, video views, and form submissions. It also offers uptime monitoring to track website downtime and performance issues.
Form Building Software for Collecting Customers Data
Form builder software is a powerful web application that lets businesses create and manage various fillable forms for quizzes, surveys, customer feedback, lead capture, questionnaires, and more. In every business environment, a form builder solution is necessary to collect relevant customer information. Form-building software allows businesses to create beautiful forms that help them gather essential data about visitors, transform them into leads, and nurture the leads to make them customers.
Here is our top-form building software open-source solution.
Orbeon Form – is an advanced open-source web forms software. It is a robust solution for businesses to build large and complex forms. Orbeon form allows you to create form fields, including rich controls such as date, currency, file attachments, and more, right from your web browser. With this open-source solution, you can generate enterprise-level complex forms quickly.
OhMyForm is a robust free, open-source form builder similar to Google Forms or TypeForm with stunning features that allow you to build any type of complex form for free.
Webiny is an enterprise-level free, open-source drag-and-drop form builder that offers the freedom to build any form from simple to complex. It is a complete open-source software that automates most online business processes.
Formbuilder is a highly extendable drag-and-drop open-source form-building solution that allows users to create custom forms based on business needs.
Formtools is a powerful, flexible, free, and open-source form builder that allows users to manage forms and data, it also supports Recaptcha and data visualisation. With Formtools form builder, you can quickly create single or complex forms through an interface and publish them on your website.
Forms are an essential part of every organisation; they allow the business to generate professional-looking embeddable forms for contact, surveys, market research, questionnaires, and recruiting team members. The most important way for businesses and consumers to share ideas and communicate effectively is by using a form. The form enables companies to know the mind of their customers. Open-source form builders are extremely beneficial to businesses in generating leads and converting them into valuable customers.
Billing and Invoicing Software
Invoicing software helps businesses that sell stuff online craft professional invoices send payment reminders, track expenses, log work hours, and get paid faster. Invoicing software for your business is necessary if you sell products or render services online. Designing professional invoices is essential for building customer trust and encouraging payment. With Invoicing system, you can quickly create compelling invoices for your business and allow your customers to make payments securely. Here is the top open-source invoicing software under this category.
InvoiceNinja – is a robust open-source invoice software with modern and powerful features to create invoices, accept payments, track expenses, create proposals and manage tasks. Installing this free, open-source invoicing system on your server will permit you to manage your business invoice, payment, and quotations and track tasks securely without giving any sensitive billing information out. The software can be installed on almost any server environment.
Akaunting – is among the most efficient invoicing software for managing everything from invoicing to expense tracking to accounting; Akaunting has all the tools required to manage your money online for free. As a result, companies can quickly craft professional invoices and send them to clients. Akaunting also comes out of the box with an individual client portal, enabling your clients to view invoices and manage payments.
InvoicePlane – is a solid open-source invoicing application to manage the complete billing circle from quotes to invoices to payments. InvoicePlane is a robust open-source system for managing quotes, invoices, clients, and payments. It is a complete and free invoicing software suitable for collecting quotes, invoices, and payments. In addition, it can be customised to fit any business’s needs.
Kill Bill – is a free, open-source invoicing software enabling users to expand their business by quickly scaling up invoicing and payment systems. By self-hosting, this invoicing system company keeps all the data confidential and under control. Kill Bill comes out of the box with all the features a business needs to run subscription billing and payment processes.
Crater – is a robust open-source invoicing system that enables business owners to create professional invoices for their customers. It helps the users quickly come up with detailed quotes, which include prices, discounts, and more. With Crater, you have access to the transaction history of all the previous payment history. The application also helps the users keep track of their total expenses and a detailed track of given users’ spending on various services. In addition, Crater provides complete details on different clients and businesses with its report feature.
Billing and invoicing software helps businesses go paperless with invoices and accept payment without delay. These open-source invoicing systems will enable your business to bill customers quickly, create invoices, and credit notes, store payment information on your server, automate payment reminders, and gain insight into your payment history.
Centralized Authentication and Access Management Software
Centralised Authentication and access management software is an advanced solution that allows organisations to maintain and manage users’ identity information and authentication on multiple applications. Centralised authentication software provides identifiers for users looking to interact with multiple applications within an organisation using a single login credential such as “username” and “password.” Organisations with multiple applications that require users to log in often maintain centralised authentication to improve security and user experience. In this category here is our top centralised authentication open-source software.
IdentityServer – is an open-source solution to build advanced access control solutions for modern web applications and APIs. It simplifies authentication management by centralizing it to one place. This open-source authentication server will enable you to provide a common way to authenticate users’ requests to your online business applications, whether they’re web, native, mobile, or API endpoints.
Keycloak is a robust open-source identity and access management solution. It enables you to add authentication to your applications and secure your online businesses with minimum effort—no need to deal with storing or authenticating users. Keycloak also provides user federation, strong authentication, user management, and fine-grained authorisation and enables login with social networks.
OpenAM is an advanced and robust open-source Open Access Management software. It is a powerful access management solution that includes Authentication, SSO, Authorization, Federation, Entitlements, and Web Services Security. It also supports Cross Domain Single Sign On (CDSSO), SAML 2.0, OAuth 2.0, and OpenID Connect to ensure you own and protect your users’ digital identities.
Central Authentication Service (CAS)
Central Authentication Service (CAS) – is an open-source SSO tool that provides authentication and authorization features using OpenID, OAuth, and SAML protocols. This free software is a single sign-on protocol for web applications. It enables companies with multiple web applications to grant users access to various applications using only one login credential, such as a user ID and password. CAS is a unique tool to allow web applications to authenticate users without gaining access to a user’s security details.
WSO2 – is a robust open-source identity and access management solution that provides users with complete access and an identity management system that offers a layer of security for online business applications. It also supports single-sign-on with multi-factor authentication, allowing users to access a company’s internal resources via different devices and applications using only credentials once. With WSO2, you can quickly develop, deploy, run, and manage APIs, services, integrations, and user identities and create users with unique roles via a management console to deliver secure solutions.
Authelia – is a highly scalable, rich-featured open-source authentication and authorisation server and portal fulfilling the identity and access management (IAM) role of information security in providing multi-factor authentication and single-sign-on for all your applications via a web portal. This free software comes with single-sign-on, login regulations, and application security and provides support for LDAP and Active Directory.
The number of users accessing companies’ applications online is growing daily, putting most companies’ web applications at a security risk. Therefore, there is a need for data security and management in every business managing multiple online applications. Businesses need to be proactive in protecting their resources and users’ data online using a centralised authentication and identity management system like the one mentioned above.
Social Network for Team Collaborations
A private social network platform is an excellent option for businesses to build a deeper connection between company members. A private social network within an organisation provides a cohesive environment for company communications, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing. It is one of the best ways to power collaboration at every level in any organisation.
A social network for enterprises is a private social media network that enables team members to connect throughout the organisation. An internal social network allows employees to connect and collaborate across different departments, leading to greater job fulfilment. Here is our top open-source social media solution you can use to build a private social network for your business and team members.
HumHub – is a highly customisable free and open-source social network software; it can be used as a social intranet within an organisation, school, community or association. It has unique features like notifications, comments, follow, like, activity stream, user profiles, and more. It is an open-source social network software built with tools to enhance effective communication and collaboration within an organisation.
Elgg – is an enterprise-level open-source collaborative tool for a social network. It comes out of the box with robust features such as a notification service, access control system, extendable system of views, file storage, a cacheable system of static assets and many more to build a collaborative platform to enhance employees’ and clients’ communications and productivities.
Tribe – is an advanced open-source social network tool. With this self-hosted tool, you can build an online community for your business for teams to share content and collaborate astonishingly. With this software, you can bring the social and collaborative life out of your business and improve customer engagement.
Opensource-Social network – is a powerful free and open-source social networking software allowing anyone to own a social network and build social relationships with people within the network. This free social media platform has rich features like a notification system, profile pictures, tagging & mentions, inviting friends, a poke system, a block system, and much more.
Building an enterprise social network for your business fosters an inclusive corporate culture of your business and strengthens the sense of belonging of your employees. It will allow your teams to communicate and collaborate effectively over a network without fear or rejection. It will also enable the organisation to showcase employee achievements and progress, bringing cohesion into the team and fostering unity within an organisation. It also enables teams and management to celebrate members’ anniversaries and achievements.
Final Thoughts
Open-source software has become an integral part of every business and technology. Almost everything depends on an open-source program to function, including the telecommunications system and accounting, inventory applications for personal productivity such as contact management, and operating systems. Open-source technology is the future because of the significant community base availability to scale any system without limit. Most technology we have now are built on open-source, from mobile and web to cloud-based solutions; are all built with open-source technology.
Your business can also benefit from numerous open-source technologies and solutions out there. You can automate every part of your business with open-source technology and turn your brick-and-mortar business into a robust paperless business without limitation. Need to run a digital and paperless business? Then the tools mentioned in this article are there to turn your business around.
The good thing is they are free, secure, and time savers; they are cost-effective, flexible, secure, and offer speed to automate every segment of your business. Instead of waiting for a vendor to custom-build a business solution for you, you can look into any of the open-source mentioned above and automate your business immediately.
There is ready-made open-source tool that fits your business needs, and you can still extend most of them for your organisation’s needs. Open-source technology is a great way to turn your business into a digital hub that competes in this ever-changing digital world. Which open-source solution have you used, and which do you intend to use?
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