Open source alternatives to Salesforce

By GitHub stars it is Twenty, with 60,898 stars and a commit on 13 Nov. Choose Twenty when your team needs custom objects, row-level permissions and workflows in a CRM whose code you can read and host. Next come Odoo (55,775 stars) and EspoCRM (3,610 stars).

Yes. The code of all 3 is public under AGPL 3.0 or LGPL 3.0, so you can use them with no licence fee. Running one yourself costs the server and your time to look after it, and some makers also sell a hosted plan.

Start from the job you use Salesforce for. Choose Odoo when sales should share one database with accounting, inventory and HR, and you want to self-host the open edition. Choose EspoCRM when you need BPMN process automation and a customer portal but cannot justify enterprise CRM pricing per user.

All 3: Twenty, Odoo and EspoCRM. Each tool's page says what it needs to run.

All 3 we track had a commit in the last 30 days, among them Twenty, Odoo and EspoCRM. A recent commit shows the project is kept up, not that it will stay that way.

AGPL 3.0 (2), LGPL 3.0 (1). GPL and AGPL ask you to share your changes under the same licence when you give the software to others, and AGPL also counts letting people use it over a network.

The hosting. Salesforce's maker runs the servers for you; with an open source tool the updates, backups, security fixes and support are yours, unless you take the maker's hosted plan. Features differ too, so check what each one imports and exports before you move your data.