DEV Community

Cover image for List of top Open Source alternatives to popular products.
Fayaz Ahmed
Fayaz Ahmed

Posted on • Updated on

List of top Open Source alternatives to popular products.

So I am collecting new and amazing tools for a directory app I am making, v2 of Appydev.

I found out there are some great alternatives to some very popular products. Here's a list of some interesting things people pay for.

Although, the title say's don't pay, most of these OSS projects are made by independent developers on their free time, consider donating them on github sponsors or opencollective etc.

Shopify

  1. WooCommerce
  2. Magento
  3. Prestashop

Slack/Microsoft Teams

  1. Rocketchat
  2. Wire

Firebase

  1. Appwrite

ngRok

  1. Localtunnel

Postman

  1. Insomnia
  2. Hoppscotch (prev Postwoman)

Sendgrid, Mailchimp

  1. Mail For Good

Bitly

  1. Polr
  2. Zero Width Shortner

Google analytics

  1. Fathom
  2. Matomo
  3. Plausible
  4. Ackee

Github/Bitbucket

  1. Gitlab

Intercom/Livechat

  1. Chatwoot
  2. Chaskiq

Salesforce

  1. Odoo
  2. SuiteCRM
  3. Crust CRM

Trello/Asana

  1. Wekan
  2. Taiga
  3. Kanboard

Zapier

  1. n8n
  2. Huginn

Algolia

  1. MeiliSearch
  2. Elastic Search

Typeform

  1. Oh My Form
  2. Super Easy Forms

Filmora/Adobe Audition

  1. Audacity

MS Office/Google Doc

  1. Open Office.
  2. Libre Office

Lastpass

  1. Bitwarden

Google maps

  1. Openstreet maps - (Leaflet.js wrapper)

Google Chrome

  1. Brave
  2. Firefox

Google Drive/Dropbox

  1. NextCloud

Wix

  1. Grapejs

Top comments (83)

Collapse
 
simme profile image
Simme • Edited

Great list! However, money needs to come from somewhere. It's unsustainable to expect great technology to just be free.

If you use any of these projects, consider also supporting them on opencollective.com, GitHub Sponsors, ko-fi.com, or patreon.com - wherever they might accept donations or support. Every dollar makes a difference!

Collapse
 
fayaz profile image
Fayaz Ahmed • Edited

Agreed, the title might be misleading.

Collapse
 
jcabot profile image
Jordi Cabot

Fully agree. Even if a certain user cannot contribute to the open source project with a monetary donation, there are many different ways to contribute to open source projects, e.g. by publicizing it so that it reachers others that can help with the funding

Collapse
 
fayaz profile image
Fayaz Ahmed

Yes totally agree, Not paying to these awesome people who make these open source tools and Projects was not my motive, instead the other way around.

Collapse
 
fayaz profile image
Fayaz Ahmed

Added a small note about this. Thanks.

Collapse
 
michelson profile image
miguel michelson

Hey Fayaz, Chaskiq.io founder here. Thanks for the mention, greatly appreciated.

Collapse
 
fayaz profile image
Fayaz Ahmed

Thanks for making it

Collapse
 
fayaz profile image
Fayaz Ahmed • Edited

I had some questions, would you mind answering them?

I am available on t.me/fayazara or twitter.com/fayazara

Collapse
 
michelson profile image
miguel michelson

sure, just drop me a line at Chaskiq.io chat :D or send me a DM at twitter @michelson / @chaskiqapp

Collapse
 
patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • Edited

Firebase is a series of products...

What's a safe alternative to Firebase Auth / Google Auth, or do you collect Oauth2 client ID / secrets, by yourself?

Firebase Auth is a guaranteed way to work with Google OAuth2, BTW. I have problem with getting permission from Facebook and Twitter...

Collapse
 
fayaz profile image
Fayaz Ahmed

Auth0 & Okta are good alternatives. Or you could directly implement oAuth 2.0 client authentication with respective sdk's

Collapse
 
patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

Not sure if Auth0 is better or cheaper than Firebase Auth. Actually, I moved from Auth0 to Firebase Auth.

MongoDB Stitch also have an Auth.

Thread Thread
 
fayaz profile image
Fayaz Ahmed

Why not handle the authentication yourself? I did it recently with Nuxt + Node + Mongodb + Google sign in

Thread Thread
 
patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

I still need some kind of Object / Image storage, though. But I don't think I should use MongoDB Atlas's 500 MB of GridFS...

That's why I come to Firebase Auth + Firebase Storage.

I use Google Cloud for hosting BTW, not AWS.

Nuxt Auth Module might be nice, but still I fear security and not being able to track...

Thread Thread
 
fayaz profile image
Fayaz Ahmed

Honestly, Mongodb atlas free tier is good for small apps.

If you do need image storage, you could probably use imgur or imgbb

Collapse
 
xet7 profile image
Lauri Ojansivu
Collapse
 
patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

Still looks complicated, but I will consider...

Collapse
 
corentinbettiol profile image
Corentin Bettiol

Openoffice is nearly dead, I would not use it :/

Collapse
 
fayaz profile image
Fayaz Ahmed

Just an alternative, would definitely add something if you know anything similar.

Collapse
 
corentinbettiol profile image
Corentin Bettiol • Edited

All kde applications have a great UI and are easy to use :)

Thread Thread
 
fayaz profile image
Fayaz Ahmed

Adding this

Thread Thread
 
corentinbettiol profile image
Corentin Bettiol

Thanks :)

Collapse
 
3alinet profile image
Ali Aljowaher

Take a look at WPS office

Collapse
 
caribe profile image
Vincenzo Buttazzo

There is also owncloud.org/ as alternative for Google Drive/Dropbox.

Collapse
 
phantas0s profile image
Matthieu Cneude

And Nextcloud!

Collapse
 
fayaz profile image
Fayaz Ahmed

Nextcould is already added

Collapse
 
moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair

And Syncthing for a different approach.

Collapse
 
dodgycoffee profile image
Alex Brindley

Probably worth noting that not all open-source is a good alternative to a paid option.

For example magento is historically one of the worst platforms to work in, and definitely not easy for non-dev people. Where as shopify has tools that make it much simpler for average people to get started as well as a whole developer toolkit.

Collapse
 
fayaz profile image
Fayaz Ahmed • Edited

Agreed, but I had developers in mind while making this list.

A company I worked for, used magento and handled thousands of orders a month smoothly, I think if you have people in your team who know the stuff they're using, then its not an issue.

Collapse
 
patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • Edited

Trying to see if I can find a Cloudflare alternative, possibly FOSS.

Can I really trust Cloudflare, BTW?

Another downside of Open Source and Free, is sometimes they don't provide hosting / support. And self-hosting, especially VPS, does cost something.

Collapse
 
fayaz profile image
Fayaz Ahmed

You mean the CDN?

Collapse
 
patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • Edited

Proxying, and security shield.

Asset loading performance comes after that. But in the end, it also matters.

Collapse
 
garretharp profile image
Garret

Why would you not trust cloudflare?

Collapse
 
banditelol profile image
Aditya Rachman Putra

Fof firebase alternative, I've just found out about Supabase recently and it seems decent :)
Haven't tried it yet btw

Collapse
 
maciejcieslik profile image
Maciej Cieslik

Taiga isn't open source, it just have free tier.

Collapse
 
fayaz profile image
Fayaz Ahmed
Collapse
 
maciejcieslik profile image
Maciej Cieslik

Ok, my mistake, sorry

Collapse
 
shostarsson profile image
Rémi Lavedrine

For Google Drive/Dropbox, you should add Syncthing which is by far the most efficient solution I found to replace Dropbox or Google Drive.
I actually wrote an article about it as I was so enthusiastic about that software.

Collapse
 
crowdhailer profile image
Peter Saxton

Is anyone interested in open source alternatives to "Sign in with Google/Facebook" buttons.
We are in the process of open sourcing did.app (taking a little while we kept user notes in our source in one big mono repo) but we should get there soon.
Seam's like a key piece of the internet that would be good to open source, and would also be awesome if there was more than one option

Collapse
 
vinayhegde1990 profile image
Vinay Hegde

Thoroughly compiled list Fayaz! While apps like Polr, Rocketchat, ElasticSearch, Nextcloud are good free alternatives but there's the effort of hosting, maintaining/debugging & upgrading them.

This would imply only people with the requisite know-how can use them rather than all. Given the complexity of some of those apps, wouldn't that lead people to switch back to paid options?

Collapse
 
fayaz profile image
Fayaz Ahmed

I guess so, but sometimes you need to build something on top of these OSS projects, say a client has a requirement of something like Google Drive for his organization, you dont have to build it from scratch, just build on top of these projects.

I recently read a post by @ben on how someone built a forum/blogging platform on top of dev.to as it is open source. That is a great example actually.

But for individuals, its best to use the free versions of these proprietary software.

Collapse
 
vinayhegde1990 profile image
Vinay Hegde

In that use-case, yes OSS projects would help save time & effort.

Collapse
 
fayaz profile image
Fayaz Ahmed

I shd just remove it from the list, lot of people mentioned this.

😂

Collapse
 
amritanshupandey profile image
Amritanshu Pandey

I think you should put Gitea (gitea.io/en-us/) as a FOSS alternative to Github/Bitbucket.
It is lightweight, simple and self hosted.

Collapse
 
pszndr profile image
Paulo

I'd also add ProtonMail and Tutanota as alternatives to gmail

Collapse
 
xet7 profile image
Lauri Ojansivu

If you mean anonymity related, here more:

fsf.org/campaigns/surveillance

prism-break.org/en/

Also see other campaings at fsf.org/campaigns/