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
Slack/Microsoft Teams
Firebase
ngRok
Postman
Sendgrid, Mailchimp
Bitly
Google analytics
Github/Bitbucket
Intercom/Livechat
Salesforce
Trello/Asana
Zapier
Algolia
Typeform
Filmora/Adobe Audition
MS Office/Google Doc
Lastpass
Google maps
- Openstreet maps - (Leaflet.js wrapper)
Top comments (81)
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!
Agreed, the title might be misleading.
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
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.
Added a small note about this. Thanks.
Hey Fayaz, Chaskiq.io founder here. Thanks for the mention, greatly appreciated.
Thanks for making it
I had some questions, would you mind answering them?
I am available on t.me/fayazara or twitter.com/fayazara
sure, just drop me a line at Chaskiq.io chat :D or send me a DM at twitter @michelson / @chaskiqapp
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...
Auth0 & Okta are good alternatives. Or you could directly implement oAuth 2.0 client authentication with respective sdk's
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.
Why not handle the authentication yourself? I did it recently with Nuxt + Node + Mongodb + Google sign in
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...
Honestly, Mongodb atlas free tier is good for small apps.
If you do need image storage, you could probably use imgur or imgbb
keycloak.org
github.com/keycloak/keycloak
Still looks complicated, but I will consider...
Openoffice is nearly dead, I would not use it :/
Just an alternative, would definitely add something if you know anything similar.
All kde applications have a great UI and are easy to use :)
Adding this
Thanks :)
Take a look at WPS office
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.
You mean the CDN?
Proxying, and security shield.
Asset loading performance comes after that. But in the end, it also matters.
Why would you not trust cloudflare?
There is also owncloud.org/ as alternative for Google Drive/Dropbox.
And Nextcloud!
Nextcould is already added
And Syncthing for a different approach.
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.
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.
Fof firebase alternative, I've just found out about Supabase recently and it seems decent :)
Haven't tried it yet btw
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.
Do you care about your privacy? Maybe it is time to set up your own Dropbox.
Rémi Lavedrine ・ Sep 13 '18 ・ 5 min read
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?
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.
In that use-case, yes OSS projects would help save time & effort.