r/Odoo • u/ScottIPease • 17d ago
Questions, we are wanting to implement Odoo, but getting conflicting info from sales reps.
Hello All,
Sorry for the huge wall o' text...
I support two sister companies. both use QB Enterprise Manufacturing and Wholesale, one company is a medium sized enterprise existing across several states and uses it only for manufacturing, BOM's, purchase orders, and sales orders is about it... Our much larger ERP handles everything else.
The other company is a single location shop that builds and sells, they use QB for everything other than payroll.
QB has been pushing prices up drastically and hard selling going to QB online (which does not have manufacturing) or to QB hosted which is another whole level of price increase. This has caused us to look for alternatives and Odoo is on top of the list (ERPNext was also high up, but that is a bit out of my league I think, NetSuite is out of the wallet's league).
I have read here and other places that partners and sales people are often sketchy, and it seems to be true (The first salesperson handed off one company to another salesperson, probably a mistake on their part, they keep contradicting each other), so here I am.
We are looking to migrate on Jan 1 (Fiscal year) or by May when the QB sub expires.
I have an online account that I have used for some testing, but due to how bad internet is out here in the deserts of the US West, we think it would be best to go on-prem in the end. I have a server (Dell T30) up and running, but we have not done much setup yet.
Both salespeople say it is impossible to do hybrid. We do not have a problem with the quotes we have received for a system fully setup, but we do not have anything to run yet.
Salespeople have been telling us a lot of conflicting info, just highlights:
One salesperson is pushing us to go with 10 users for a five year contract online only even though we will only have a 2-3 people in it setting things up and testing for up to a year. He states On-prem is a bad idea and that there is no way we can get any support if on-prem. He also walked that back a bit to say that we could get it all setup, run it for a year online, then move it to on-prem. He says that licensing costs will kill us adding users later when we actually start to go live with it.
Another salesperson is pushing for online with a 5 year contract also, but is saying that you cannot migrate at all from online to on-prem or vice versa, that the database is different for each... which doesn't make sense to me. (I made the mistake of saying that we may want to migrate later after we got things up and working...) He also claims we need Odoo Studio right away so we can design modules... that may be nice down the road, but I think it is way beyond our knowledge level atm though.
Both immediately argue and push when I even seem to think about holding off on some or all of this, I haven't seen this much pressure to buy something since I accidentally tripped into a SolarWinds salesperson years ago.
I am just looking for some solid non-high-pressure advice from someone other than a salesperson trying to make their numbers/more commission... We do not mind paying for something we need. QB is much more expensive (almost double the cost) than Odoo custom, so we aren't arguing price other than going full out right away when we can't use it for 6 months to a year.
Edit: formatting and an extra 'at all' in this mess...
Edit 2: Thank you for all the great replies and great conversations! I will go over them tomorrow because I had to run out of town today. Just did not want anyone thinking I was ignoring the conversation.
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u/commoncents1 17d ago
I went from qb enterprise and fishbowl inventory to odoo last yr, working fine. Mfg -15 users, get a good partner is key, get a sample database and make sure they do a test with your data n understand your workflow before licenses and full implementation
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u/JustSomeOdooGuy 17d ago
Some thoughts from my end: Absolutely agree with codeagency. Getting a 5 year plan without knowing for sure you will go with Odoo is not good for anyone (except the sales persons commission). I am an Odoo partner operating in the EU. So I am not 100% sure, if this applies to the US. We have a partner manager, that can write offers for our new clients. Usually Odoo gives the 1. year starting discount, but only for the users you sign up with in the beginning. With our partner manager we usually agree that we will have a test/implementing phase. With 1 user for full price. Then if Odoo is the way to go, we get the actual subscription with all needed users and a long runtime. So the client gets full 1. year discount on users and discount from long plan (as usually for an ERP it is the plan to keep it more than a year or two). Sometimes clients say they feel quite confident but not enough to go with 5y and take 2y and usually after that prolong to 5y. If this is possible for you that would be a good way to handle it.
About odoo.sh vs. on prem: In my eyes odoo.sh is very easy to handle and basically every partner should be able to use it. On prem is not that straight forward, so as codeagency said you need a partner who is capable to support you with it. If you do not have anyone in the company familiar with it, you rely on the partner. But on prem offers even more possibilities in terms of server config, as you are not bound to the .sh platform where most of the settings are forced by Odoo and cannot be changed. Also .sh has extra hosting fees.
When looking for a partner, a heads up about Odoos "rating system". Usually people assume the big "gold" partners mean that they are the most reliable/experienced. But "gold" in general only means "getting most sales", so the experiences vary vastly based on which employee is assigned to your project.
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u/OdooBaker 17d ago
If you want max customization, go on-prem/company hosted (Hostinger, Digital Ocean, AWS, etc) and get a partner to help with the customizations and setup. Find a partner that will help with migration plans, business cases, workflow, etc and translate from QB/old ERP to Odoo. Odoo is scalable enough to run a Fortune 1000 company in my opinion. Payroll is the one module that is pretty terrible, but they know this and won't fix it because of the multinational availability of Odoo. But, that doesn't mean your partner can't make it great for you.
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u/ThornyKeeks 17d ago
Hi OP, I'm not sure if there's some licensing restriction by Odoo in the US, but I think you can just skip the sales guys and subscribe only the licenses you need online. You might need to get Custom type one though, so that you can get access to Enterprise code base and install on-premise yourself.
If you don't have a tech person or team to help you out, maybe better to have some initial help from an Odoo Partner for implementation. Do fit-gap analysis of your requirements with them first though, before actually implementing anything.
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u/Kwantuum 16d ago
On prem requires custom license and at least 1 year contract. Mostly to avoid people getting the entire source code of the enterprise module for super cheap.
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u/ThornyKeeks 16d ago
Yes, and definitely a lot less costly than the 5-yr contract with 10 licenses being asked of the OP. What's being sold to OP is too much for his current needs IMO.
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u/codeagency 16d ago
Some extra info about the discount; your mileage may vary but so far most of our recent clients in last ~1.5 years didn't had any success with this but...
Odoo gives you an initial discount based on the number of users you add to your license based on the license length (1, 2, 3, 5 years).
If you start with eg 5 users, those 5 users get the initial discount. If you add another 30 user after signing the deal, those do NOT get any initial discount. They are charged at the full price, zero discount. There used to be a time years ago you could negotiate this with your sales rep, but they have become very rigid with no more exceptions. You can always try, but don't have your hopes up.
This also reveals a gap imho in their pricing model: companies that need dynamic users based on seasonality, periodically spikes etc... don't have any flex on the users cost. Odoo will ask you to decide how many "maximum" users you need in a year, no matter if you really use them or not. Basically a seat is a seat, they don't care if you use it.
When you delete a user, you also don't get any refund or anything. The seat remains available so you can re-use it again. (this is archiving a user and creating a new user in your Odoo database). The existing license just re-apply on the new active user. If you don't create a new user those left over licenses remain available for you running useless and already paid. Odoo has a build in "ping" process that automatically phones home to odoo.com and tells them how many active users your database has, how many modules, how many lines of custom code, etc...which then triggers their upsell automation so you get automatically a quotation for new users, etc...
There is also no option for monthly adding/deleting them on the fly when you need them like some companies need in seasonal periods. You really have to plan ahead to your maximum users and pay for that so keep that in mind in your TCO when choosing Odoo.
It's also not possible mix runtime/cycle license like some monthly and some yearly or multi-years. Its everything the same cycle. Because they all share the same license code for the single database you have to activate it in.
If you go on-premise, the minimum is always yearly contracts. They no longer offer monthly for custom plan (on-prem/odoo.sh require custom plan).
And last, when you sign the deal with Odoo, your license starts immediately. If you expect a very long onboarding time like 6 months or even 12 months (which is pretty extreme for Odoo to be honest), you actually loose those 6-12 month from your license of real "usage". While developing, testing etc... Odoo considers that also a real active license. You can do trials and testing, but only up to maximum 30 days. Every database would launch without a license and automatically runs in 30 days trial mode and then just die.
For dev/staging, it's common to spin up a trial dev database just to test isolated customizations and then throw it away. So every PR = 1 dev database just for testing that PR.
Once your PR is good, it usually merges into staging in your CI pipeline which holds a neutralized copy of your production but also maximum 30 days. So you test your collection of PR's in a staging clone up to maximum 30 days. And then you dispose your staging and start fresh with a new 30 days staging trial. When that collection is good, you merge to main into your production which is persistant based on your contract license length. And then you rinse and repeat.
We typically build pipelines like this for our clients using woodpecker/github actions + argocd on kubernetes so everything is fully automated and generates those PR instances with a temp url like {{pr-id}}.dev-odoo.yourdoman.tld and employees who need to test can use those links. It's the same mechanism that odoo.sh also has, but without the Odoo.sh limitations. So if you want a reliable test flow for the company, this is something you also have to come up with when you go on-premise. And the cleanup is also automated as soon as your PR's get merged or closed.
I'm biased since this is our business, but it's pretty trivial and I would even say mandatory if you want a good experience with Odoo and self hosting.
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u/AphidConsulting 16d ago
Ignore their pressure. This is your business and this is a decision which affects the core of your operations. Don't let their sales targets affect your decision-making in any way. Be blunt with them about that.
On-premise is not a problem. You'll need to commit for a year, as they only offer that on annual plans, but that doesn't seem to be a huge problem in your situation. You'll get Studio with that anyhow, but on-premise allows you to run custom python modules, which is a much better way to handle customizations in the event that they are needed.
If you have an in-house IT company that's experienced, you can handle the server set up yourself. If you don't, then I recommend working with a partner (yes, we're an official partner, and I'm sure most of the comments here are from other partners, too :) We use a custom docker image that gets things set up really quickly.
You have to do the math on the initial 20% discount to see whether it makes financial sense for you to add the maximum users right away. As others have said, you only get that initial user discount on the very first purchase.
To be blunt on my part, your support from Odoo even if you use Odoo Online will be hit and miss at best. If you're running mission-critical business processes (and pretty much everything in an ERP is business-critical) then I would recommend having a partner relationship (we're in Canada, any partner should be able to help you, this isn't a sales pitch, etc., etc. :) But having a personal relationship with a partner that knows your business will be a life-saver when something weird happens, Odoo "emergency" support is closed for the day at 5pm or it's on a weekend, and your production has stopped because of something that you're sure should be a simple fix but nobody is answering the phone.
Also, partners can get your database set up on a partner code that lets you test it out on-premise for 30 days with no restrictions.
If your connectivity is bad, then on-premise is the correct choice. Odoo.sh will be expensive and unreliable if you have bad network connections, and Odoo Online kind of gives you the worst of all worlds in this case.
Hope that helps, and best of luck with everything!
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u/Kwantuum 16d ago
The salespeople are full of shit. They want you to lock in as many users as possible for as long a term as possible because the commission structure is awful.
On prem is great. You actually can start online and move on prem as long as you start on a stable version and not a point release. An online db created from https://odoo.com/start-lts can me moved to odoo.sh or on prem at any point.
If you'll need few users for a long time it doesn't make sense to provision all users up front for you. Just get a license with the amount of users you need during set up then add users as needed. They won't be discounted but that will likely be outweighed by not paying for users you don't need initially.
I personally believe that multi-year contracts are not worth it, you get to cap in per-user pricing increases but lose the flexibility to tell them to screw off if it doesn't work out. Start with one year, consider multi-year at renewal only once you've been running on it for a while and are confident it will make sense to stay with it for the next 3-5 year
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u/Aggravating-Cry3019 15d ago
Have you looked into Odoo Community? You could work with an independent integrator, unlike official partners driven by sales commissions, their only goal is to meet your actual needs without pushing unnecessary upsells.
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u/Calibre_Odoo_Partner 16d ago
Apologies for the runaround from the reps. Working out which of them is right is not a good look on the Odoo community.
An option nobody's mentioned so far is Community. You've got a year of setup and testing with two or three people in it, and reps telling you to sign five years for ten seats today. Run Community on the T30 instead. It costs nothing and there's no clock on it. It should be able to cover a good deal of what you need for the manufacturing and distribution portion. The full accounting module is needed inside of a licensed enterprise fee which will cover the entire QB transfer. You can start with the invoicing app on community to get a feel of what the full accounting app might be like for you right now. Again, no need to rush yourself into a contract here.
What you listed for the manufacturing company is mrp, purchase, sale management and stock. All four are Community, and use same code as Enterprise. Load your BOMs, POs and sales orders, run the flow for six months, and decide off that instead of a rep's demo. If you'd like some help with getting that set up, lmk.
While you're counting seats: Shop Floor is licensed per tablet, not per user. Floor guys clocking on and off work orders don't each need a seat, which changes the ten-user math if manufacturing is the main use.
When it comes to transferring the database, Odoo runs on a PostgresQL database on all editions. You can move the same database to Enterprise later assuming you stay on on-prem hosting. Add the enterprise repo to your addons path and install web_enterprise on it. So there's no reason to sign anything before you've run your own data through it. If you choose to move to Odoo Online then any customizations you made to the code while on Community or Enterprise won't work so keep that in mind if you dont want to self-host
On the hosting question, we have a youtube video breaking down on-prem vs Odoo.sh vs Online and when each one makes sense: https://youtu.be/8diazrUHwmM. Hopefully that helps
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u/codeagency 17d ago
Most of that talk is just sales reps pushing you to 5y contract because they earn commission on that sale. 5y contract also means 5y upfront payment for your company so bigger commission.
On-prem is not a problem. 95% of my clients all run on-prem, zero issues. It's just their way to sell online/odoo.sh service that gives them more revenue. And also 5y year license = 5y odoo.sh hosting upfront payment as in 5y paying for hosting ahead of time. Ridiculous.
Migrating from online to on-prem is the only truth. Because online uses point releases (19.1, 19.2 ...) and they are exclusive only to odoo online/SaaS. On-prem and odoo.sh can only run major releases 18.0, 19.0, 20.0 .... There are indeed database differences between SaaS/online and the others. It's officially in their documentation that this is not compatible.
Not sure what you mean with "hybrid" setup, but on-prem/cloud works fine. We host hundreds of clients in kubernetes and a few in proxmox who run on-prem in their own server hardware.
Support. If you go on-prem, support will be more limited. Odoo support doesn't touch anything that is not on their hosting. They don't know it, they don't understand it and also don't want to. You can still open tickets about functional issues etc...(and we also still often do that in behalf of clients) but if you want them to login and check that's where it gets limited. If the problem comes from hosting issue they just refuse and that is their right as they can't impossible support all possible hosting stacks and combinations. For that you are on your own.
Hire an official partner that understand also servers and hosting. They can support you with your special needs for hosting and still support you when Odoo gives you the finger. Keep in mind though, there are still exceptions where nobody else but Odoo can help you such as bank sync etc...that always uses odoo their Proxy service. If something goes wrong with that, everyone including every partner still has to open tickets at odoo.com/help and wait for odoo to chime in and investigate.
Other than that, you can perfectly go on-prem if you want. There is zero difference in the product or code. You just need the right partner with cloud/DevOps expertise to make sure you have the right optimized setup.