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Paying for software is stupid… 10 free and open-source SaaS replacements (www.youtube.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Remember, for every paid SaaS, there is a free open-source self-hosted alternative. Let's take a look at 10 FOSS tools designed to replace popular tools like MS Office, Notion, Heroku, Vercel, Zoom, Adobe, and more.

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⭐ Repos mentioned

LibreOffice

Mattermost

Nocodb

Plane

Appflowy

Jitsi

ERPNext

Coolify

Dokku

Instant

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[–] AHemlocksLie 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

These apps aren't SaaS, but their alternatives are in at least some cases. LibreOffice competes with Microsoft Office, for example, and Microsoft wants people to pay a subscription for it, although I think you can still buy it outright. Pretty sure I've heard similar for Adobe products. Not super familiar with all the options, so can't say if it's true for all of them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

SAAS isn't about subscription perse although they have them of course. Its about "not needing to take care of". It's software on "someone else's computer" just as with public cloud. In a SAAS construct a provider does the hosting, computing, connection, install, configuration and maintenance. Absolving clients from that burden.

Comparing proprietary desktop applications (even with a subscription) with FOSS alternatives is useful, it's just not SAAS.

[–] AHemlocksLie 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So it seems like if you're using Office on desktop, not SaaS, but they do offer it in a browser, so would that count? Technically, if it's in JavaScript or something like that, computing is handled locally, but it still feels close enough to count.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

My understanding is roughly, for example:

Microsoft Word desktop application: not SAAS.
Microsoft Word online: SAAS (just like any other service accessible by browser but not a "localhost")
Onedrive: SAAS, storage with local explorer integration.
Exchange server on prem: not SAAS, increasingly diffucult to do.
Exchange server by MS: SAAS
Microsoft Outlook Classic for desktop: not SAAS.
Microsoft Teams for desktop: SAAS although local install but its just another frontend instead of browser.
Office365: SAAS but really a container for every tool in the MS online toolbox together.

Some caveats: Word handles spellchecker in their cloud and clippy 2024 (Copilot) integration blurs the line.