Guides on choosing, comparing, licensing and self-hosting free CRM software.
In-depth comparisons for small businesses: accounting, invoicing, payroll, inventory, POS, ERP and more.
Best Accounting Software for Small Business: Free and Self-Hosted Options Compared. Verified tools, licenses and honest limits for small businesses.
Best Bookkeeping Software for Small Business (and When to Hire a Bookkeeper Instead). Verified tools, licenses and honest limits for small businesses.
Best Invoicing Software for Small Business: Free Tools You Can Host Yourself. Verified tools, licenses and honest limits for small businesses.
Best Payroll Software for Small Business: What Free Tools Can and Cannot Do. Verified tools, licenses and honest limits for small businesses.
Best Billing Software for Small Business: Recurring, Usage-Based and One-Off Billing. Verified tools, licenses and honest limits for small businesses.
Best Inventory Management Software for Small Business, Chosen by What You Stock. Verified tools, licenses and honest limits for small businesses.
Best Point of Sale Software for Small Business: Software, Fees and Hardware Compared. Verified tools, licenses and honest limits for small businesses.
Best ERP Software for Small Business: Do You Need One, and Which Free ERP to Try. Verified tools, licenses and honest limits for small businesses.
Best Expense Tracking Software for Small Business: From Receipt to Accountant. Verified tools, licenses and honest limits for small businesses.
Best Time Tracking Software for Small Business: Billable Hours, Time Clocks and Privacy. Verified tools, licenses and honest limits for small businesses.
Best Cash Flow Management Software for Small Business (Plus a 13-Week Forecast Method). Verified tools, licenses and honest limits for small businesses.
Best Bank Reconciliation Software for Small Business, Explained With a Worked Example. Verified tools, licenses and honest limits for small businesses.
Best Warehouse Management Software for Small Business: Do You Even Need a WMS?. Verified tools, licenses and honest limits for small businesses.
Best Purchase Order Software for Small Business: From Request to Three-Way Match. Verified tools, licenses and honest limits for small businesses.
Best Quoting Software for Small Business: Quotes, Estimates and Quote-to-Invoice. Verified tools, licenses and honest limits for small businesses.
Best Financial Reporting Software for Small Business: Which Reports You Need. Verified tools, licenses and honest limits for small businesses.
How to choose, license, secure and self-host a CRM.
A practical checklist for picking the right open source CRM: license, project health, tech stack, features, security, total cost and how to run a proper trial.
Self-hosting a CRM removes per-seat fees but adds hosting, backups and admin work. Here is a simple way to compare the true cost and decide.
Not every "open source" CRM is truly open source. Understand MIT, GPL, AGPL, LGPL, MPL-style, open-core and source-available licenses before you choose.
A practical checklist to secure a self-hosted CRM: HTTPS, updates, backups, access control, secrets, network exposure and privacy compliance.
The most-starred open source CRM and CRM-ERP projects on GitHub, with license and last update, verified October 2026.
Find the right free CRM for your situation: general sales, ERP + CRM, developer-first, nonprofits, marketing, personal, AI and low-code.
Our methodology: public source, not archived, real license file, recent activity. Plus the projects we removed or declined and why.
