A story we hear often: a company gets stuck on its package, starts searching and asks a few Odoo partners for quotes. Makes sense, because Odoo feels flexible. You switch on only the apps you need, and whatever doesn't fit, a partner can build on top. Yet after such a project we often hear the same thing: it fits better, but still not quite.
Why Odoo is so attractive
- A broad set of apps, from CRM and sales to inventory, projects and accounting.
- A low entry point: Odoo Standard costs €19.90 per user per month on a yearly plan.
- An open foundation, so partners can extend the software.
- A large ecosystem: the Netherlands now has 51 official Odoo partners.
Where the compromises are
Odoo's strength is that it is a standard package with many settings. That is also its limit. Everything outside those settings becomes custom work on top of the package, and that is where the compromises are.
- Custom work needs the Custom plan: €35.90 per user per month on a yearly plan. Maintaining that custom code is not included in any plan.
- A new Odoo version can affect your custom work: whatever you have built has to come along with every upgrade.
- Your way of working adapts to Odoo's structure, to how orders, projects and invoices are named and connected there. Where you differ, you work around it or pay for custom work.
- Changes usually go through the partner, at an hourly rate.
What it costs
Implementation partners themselves quote very different amounts. One Dutch partner mentions 5,000 to 15,000 euros on average for companies with up to about 50 users, another 20,000 to 200,000 euros for SMEs. The difference is mostly custom work: the more your process differs, the higher the bill.
€20,000 to €200,000
What a Dutch Odoo partner mentions as typical implementation costs for SMEs, depending on the custom work.
The alternative: custom work on a foundation made for it
There is another approach: a foundation built for custom work. Then the question is not how to work around the package, but what has to go on top of the foundation to fit 100%. That is how Ralect ONE works. You work on the foundation within a week, and your custom layer is added in the same system, on the same data.
An example calculation
Take a project company with 15 users that needs CRM, quotes, projects, hours, invoices and bookkeeping, with custom work. In Odoo that is the Custom plan: 15 × €35.90, about €540 a month, plus the implementation by a partner. In Ralect ONE you pay 15 × €17 plus the apps, about €430 a month, with €149 setup per app and custom work at a fixed price agreed up front.
How much custom work you need determines most of the bill in both cases. The difference is what happens after: in Ralect ONE the custom work belongs to the system, with its maintenance as a fixed part of your monthly price, so it keeps working with every update.
The bottom line
Odoo is a strong package and a good choice for many companies. But flexible is not the same as fitting. If your process differs in important ways, don't just look at what a package can do, but also at what it costs to make it fit, and who maintains that afterwards.
