At Ralect we talk to business owners looking for different business software every week. The pattern is almost always the same. The current package does most of it, but not quite the way they work. They search, they watch demos, and the search often ends at the same three names. Lately one name comes up first more and more often: Odoo.
The familiar names
Exact was founded in 1984 in Delft and has been owned by investor KKR since 2019. It started as accounting software and grew into a broad platform: in 2021 more than 550,000 businesses used Exact's software. It also grows through acquisitions, such as Gripp in 2021, project software for agencies from Tilburg.
AFAS is a Dutch family business from Leusden, active since the mid-nineties. It is strong in HR, payroll and finance for mid-sized organisations, and grew 10% in 2025 to 356 million euros in revenue.
Odoo comes from Belgium. It started in 2005 as TinyERP, Fabien Pinckaers' project, was then called OpenERP and has been Odoo since 2014. It works with separate apps on an open foundation and grows fast: at the end of 2024 the company was valued at 5 billion euros, after years of growing around 40% a year.
What we see shifting
In the conversations we have, Odoo is moving from alternative to first option. You can see it in the number of Dutch implementation partners too. According to a count based on odoo.com there were about 34 in mid-2024, 44 in mid-2025 and 51 in July 2026.
51
official Odoo partners in the Netherlands in July 2026, up from about 34 two years earlier (count by an Odoo partner based on odoo.com).
That doesn't mean AFAS and Exact are struggling: their revenue keeps growing. What is shifting is what business owners expect. No longer one big package that does everything its own way, but software that can be adapted. That is where Odoo scores, with separate apps and an open foundation a partner can build on.
Why the search so often starts again
Each of these packages is built around a standard process. That works as long as your process resembles that standard process. For bookkeeping that is almost always the case: a ledger is a ledger. But the rest of your company, how a job comes in, is planned, carried out and invoiced, is exactly where you stand out. Roughly 70% fits there, and the rest becomes Excel, loose tools or custom work on top of the package.
Whoever switches packages often switches compromises. The new package fits better in some places, and worse in others.
How to make the right choice
- Start from your process, not the feature list: how does a job run from request to invoice?
- Decide which 30% sets you apart, and ask every vendor how they handle it: standard, through settings or with custom work.
- Look at who makes changes: you, an implementation partner or the vendor, and what that costs per change.
- Calculate over five years, not the first year: licences, implementation, custom work and its maintenance.
- Keep bookkeeping separate if that fits better: it can stay in a proven package.
Our view
We build Ralect ONE because we saw that search end in a new compromise too often: a proven foundation for what is the same everywhere, and custom work for what makes your company different, in the same system. Whether you end up at Odoo, AFAS, Exact or with us: start from your own process, and you'll know what to ask.
