Odoo is a suite of web-based open source business applications that together form a full-featured enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform. It helps organisations manage sales, customer relationship management (CRM), inventory, accounting, human resources, manufacturing, e-commerce, project management, point of sale, and marketing from a single integrated application.

Odoo Apps can be used as standalone applications or combined into a complete ERP system, since they integrate seamlessly with one another. Because it is free and open source (LGPL-3), you can self-host Odoo on your own infrastructure — a VPS, dedicated server, cloud VM, or on-premises hardware — giving you full control over data, performance, and cost. Alternatively, Odoo offers managed hosting (SaaS) for teams that prefer to avoid infrastructure maintenance.

Key features

• Open Source CRM — pipeline management, lead tracking, and sales automation.
• Inventory & Warehouse Management — stock control, reordering rules, and multi-warehouse operations.
• Billing & Accounting — invoices, payments, bank synchronisation, and financial reporting.
• Project Management — tasks, timesheets, planning, and collaboration.
• Human Resources — employee records, recruitment, payroll, and appraisals.
• E-commerce & Website Builder — build a storefront and website with a drag-and-drop editor.
• Manufacturing — bill of materials, work orders, and production planning.
• Point of Sale — retail POS with offline capability and inventory sync.
• Marketing — email campaigns, social marketing, and lead generation.

Self-hosting

Odoo can be deployed easily with Docker Compose alongside PostgreSQL, frequently fronted by a reverse proxy such as Traefik for automatic HTTPS. Deployment via Docker allows persistent data volumes for Odoo filestore, the PostgreSQL database, and custom add-ons, making upgrades and backups straightforward.

Licence and platform

Odoo Community Edition is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3 (LGPL-3) and is primarily written in Python. It runs as a web application, accessible from any modern browser on desktop or mobile. A paid Enterprise Edition adds proprietary modules, while the Community Edition remains fully free.