With its recent announcement that G Suite’s legacy free edition users are being forced to upgrade to Workspace plans, Google inadvertently prompted users to start seeking alternatives. During a time when the market for open source or self-hosted business tools is larger than ever, the Linode Marketplace makes it easy for you to quickly deploy your own apps with minimal setup, whether your goal is to self-host for privacy and control or avoid paying for premium licenses.
In addition to controlling your costs, self-hosting with help from the Linode Marketplace comes with several benefits, including customizing your compute instance plan based on your application’s needs. Instead of over-paying for SaaS access for these tools, you can add more storage or temporarily resize your instance to get the performance you need while minimizing your costs. And you can easily purchase a domain and add it to your Linode to customize access to your tool.
We’ve curated a list of options to consider, each with differing use cases and feature sets. Check them out, and let us know if you think there are other, similar tools that we should add to the Linode Marketplace.
Alternative to: FreshBooks, QuickBooks
Try a free and open source accounting software optimized for small businesses and freelancers. Akaunting has over 250,000 users and more than 100,000 community contributors to ensure that user data is secure and the software is still feature-rich. Streamline business management with easy invoice creation and expense tracking, and manage multiple companies in one admin panel you can access in your browser. The free tier includes access for one user and one accountant and unlimited clients/projects.
Alternative to: Google Photos
Get a beautiful, highly-visual, and customizable way to share photos, designs, or create an online portfolio to showcase your work with Chevereto. Customize your theme, privacy controls, and link to external storage (including Linode Object Storage) with a robust API. Chevereto requires a one-time payment of $59 for their latest version (or $15 for their previous version). One payment (per root domain) gets you lifetime access to the software.
Alternative to: Slack, Discord, Reddit
Build public or private communities to serve your team, clients, fans, or friends. This feature-rich discussion platform is mobile-friendly and can be customized to work best for you with an extensive API and library of official plugins. Discourse software is completely free.
Alternative to: Zoom, Google Meet, Skype
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, video conferencing software providers have tightened the restrictions on using their tools without paying for a premium subscription. Jitsi Meet is a free alternative that you can self-host to optimize network and server performance and provides all the standard features you’re used to having.
Alternative to: Google Suite, Dropbox, OneDrive
Streamline your file storage and access an open source suite of content creation tools all in one open source platform. Create documents, collaborate via chat, and customize your security settings to ensure your data is protected.
Alternative to: Dropbox, Google Drive
NirvaShare is a file sharing and collaboration tool that integrates with Object Storage. Make it easier to access your files in the cloud and share with your team, clients, or friends. Stay on the free tier and add users to view your files, or upgrade to the paid plans for unlimited file sharing and additional collaboration features like document signing.
Alternative to: Asana, SharePoint, Zendesk
A ticketing and task management system that is free, simple, and fun to use. Get access to standard ticket templates (including file uploads), a markdown-based notebook to create to-do lists, and easily keep track of your work. Peppermint is still in alpha in terms of features, but is stable for everyday use.
Alternative to: Trello
Manage work while having full control over your data with an extremely intuitive alternative to Trello. The free tier includes up to 10 user licenses, essential power-ups to integrate with other tools, and community support.
Alternative to: Slack, Microsoft Teams
Get high-performance, real-time communication for your team, community, or group of friends. Rocket.Chat is a comparable alternative to popular chat and collaboration platforms, and with a free tier that doesn’t limit your data retention. The free community tier is optimized for up to 1,000 users and includes unlimited message history.
Get started with a new tool by deploying a Marketplace app in Cloud Manager. Looking for more tools and services you can host on Linode? Explore all apps.
Comments (2)
The big thing in gsuit is webmail. There are several out there but they are painful to set up and maintain.
Thanks a lot for sharing this amazing business tools list. You have mentioned lots of alternatives and I will share them with my friends.