Twenty, Dolibarr or Odoo: which one for your team?

Twenty, Dolibarr or Odoo: the question arises as soon as an SME wants to leave its spreadsheets or a CRM billed per user. All three can run on your own server, but they do not do the same job: a pure CRM, a light ERP, a full ERP. That is where to start, before any list of features.

A word on where we stand: we have run Twenty in production since early 2025, and we contribute to the project; it is the CRM of Palmora Property, a property listings portal that we operate. For Dolibarr and Odoo, we present the scope and the price, without claiming experience we do not have. The other guides on choosing, migrating and operating are in our CRM section.

What is the difference between Twenty, Dolibarr and Odoo?

A team of 25 people could fall under any of the three. Headcount gives an order of magnitude; the next question is what decides.

Which processes must the tool carry?

Before comparing software, list what the tool must do, and what stays elsewhere.

1. Customer relationship only (tracking prospects, deals, exchanges), with invoicing and accounting staying in your current tools: a CRM is enough, and a well-made CRM will be better adopted than an ERP of which only one module is used.
2. The full sales chain (from quote to invoice, with stock and projects), without advanced analytical accounting: a light ERP covers the essentials.
3. The whole company (accounting, purchasing, production, HR, several companies or several countries): you need a full ERP, and a real project to deploy it.

Hence our rule: we recommend the smallest tool that really covers the need, today’s and the one you can already see coming.

Twenty: customer relationship, with no compromise on the model

Twenty stands out for the freedom of its data model. According to its documentation, you create custom objects and fields, table, kanban or calendar views, and workflows, and everything is accessible through REST and GraphQL APIs. It also connects to Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 mailboxes, attaching their emails and calendar events to records, according to the same documentation.

For whom: a sales team that wants a tool in its own vocabulary, connected to the rest through automations.

Limits: it is not an ERP. No invoicing and no stock. If those needs are there or arrive quickly, go straight to an ERP rather than stacking tools.

Licence: mainly AGPL v3, self-hostable with no licence fees according to its pricing page. We have run it in production since early 2025; our detailed feedback, limits included, is in Twenty CRM in production, and its use as a business database in Twenty beyond the CRM.

Dolibarr: managing everything, simply

Dolibarr presents itself as a set of modules that you switch on as you need them. On the project’s website, you find customer relationship and sales (prospects, proposals, orders, contracts, tickets), products and stock, purchasing and manufacturing, invoicing and bank reconciliation, double-entry accounting, projects, expense reports and leave. A REST API module, documented on the project’s wiki, lets you connect it to other tools, and a marketplace, DoliStore, offers add-on modules.

For whom: an SME that wants the quote, the invoice, stock and customer follow-up in a single tool, with modules switched on as it goes.

Limits: for very specific processes or a complex multi-company organisation, you reach its limits sooner than with a full ERP. Add-on modules come from different authors: check their maintenance and compatibility with your version before installing them, and have the team try the interface before deciding.

Licence: GPL v3 or later, according to the official repository. The software is open source, with no per-user licence.

Odoo: the full ERP, and the project that comes with it

Odoo links sales, purchasing, production, accounting and human resources in a single tool. Two editions coexist, and the distinction matters. According to Odoo’s licence documentation and the vendor’s pricing page, consulted on 4 October 2026:

For whom: a company of around twenty people or more, with several functions to link (sales, purchasing, production, accounting, HR), several companies, or strong accounting requirements.

Limits: it is a project, not an installation. You need to map the processes, transfer the data, train people, support the change, and allow time. The choice between Community and Enterprise has consequences for cost and features, to be settled from the outset.

What moves you from one level to the next?

What does each really cost, beyond the licence?

All three can run without a per-user licence: Twenty and Dolibarr when self-hosted, Odoo in its Community edition. The real cost lies elsewhere: set-up, data transfer, training, hosting, updates, and the time of the person who keeps the tool alive. Our article on the three-year cost of leaving SaaS shows how to do this calculation without forgetting a line.

How do you decide on the evidence?

The choice is better made on the evidence than on gut feeling:

1. 01List your processes.
2. 02Count the people who will really use the tool.
3. 03Look for the signals in the table above.

Also keep in mind the data transfer, which weighs as much as the software in the success of the project.

If you would rather have support, our CRM offer starts by comparing Twenty, Dolibarr and Odoo against your real processes, before recommending the smallest tool that covers the need. As an indication, set-up costs €4,500 for Twenty, from €6,500 for Dolibarr, and from €15,000 for Odoo, in three tiers.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Pricing page (new tab)twenty.com
2. Official repository (new tab)github.com
3. Odoo’s licence documentation (new tab)odoo.com