But:

Mixpanel holds every click your customers make. Every signup. Every drop-off.

Your funnels, your cohorts, your years of history all live on their servers.

And the bill grows every time your product gets more popular.

Mixpanel Growth at 20 million events a month is $1,635 a month, billed annually.

Then a team built the open source version of the whole product toolkit.

PostHog is the open source product analytics platform you can host yourself.

Now here is the part that actually matters. It is not just charts. You see the number drop, then you click and watch the real person's session. Same place. Then you flip a feature on for ten percent of users, or run a test, or ask a survey. Mixpanel now does some of this too. But PostHog was built as one box for all of it, and 97 percent of its users pay nothing.

Be honest about self-hosting. PostHog says its free self-hosted version is for roughly 100,000 events a month, with no support. For bigger products, they point you to their cloud. It is free for the first million events a month, then you pay by usage.

Here is what PostHog ships:

• Charts, funnels, and retention that show where people drop off
• Session replays so you can watch exactly what a real user did
• Feature flags and A/B tests to roll changes out safely
• Surveys and error tracking in the same place
• An AI assistant you can ask questions about your own data

Worth Noticing:

This is open-core. Almost everything is MIT, which means you can do anything with it, including sell it. But one folder, called "ee", is under PostHog's own enterprise license. Using that part in production needs a paid PostHog plan. If you want zero strings, PostHog keeps a separate copy with that folder removed. Self-hosting is for small volume. Big products end up on the cloud bill.

Your users. Your events. Your replays. Your server.

But:

Shopify is the storefront, the checkout, the customer list, and the bill.

Your theme only runs on Shopify. Your apps only run on Shopify. Take payments with anyone else and Shopify takes an extra cut of every sale.

Shopify Advanced is $299 a month, billed yearly.

Then a small team built an open source storefront.

Your Next Store is the open source online store you can change with AI.

Now here is the part that actually matters. The open source part is the storefront. That is the shop your customers see: the home page, the product pages, search, the cart. That code is yours. But the back office is not open source. Your products, orders, checkout, and customer accounts live on Your Next Store's own hosted platform. You need their account to make it run.

So this is not "own everything." It is "own the front of the store." The platform has its own monthly bill. What it does not take is a cut of your sales. You pay Stripe's normal card fees, and that is it.

Here is what Your Next Store ships:

• A complete store front: home page, product pages, categories, collections, search, and cart
• 149 ready-made themes you can switch between
• Checkout that runs on Stripe
• A blog, FAQ, about, contact, and legal pages, built in
• Instructions written for AI coding tools, so Claude Code or Cursor can change your store when you ask in plain English

Worth Noticing:

Open front, closed back. Your store's data sits on Your Next Store's servers, not yours. It is young. On GitHub since August 2024, with one official release. Shopify still wins on its app store, in-person selling, and the sheer size of its ecosystem.

Your storefront. Your code. Your Stripe. Your look.

But:

QuickBooks holds your client list, every invoice you have ever sent, and the record of who paid.

Your customers pay you through their payment screen. Your history lives on their servers. When they change the plans, your whole billing setup changes with them.

QuickBooks Online Advanced is $340 a month.

Then a team built the invoicing app you can own.

Invoice Ninja is the source-available invoicing and payments app you can host yourself.

Now here is the part that actually matters. The job most small businesses really need is: send a quote, turn it into an invoice, get paid by card, chase the late ones. Invoice Ninja does that job. Full bookkeeping, payroll, and taxes are a different QuickBooks. Invoice Ninja does not win that fight.

Your accountant still lives in QuickBooks? Invoice Ninja can push your invoices and payments into it. And if you do not want to run a server, Invoice Ninja sells a hosted version too, with its own monthly bill.

Here is what Invoice Ninja ships:

• Quotes your clients can approve, then turn into invoices in one click
• Online payments by card and bank, through Stripe, PayPal, Square, GoCardless, and more
• Recurring invoices and auto-billing for retainers and subscriptions
• A client portal where customers see, pay, and download everything
• Time tracking, projects, and expenses, so you can bill for your hours

Worth Noticing:

This is not open source in the strict sense. It uses the Elastic License, which means you can use it, change it, and even install it for paying clients. What you cannot do is turn it into your own invoicing service and resell it. Removing the Invoice Ninja branding from what your clients see costs $40 a year. QuickBooks still wins on bookkeeping and taxes.

Your invoices. Your clients. Your payments. Your server.

But:

Calendly is the link in your email signature. It is the page every client sees before they ever talk to you.

It reads your calendar. It holds every name, email, and time slot of everyone who ever booked you. Stop paying, and your booking page stops booking.

Calendly Standard is $12 a seat a month if you pay monthly.

Then a team built the open source booking page.

Cal.diy is the open source scheduling tool you host yourself.

Now here is the part that actually matters. You get the booking link. It checks your Google or Outlook calendar, so nobody books you twice. It drops in a Zoom or Google Meet link. It can charge people before they book. And it is MIT, which means you can do anything with it, including sell it. That is the Calendly job for one person. Round-robin for a sales team, routing forms, and automated reminder workflows are not in here. Calendly still wins that fight.

There is no hosted version. You run it on your own server. Its own docs say use it at your own risk and recommend it for personal use. If you want someone else to keep it running, that is Cal.com, the paid version from the same company.

Here is what Cal.diy ships:

• Your own booking page, on your own domain, with as many meeting types as you want
• Checks Google, Outlook, and Apple calendars so you never get double-booked
• Adds a Zoom, Google Meet, or Teams link to every booking
• Charges people through Stripe or PayPal before they book
• Drops onto your website as a button, a pop-up, or right on the page

Worth Noticing:

This is the one-person version. No teams, no round-robin, no routing forms, no automated workflows. The last tagged release was in March, though changes still land every week. You are the IT department. Calendly still wins for teams and for hands-off.

Your booking page. Your calendar. Your clients. Your server.

But:

Your prices live inside Chargebee. So do your plans, your trials, and every customer's renewal date.

Want to raise prices, or add credits for an AI feature? You change it on their system, on their terms.

And the fee grows every time your revenue does.

Chargebee's Flow plan is $99 a month plus 0.65 percent of everything you bill, which is $3,349 a month once you bill half a million.

Then a team built the open source billing layer.

Autumn is the open source pricing and billing platform that sits on top of Stripe.

Now here is the part that actually matters. Pricing becomes a setting, not a project. You want to raise the price of Pro? You change it in the dashboard. New customers get the new price. Your existing customers stay on the old one until you decide to move them. Free trials, usage limits, credits, all set the same way. Your developer does not rebuild the app every time you change your mind.

Autumn does not replace Stripe. Stripe still moves the money, and Stripe still takes its fees. Autumn is the brain on top that decides who gets what.

Here is what Autumn ships:

• Free trials, with or without a credit card up front
• Usage limits that reset every month, and charges when someone goes over
• Credit systems, where different features cost different amounts from one balance
• Price changes that keep old customers on their old price until you move them
• Spend caps, usage alerts, coupons, and referral rewards

Worth Noticing:

This is young. It went on GitHub in January 2025. Self-hosting is real, but the team itself says it depends on a bunch of other services and to ask them for help. Most people will use their hosted cloud, which is free to start and $375 a month on Pro. Chargebee still wins on finance-team stuff like quotes, revenue recognition, and big multi-company setups.

Your prices. Your plans. Your customers. Your billing.

But:

Typeform holds every answer your customers ever typed.

Your lead forms, your quizzes, your signups all live on their servers.

And every self-serve plan counts responses. Hit the cap, and you are shopping for the next plan.

Typeform's top plan, Growth Flow, is $266 a month billed yearly, and it still caps you at 10,000 responses a month.

Then a solo developer in France built the open source chatbot builder.

Typebot is the open source form and chatbot builder you can host yourself.

Now here is the part that actually matters. A Typebot is a Typeform that talks. One question at a time, like a chat. It branches on the answers. It takes payments. It files everything into Google Sheets or your own tools. And on your own server, there is no response meter. Typeform still wins on polish and its newer AI tools. Typebot wins on owning the whole thing.

One honest note on the license. It is "fair source," not classic open source. You can use it for your own business and build bots for clients. You cannot sell Typebot hosting to other people. Each version turns fully open, Apache 2.0, two years after it ships.

Here is what Typebot ships:

• A drag-and-drop builder with dozens of blocks: text, images, video, buttons, dates, file uploads
• Branching logic, so each person gets the questions that fit them
• Payments inside the chat, plus AI, Google Sheets, Zapier, Make, and webhooks
• Put it anywhere: a full page on your own domain, a popup, a chat bubble, or WhatsApp
• Results in real time, with drop-off rates and CSV export

Worth Noticing:

Typebot is mostly one person's project. That is fast, but it is a small team to depend on. The license blocks you from reselling it as a hosted service for two years. Typebot also sells its own hosted cloud if you do not want to run a server, and that has a monthly bill.

Your forms. Your chats. Your answers. Your server.

But:

Salesforce holds your pipeline. Every lead, every deal, every note your reps ever wrote.

Your sales team lives in it all day. Leaving means moving years of history.

And every person you hire is one more seat.

Salesforce Sales Cloud Max is $550 a user a month, billed annually.

Then a team built the open source CRM.

Frappe CRM is the open source sales CRM you can host yourself, with unlimited users.

Now here is the part that actually matters. There is no seat price. Add a salesperson and the bill does not move. Every deal gets one page. The emails, the calls, the notes, the tasks, all in one place. That is the Salesforce job most small teams actually need. Salesforce still wins on AI agents and its giant add-on marketplace. Frappe CRM does not win that fight.

Frappe CRM is made by Frappe, a software company in India. They also sell a hosted cloud. It is priced by the server, not by the person. Self-hosting is free.

Here is what Frappe CRM ships:

• Leads and deals on a drag-and-drop board, stage by stage
• One page per deal with every email, call, note, and task
• Make and record calls from inside the CRM, through Twilio or Exotel
• WhatsApp messages, plus leads pulled in from Facebook and Instagram
• Your own fields, views, and automations for follow-ups and assignments

Worth Noticing:

The license is AGPL. That means you can use it, change it, and even host it for paying clients. The catch: if you change it and let people use it over the web, you must share your changes. There is no locked enterprise folder. It is young, on GitHub since July 2023. And custom work means finding someone who knows Frappe.

Your leads. Your deals. Your team. Your server.

But:

Your contact list lives in their database. So do your automations.

If you are an agency, it is worse. Every client account you sell sits inside GoHighLevel. Your whole business is a rebrand of theirs.

GoHighLevel's Agency Pro plan is $497 a month.

Then a team built the open source marketing automation engine.

Mautic is the open source marketing automation platform you can host yourself.

Now here is the part that actually matters. The piece most people use GoHighLevel for is the follow-up. The email sequences. The "they clicked, so send this next" logic. That is exactly what Mautic does, with unlimited contacts and no per-contact bill. But GoHighLevel bundles a lot more. Sales pipelines. Funnel builder. Phone calls. Review requests. A branded SaaS mode that bills your clients for you. Mautic does not ship those. It is the email and automation core, not the whole building.

One more honest thing. Mautic does not send the email itself. You plug in a sending service, like Amazon SES or SendGrid, and you pay for that. And for an agency, each client usually gets their own copy of Mautic. There is no one-click sub-account button.

Here is what Mautic ships:

• Drag-and-drop email builder, with A/B tests
• A visual campaign builder: if they open, wait two days, then send the next one
• Landing pages, forms, and pop-ups that grow your list
• Lead scoring and segments that update themselves based on what people do
• SMS, web notifications, and a tracker that shows which pages each contact visited

Worth Noticing:

The license is GPL version 3. That means you can use it, change it, rebrand it, and sell services on it. If you hand someone a copy of the software, you must hand them the source code too. The name Mautic is a trademark, so you cannot put it in your company or product name without permission. GoHighLevel still wins on everything-in-one-box.

Your contacts. Your campaigns. Your clients. Your server.

But:

Fin is the AI that answers your customers before any human does.

It learns from your help docs, your old conversations, your policies.

That front door, trained on your knowledge and talking in your name, now belongs to Salesforce.

Intercom Expert is $132 a seat a month billed annually, plus 99 cents and up for every conversation Fin resolves.

Then a team built the open source support inbox, with its own AI agent.

Chatwoot is the open source Intercom alternative you can host yourself.

Now here is the part that actually matters. Chatwoot's AI agent is called Captain. You point it at your help center, your website, your PDFs. Link it to an inbox and it talks to customers. When it gets stuck, it hands off to a person. It can even check things in your own systems, like a warranty or an order. But Captain is not in the free part. It lives in Chatwoot's enterprise folder, not the MIT part. MIT is the license that lets you do anything, including sell it. The enterprise folder needs a paid Chatwoot plan.

So if you self-host and want Captain, you pay Chatwoot and bring your own OpenAI key. If you stay on the free core, you still get small AI helpers. Rewrite a reply. Summarize a thread. Suggest an answer. And there is a door to plug in any bot you build yourself.

Here is what Chatwoot ships:

• One inbox for website chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, SMS, and more
• Captain, an AI agent that answers from your docs and hands off to a human
• A copilot that drafts replies, translates, and summarizes for your team
• A help center customers can search on their own
• Reports on conversations, agents, and customer satisfaction

Worth Noticing:

Fin is still the stronger AI. Fin says it resolves 76% of questions on average, across more than 12,000 customers. Chatwoot publishes no number like that. And Captain sits in the enterprise folder. Delete that folder and you have the free MIT product, minus the AI agent.

Your inbox. Your AI. Your knowledge. Your server.

But:

Semrush holds your keyword lists, your rank history, and your site audits.

Your agency reports live inside its dashboard. Stop paying, and you lose the dashboard.

Want to track more websites or more keywords? That means a bigger plan.

Semrush Advanced is $549 a month, or $455.67 a month billed annually.

Then a small team built the open source SEO tool.

OpenSEO is the open source alternative to Semrush and Ahrefs that you can run yourself.

Now here is the part that actually matters. OpenSEO does not have its own map of the internet. The keyword numbers and backlink data come from DataForSEO, a paid data company. You bring your own DataForSEO key and pay them per search. The README gives examples: about five cents for a keyword search and about eight cents for a backlink check. Most small sites use a few dollars a month, not hundreds.

If you do not want to set it up, the hosted version is $10 a month with $10 of usage included. That is how they make money: the README says they add 28% on top of every DataForSEO request. Self-host and you skip that markup. DataForSEO asks for a $50 minimum top-up.

Here is what OpenSEO ships:

• Keyword research: what people search for and how hard it is to rank
• Rank tracking for the keywords you care about
• Backlinks and competitor insights: who links to them, and what they rank for
• Site audits that find what is broken on your site
• Plug it into Claude or ChatGPT and ask your AI to do the SEO work for you

Worth Noticing:

The software is free. The data is not. Every search runs through DataForSEO, and you pay them for it. Semrush still wins on its own giant database, years of history, and one tool that does everything. OpenSEO is young. It went public in February, and it is only at version 0.1.9.

Your keywords. Your rankings. Your reports. Your server.