How to Compare Odoo vs Acumatica Cloud ERP

This Guide Helps You Compare Odoo vs Acumatica, So You Can Make the Right Decision for Your Business

 

Implementing an Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP) is a massive undertaking for any business. Whether you have implemented an ERP before or you are just now graduating to ERP from QuickBooks, you can probably already tell that selecting, implementing, and using your new ERP will be an amazing journey for your business.

If you choose the right ERP and work with the right partner for implementation and support, your ERP transformation is sure to boost your productivity so you can build your business to previously unimaginable heights. However, selecting the right ERP takes some research.

This quick guide will compare Odoo vs Acumatica Cloud ERP, to help you start narrowing your choices and creating your ERP shortlist.

Be sure to check out our other handy comparison guides that talk about Sage 100, Sage Intacct, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, NetSuite, and QuickBooks Enterprise.

An Overview of Odoo and Acumatica

At a glance, Odoo and Acumatica may look very similar, which can make it hard to decide between the two. Since businesses typically use their ERPs for 10+ years, you want to make sure you are working with the right product and the right company. This is why it is important that you always look deeply into any ERP vendor.

• Odoo, originally named OpenERP, was founded in 2005 and is based in Belgium. As of March 2021, Odoo had ~16,000 paying customers, with the vast majority (70%) in the Europe and Middle East market. The product offers many end-to-end modules, including Financials, CRM, eCommerce, HR, and Payroll.
• Acumatica, the world’s fastest growing Cloud ERP company, was founded in 2008 and is based in Seattle, Washington. As of November 2020, Acumatica had 6,500+ customers across the globe. Offering many end-to-end modules, Acumatica has particular strengths in Financials, Retail and eCommerce, Field Services, Construction, Distribution, Manufacturing, Professional Services, and regulated industries.

Acumatica has been named the Best Cloud ERP Software, and Gartner and G2 have rated Acumatica the highest in customer satisfaction and usability.

Who Uses Odoo vs Acumatica?

Although they are both cloud ERP solutions, Odoo and Acumatica have very different user bases. This is due to different software strengths and capabilities.

• Odoo primarily serves clients on the lower end of the SMB market. Their sweet spot is companies that have less than 50 employees and less than $5 million in revenue. Their clients tend to have relatively static business operations with slow growth rates, and predictable / repetitive processes.

They offer a feature set for eCommerce and Retail, as well as equipment rental companies, and these industries comprise the bulk of their customer base. Software limitations, including “lite” features and costly integration requirements, make them a bad fit for warehousing, manufacturing, and regulated industries.

• Acumatica serves clients of all sizes, with a relatively distributed portfolio of customers that have anywhere from less than 50 to more than 1000 employees with accordingly varied revenues. Their clients tend to have dynamic and agile business operations, with fast growth rates and constantly evolving processes.

Acumatica offers targeted and comprehensive industry editions for Retail and eCommerce, Construction,Distribution, Manufacturing, and Field Services, and their core product provides robust features for Professional Services, regulated industries, Nonprofits, the equipment rental industry, and Travel / Hospitality.

How Much Do Odoo and Acumatica Cost?

For the initial product, pricing appears similar for Odoo vs Acumatica, but the picture changes when you start comparing long-term value and costs between the two products.

• Odoo offers both a free version (Community) and a paid version (Enterprise), but the free version has very limited functionality with little availability for customization. Odoo has a habit of moving key functionality from their free version to their paid version, which forces user migrations. If a user moves from the free to the paid version, they cannot scale back down.

Like most ERPs, Odoo prices per user. According to their website, they currently charge monthly for users, plus another fee for each module per month. Hidden charges include the steep cost of online connectors, such as to eBay and Amazon, which result in additional monthly charges, as well as a shipping app integration, which is again another monthly fee to connect to key shipping carriers.

Implementation can also be expensive. In addition, hosting on Odoo requires additional investments in development, staging, and storage, and customizations cost a core development fee plus a recurring per-hour customization fee that is charged monthly, forever.

• Acumatica uniquely focuses solely on cloud resource-based pricing, which means customers pay only for the cloud resources they use, with no per-user fees. This strategy drives worry-free growth and streamlines operations by enabling customers to add unlimited users, including employees, customers, vendors, suppliers, and partners.

Unlike Odoo, Acumatica includes a vast range of included capabilities to meet industry and customer needs, with competitive add-on pricing for off-the-shelf products from the Acumatica Marketplace and reasonable developer costs for customization. Acumatica also offers the freedom to scale up and down to meet changing resource needs affordably and flexibly. Implementation costs for Acumatica tend to be reasonable as well, and Acumatica is known to provide a low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

How Do Odoo and Acumatica Meet Key ERP Needs?

CEOs do not simply wake up one day and say, “I’d like to buy an ERP today!” Instead, the decision to migrate to a Cloud ERP typically comes after the company has suffered significant issues with workflow, production speed, and efficiency. When a company is finally fed up with wasting time on frustrating workarounds, they make the leap to an ERP.

This means that companies are usually looking for a few key capabilities in their ERP that they did not have in their previous accounting solution. This section compares Odoo vs Acumatica on these key considerations.

Scalability

Business leaders invest in an ERP solution to handle growth and deliver critical insight that drives faster decision making.

• Odoo serves mostly smaller companies with fewer than 50 employees. This may be due to the fact that more transactions (invoices, POs, SOs) tax the Odoo system – resulting in slow performance, corrupted transactions, and conflicts between concurrent users. This may also be due to the fact that per-user pricing, which Odoo relies on, often limits growth by punishing companies that need to hire more employees. Odoo also limits emails to 100 per day. These critical limitations negatively impact Odoo’s scalability.

Reporting in Odoo is also limited. The software delivers less than 50 canned reports and dashboards included in the system, which are not customizable. Building customized reports requires the Customizer tool (Studio), which has a monthly add-on fee and often additionally requires skilled and expensive developer assistance.

• Acumatica actively promotes business growth with resource-based pricing that allows for unlimited users. To support those unlimited users accessing the ERP anywhere / anytime, from any device (and often from multiple devices at once), Acumatica Cloud ERP is built on a cutting-edge technology platform known as Acumatica Cloud xRP. This platform, which underlies every Acumatica function and capability, supports rapid growth and dynamic operations, and handles high transaction volumes seamlessly and quickly.

Reporting in Acumatica is very strong and is one of the reasons the ERP has been named a Leader in Financials by IDC. Featuring 250+ built-in reports and dashboards that are easy to modify in house, Acumatica’s no-code / low-code customization capabilities make it fast and easy to create custom reports, General Inquiries, and dashboards with in-depth analytics. In addition, Acumatica users can gain deeper insight by seamlessly exporting data to Excel or analytics engines such as Power BI or Tableau.

Customization

One of the key frustrations business leaders complain of with non-ERP accounting solutions is the requirement for time-consuming workarounds. ERP solutions should eliminate workarounds by providing flexible, robust customization capabilities.

• Odoo provides off-the-shelf customizations and connects to many third-party add-ons, but with minimal governance and oversight, customers often say that Odoo’s integrations simply do not work. Most Odoo third-party add-ons are built for their on-premises solution and do not work with their cloud product.

The Enterprise edition of Odoo delivers a customization tool (Studio) for an additionaly monthly fee but the customization tool is difficult to use and Odoo’s documentation is said to be limited and unhelpful. Users often have to call in developers to make the customizations they want, and they may not receive refunds for failed customization projects.

Customizations frequently break with new Odoo updates, and Odoo only provides support for their core product, not for customizations. Since customization fees are steep in Odoo, requiring a core development fee plus a recurring monthly cost based on development hours, customers could pay a development fee plus the monthly fee FOREVER for a 20-hour customization project that might become unusable in a subsequent update.

• Acumatica provides a wide range of off-the-shelf customization add-ons in the Acumatica Marketplace, backed by strong governance and oversight that ensures add-ons will continue to work with ERP updates within a strict timeframe. In addition, the no-code / low-code customization capabilities of Acumatica’s Cloud xRP platform, which underpins all Acumatica solutions, makes it fast and easy for non-technical users to create their own customizations in any part of their Acumatica system or setup.

Acumatica developers are also affordable and can make sure that customizations are fully integrated within the Acumatica system, with capabilities that can flow seamlessly from module to module. Whenever Acumatica users need help or guidance for customizations, they can access the comprehensive, readable, and in-depth help documentation in the Acumatica Open University or the Help Portal. Users are also encouraged to join the Acumatica Community, which features in-person learning events and an active and supportive online forum.

“One of the best things about Acumatica is how customizable it is, especially the user interface. I can change screens, processes and workflows. I can also create custom reports by connecting tables, combining tables and then generate a single table that has all the information I need.” –Taylan Sevimli, Tayse Rugs

Support

Today’s agile companies run their businesses 24/7, which means they need reliable access to support and customer service at all hours. Because of the significant support differences between the two ERP solutions, this is a key factor to consider when comparing Odoo vs Acumatica.

• Odoo consultants are mostly technical experts, typically focused on implementation and development, rather than system optimization and support. For many Odoo consultants, support begins and ends with the implementation or customization project. Oddly, Odoo Gold Tier partners (the highest tier) are only required to have 3 certified employees on at least one of the last 3 Odoo versions.

Corporate customer support is available from Odoo, but it relies on aggressive pricing that has been said to nickel and dime customers. Plus, with no weekend support and few guaranteed SLAs, it can be hard to solve critical ERP issues in a reasonable timeframe with Odoo.

• Acumatica consultants are technical experts as well as business experts, which is one of the critical drivers behind Acumatica’s award-winning partner program. For an Acumatica consultant, support begins during the selection and implementation process, but the top consultants pride themselves on being a true partner to their clients for years to come. Acumatica requires strict certification requirements from their partners.

Not only is Acumatica support available from your partner or Acumatica corporate 24/7, Acumatica users can rely on a defined SLA; the Cloud ERP company’s deep commitment to customer service (as explained in their Customer Bill of Rights); and  comprehensive, free, on-demand and up-to-date e-learning resources including the Acumatica Open University, the Help Portal, and the active Acumatica Community. As a result of these many support options, Acumatica has a 97% support satisfaction rating.

Get More Information About Comparing Odoo vs Acumatica

This guide provided an introduction to the differences between Odoo vs Acumatica, but truly understanding the two ERPs requires seeing them in action. Reach out to the ERP experts at SWK Technologies to learn more about your ERP options and to peer “under the hood” at the world’s fastest growing cloud ERP.

Interested in learning more about Acumatica? Take the product tour or contact SWK Technologies.