Free ERP for Manufacturing: What Is Actually Free and What It Costs Over Two Years

What can be free is a licence, a limited plan or the first 14-30 days of use, but implementation, setup, support and your team’s time are always paid for. In the example of a 15-person shop, two years with an open-source system cost $12,200, with a freemium service $7,450, and with a paid cloud ERP at a fixed price from $6,680.

An owner who types “free ERP” into a search box wants to know whether the bill can be avoided. The answer depends on what exactly is free and what has to be paid for next to it. Below are three kinds of “free”, a two-year calculation and an honest description of what Bimp offers. Bimp prices come from the pricing page, and the other figures in the example are invented.

What do people mean by free ERP?

Three different things hide behind this search. Each has its own limit beyond which the costs begin.

1. Open-source licence. The code is open, and you can install the software without paying for a licence.
2. Freemium. The service is free while you stay inside a limit: number of users, documents or modules.
3. Trial period. The full version for 14-30 days, then payment.

There is also a fourth variant: the software is given away and the vendor earns on implementation services. Such an offer costs the same, only the invoice is issued under a different heading.

What is actually free in open-source ERP?

Only the licence is free. The system has to be installed on a server that you pay for, and someone has to configure it for your accounting: currency, VAT, units of measure, product BOMs, cost calculation. Version updates, backups and bug fixes also fall on your company or a contractor.

Localisation should be priced separately. Local tax documents, local-currency accounting and data exchange with your accountant’s software need modules that international open-source packages may lack or keep outdated. You either search for third-party add-ons or order them from a developer, and those hours go on the bill too.

This option suits a shop with an in-house developer or a reliable team that has already worked with the chosen system. Without such a person, the first year goes on setup, and the first failure on a Friday evening is yours to solve.

Where does free end in freemium?

A free tier usually limits the number of users, the volume of transactions or access to modules. Production modules, BOMs and costing are often part of paid plans. A shop that needs manufacturing therefore passes the free limit on day one.

Ask the vendor four questions before connecting. Which functions are paid? What does the first paid plan cost for your headcount? What happens to your data if you move to another service? Is support included in the free tier? The answers decide whether free is still free in six months.

There is also a hidden cost of switching. Once you have entered items, BOMs and balances into a service, moving to another system means repeating that work. Check the free-tier limits against the number of users you will have in a year. For a 15-person shop that is usually five to eight people in the system.

What can you check during a trial period?

A trial shows the interface and the basic logic. A manufacturing shop rarely manages to load its item list, enter BOMs, enter balances and close a month in 14-30 days. Cost price and profit therefore appear only in the paid period.

To get more from a trial, prepare the data before it starts: a file with the item list, warehouse balances and BOMs of two or three main products. Then in two weeks you can create a customer order and a production order and look at the reports on your own numbers. What to prepare and in what order is described in What you can import into Bimp from Excel and in the launch checklist.

How much does a free ERP cost a shop over two years?

Take a hypothetical shop: 15 employees, 5 of whom work in the system (owner, sales manager, storekeeper, production engineer, accountant). The horizon is two years, or 24 months. All amounts are in US dollars, because the Bimp plans are listed in dollars on its pricing page.

The assumptions are easy to replace with your own:

• an hour of an external specialist (implementation, support) costs $25;
• an hour of a shop employee costs $8;
• a server for an open-source system costs $50 a month;
• in the freemium service the first 6 months are free, and from month 7 a paid plan at $25 per user per month is needed;
• the paid cloud system is the Bimp Start plan: $1,490 a year with 5 users, support included, and Quick Start for manufacturing from $2,500 one time.

Here is how each column was calculated. Open-source: server 50 × 24 = 1,200; implementation 200 hours × 25 = 5,000; support 6 hours a month × 25 × 24 = 3,600; team time 300 hours × 8 = 2,400; total 0 + 1,200 + 5,000 + 3,600 + 2,400 = 12,200.

Freemium: paid months 24 - 6 = 18, so the subscription is 18 × 5 users × 25 = 2,250; implementation 80 hours × 25 = 2,000; support 2 hours a month × 25 × 24 = 1,200; team time 250 hours × 8 = 2,000; total 2,250 + 2,000 + 1,200 + 2,000 = 7,450.

Paid cloud: plan 1,490 × 2 years = 2,980; Quick Start 2,500; support is in the plan, so 0; team time 150 hours × 8 = 1,200 (less, because an analyst prepares BOMs and costings together with the team); total 2,980 + 2,500 + 0 + 1,200 = 6,680. The gap to open-source is 12,200 - 6,680 = $5,520, and to freemium 7,450 - 6,680 = $770.

The table leaves out costs that are hard to estimate in advance: shop downtime during launch, errors in the first reports, a move to another system after two years. They affect all three columns equally, but the spread depends on the quality of implementation. In a comparison, ask every vendor for a concrete list of work with hours. The phrase “implementation included” without a list guarantees nothing.

The result is sensitive to two variables. If the shop has a developer paid $1,500 a month and a quarter of that person’s time goes to ERP, add 1,500 × 24 × 0.25 = $9,000, and open-source rises to 21,200. If 8 people will work in the system instead of 5, Bimp needs 3 more users: 3 × 260 × 2 = $1,560, and the total becomes 6,680 + 1,560 = $8,240.

What Bimp does and does not do

Bimp is a Ukrainian cloud ERP for manufacturers. Bimp has no free plan and no trial period. Instead there is a demo: a specialist shows how BOMs, production orders, the warehouse and cost price work on your item list, and you see the system before paying.

The prices on the pricing page are as follows, all including VAT:

An extra user costs $260 a year. Payment is made once a year: there is no monthly payment, and this is a Bimp limit worth knowing before you talk to a salesperson. Quick Start is required for launch: the Standard version costs $1,500 and takes 1 week, and the Production version for manufacturers costs from $2,500 and takes 2 weeks. It includes setting up routings and cost calculations, 15 hours of training and integration setup. If an integrator sets up the system, Quick Start is not needed.

What exactly the shop gets is covered in the article on the Bimp launch order. To move to a conversation about figures, book a demo.

How do you compare offers without making a mistake?

Compare the two-year total under identical cost items, where the licence price is only one line. Use the table above and substitute your own values.

1. Write down how many people will work in the system in a year.
2. Ask who sets up BOMs and costing and how many hours it will take.
3. Find out what support includes and during which hours it works.
4. Count the hours of your own team. A storekeeper and a production engineer who spend two weeks entering data are not doing their usual jobs.
5. Find out how to take your data out if the system does not fit.

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