Six Free Alternatives to Business Software That Could Reduce Your Start-Up Expenses

I still remember the day when I paid back the loan I took to start the business. It felt really great. Not only I paid the money back but also survived as a company. I loved that feeling.

But I also remember those days when I had to pay another loan installment. And as many young businesses I didn’t really have any clients and certainly weren’t making any serious money back then.

Looking back if only I had known about open source software those days I wouldn’t have to bring that much money back to the bank each month. My loan was in fact mostly consumed by all the software I bought.

So, as a young business now, before you go and spend money on another expensive copy of the software you think you would need, consider free, open source alternatives.

They in most cases contain exactly the same functionality as a commercial software but because they are developed by passionate people, who devote their free time to them, they very often exceed their paid counterparts.

And since there are hundreds of open source alternatives these days it may be difficult to make a decision where to start. So I am listing below a few personal suggestions of free alternatives to most commonly used programs in business.

1. Open Office,

a great substitute to Microsoft Office. Just like MS Office it contains a word processor, spreadsheet application, presentation software and many others.
It can open and save documents in native MS Office format so practically no one apart from you could even know that you are using an open source alternative

2. Bean,

If you do not require a full Office suite but just a word processor and you are on a Mac then Bean is definitely a good choice. It is packed with every feature you would need for your writing and document output.

And in fact, it is the software I use right now to write this post.

3. Open Workbench,

A substitute for Microsoft Project, again it contains all the options you would find in it’s commercial counterpart allowing you to plan and manage your projects easily.

4. Thunderbird,

A great alternative to Microsoft Outlook. If you need a powerful email client and the default PC or Mac applications are not enough then Thunderbird is definitely something worth considering. Build by the same people that created Firefox browser it is considered one of the top open source applications out there, it can also be extended with many plugins out of which one is definitely worth mentioning:

5. Lightning,

a powerful calendar and scheduling app for Thunderbird, a counterpart to Outlook’s calendar.

6. Gimp,

a substitute for Adobe Photoshop. Every now and then you need to process some images, be it for your website or presentation you will be giving. And instead of investing hundreds of dollars into paid software you could try Gimp. It’s a very easy to use, yet extremely powerful and does exactly what it should.

The above are really just to get you started. There are hundreds others open source software packages that could really help you in the early days of your business and web is full of sites where you can find and get recommendations for some great open source applications.

And you can always purchase commercial versions of the software once your business takes of and you have a budget for them.