If you're looking for an ERP for your SME and someone has mentioned Dolibarr, it's natural to have doubts: can free software be taken seriously? Who maintains it? Is it fit for a real business? Does it meet the requirements of the Spanish Tax Agency? We've been implementing Dolibarr in companies all over Spain for years and building modules for Dolistore, so here's an informed opinion, including the things it doesn't do well.
What is Dolibarr?
Dolibarr ERP & CRM is open-source business management software (GPL license), launched in 2002 and maintained by a foundation and a very active international community. It's free: there's no license to pay, either per user or per module. You install it on a web server (or in the cloud) and use it from your browser, including on your phone.
Its philosophy is modularity: Dolibarr ships with dozens of modules and you only switch on the ones you need. A services company can start with customers, quotes and invoices; a distributor adds inventory, orders and suppliers; a professional firm adds projects and timesheets. All on the same database.
What Dolibarr includes: main modules
| Area | Dolibarr modules |
|---|---|
| Sales (CRM) | Third parties (customers, suppliers, prospects), contacts, opportunities, calendar, sales proposals. |
| Sales and invoicing | Orders, invoices, credit notes, recurring invoices, payments, SEPA direct debit batches, invoice series. |
| Purchasing | Purchase orders, goods receipts, supplier invoices. |
| Products and inventory | Products and services, variants, batches and expiry dates, warehouses, stock movements, stock counts, shipments. |
| Projects | Projects, tasks, time tracking, profitability. |
| HR | Employees, expense reports, leave, clock-in/clock-out (with modules). |
| Accounting | Double-entry bookkeeping, bank accounts, reconciliation, export for your accountant. |
| Other | POS, support tickets, contracts and subscriptions, document management (DMS), basic online store, REST API. |
Dolibarr pros (our opinion)
- Easy to use and easy to implement. It's the ERP a team coming from Excel or basic invoicing software learns fastest.
- No license fees. The cost lies in implementation, training and customization, not in paying per user every month.
- Genuinely modular. You start small and grow without changing systems.
- Open source, and your data stays yours. You install it wherever you want, adapt it however you want, and nobody can cut you off.
- Huge ecosystem. Dolistore has thousands of modules (POS, time tracking, templates, connectors, Verifactu…). Several of them are ours.
- Full REST API, so you can integrate it with online stores, customer portals or, as we've been doing lately, AI assistants such as ChatGPT or Claude.
- Active community and constant updates. A major version comes out every year.
Dolibarr limitations (also our opinion)
- Complex production and manufacturing. It has a manufacturing module, but if your business is a factory with advanced planning, Odoo or a specialized system is a better fit.
- Functional, not flashy, interface. It has improved a lot, but it still feels more like a "tool" than a "beautiful product."
- High volumes and multinational groups. With hundreds of concurrent users, several companies in different countries or very demanding accounting, it falls short without extra work.
- Spanish localization. The core is international; for Spain you need modules and configuration (tax forms, Verifactu, templates). That's part of the implementation work.
- Uneven quality of third-party modules. Dolistore has a bit of everything; it pays to choose modules that are maintained and supported.
Dolibarr vs Odoo: which one to choose
It's the most common comparison, and the short answer is: Dolibarr for the SME that wants a complete, simple system with no license fees; Odoo for the company with more complex processes (manufacturing, several countries, many users) and the budget for a bigger implementation. Odoo has a free Community edition and a paid edition with more features; Dolibarr is 100% free. We go into detail in our guide on choosing an ERP for small business, where we also compare ERPNext and FacturaScripts.
Dolibarr and Verifactu, e-invoicing and SII in Spain
Dolibarr supports Verifactu through dedicated modules that add the invoice register, the chained hash, the QR code and submission to the Spanish Tax Agency (AEAT). There are also modules for SII (Spain's real-time VAT reporting system) and for e-invoicing in the Spanish Facturae format. At Interconecta we implement them, configure them with your invoice series and digital certificate, and test them against the tax agency's test environment before going live.
Which companies Dolibarr is the best option for
- Service companies and professional firms that bill by project or by the hour.
- Retailers and distributors with inventory, several warehouses and a connected online store.
- Installers and maintenance companies with quotes, work orders and recurring contracts.
- Freelancers, sole traders and micro-businesses that want more than invoicing software without paying license fees.
- Companies coming from Excel or several standalone programs that want to bring everything together in a system they can understand.
A real example: a 35-employee metalworking company that ran production, warehouse and invoicing in separate spreadsheets moved to an integrated ERP and cut admin time by 70%. That's the kind of company where Dolibarr, properly implemented, changes the way people work.
How much it costs to implement Dolibarr
The software is free, so the cost is the work: analysis, installation and configuration, migrating customers and products, specific modules (Verifactu, POS, time tracking…), custom adaptations, training and support. For an SME it's a far smaller investment than a licensed ERP, with no per-user fees. Our proposals come with a fixed price and timeline after a free analysis.
Modules we build for Dolibarr
At Interconecta we publish our own modules on Dolistore: time tracking and clock-in, PDF templates, Spanish tax form 347 (third-party transactions), multiple invoice series, POS, advanced export and more. We also build custom modules when a company needs something that doesn't exist yet. If you use Dolibarr or are considering it, tell us about your case: we'll tell you whether it's the right choice, which modules you'd need and how much it would cost to get it up and running.
Is Dolibarr the right ERP for your company?
We'll tell you in a free assessment: whether it's a good fit, which modules you need (Verifactu included) and what the implementation would cost, at a fixed price.
Talk to Interconecta