Odoo or a custom business management system: cost, implementation and when each is cheaper

DESAmedia · 2026-11-03

The short answer

Odoo is usually the cheaper route when your processes look like most other companies': sales, purchasing, inventory, invoicing and fairly simple manufacturing. A licence for all apps starts at €14.90 per user per month (Standard plan, billed annually), and the real cost is rarely the licence. It is implementation, data migration and customisation. A custom business management system becomes the cheaper option when Odoo would need heavy custom development, when you have many users who only do a few simple things, or when your core process is the very thing you compete on.

This article compares both routes from the buyer's side: what goes into the five-year cost, where companies usually get the maths wrong, and which questions to ask before you sign. We checked Odoo's prices on its official pricing page on 3 November 2026, as shown for Lithuania.

What Odoo is, and which edition you are buying

Odoo is a suite of business apps built by the Belgian company Odoo S.A.: accounting, CRM, sales, inventory, purchasing, manufacturing, projects, HR, e-commerce and more, all sharing one database. In Lithuania it is mostly implemented by partners who configure the system, migrate data and, where needed, build extra modules.

There are two editions, and the difference matters:

• Odoo Community is open source, released under the LGPLv3 licence. The licence is free, but some features are Enterprise-only, and you arrange hosting, upgrades and support yourself or through a partner.
• Odoo Enterprise is a paid subscription. It includes all apps, hosting on Odoo's cloud (Odoo Online), upgrades and email support from the vendor.

Lithuanian localisation in Odoo's official code is the "Lithuania - Accounting" module: a chart of accounts, common taxes, a list of banks and fiscal positions. Lithuanian partners say that local tax reports such as i.SAF and i.VAZ are configured during implementation. Before you commit, ask exactly how those reports will be produced and who keeps them working when Odoo releases a new version or the State Tax Inspectorate (VMI) changes its requirements.

What Odoo costs

Licences

On 3 November 2026, Odoo's Lithuanian pricing page listed these plans:

The page also shows a 12-month discount for the initial users ordered: €11.90 (Standard) and €22.90 (Custom) on annual billing. For a multi-year budget, use the regular price.

Three details often decide which plan you actually need:

1. External API access is only in the Custom plan. If your online store, warehouse scanners, production equipment or any other software needs to call into Odoo, Standard won't do. Integrations that Odoo itself initiates (payment providers, couriers, bank sync) are part of Standard.
2. Custom modules aren't allowed on the Standard plan. If you need your own code, the system runs on Odoo.sh or your own server, and Odoo.sh hosting is billed separately from the licence.
3. Customers and suppliers using the portal are not paying users. A paying user is anyone working in Odoo's back end, plus any employee with an HR record but no linked user account. For staff who only book leave, file expenses, log attendance or scan barcodes in the warehouse, Odoo offers a "Light User" licence listed from €4.90, but you have to arrange it with an Odoo advisor.

Implementation

The licence is the most predictable line. Implementation (process analysis, configuration, data migration, training) is done by a partner or, for small companies, by Odoo itself through "Success Packs". Odoo's own page says companies with more than 50 employees usually work with a local partner.

One Lithuanian Odoo partner, LONGRUN, publishes indicative implementation prices: projects start at €5,000, an average project in Lithuania costs about €30,000, and projects with many integrations and users reach up to €50,000. Those figures exclude licences, hosting and extra development. They come from a single provider, not a market average, but they give a fair sense of scale.

What sits outside the quote

• Maintaining custom code. The Odoo subscription covers upgrades of the standard software, not porting your own modules to a new version. Every extra module is code that has to be rewritten or retested each time you upgrade.
• Paid in-app credits for SMS, contact enrichment and AI scanning of bills and expenses.
• Your team's time. Process owners have to join the analysis, test and learn the system. It never shows up in the quote, but it is real.

What a custom system costs

The price of custom software is almost always hours of work, so it is driven by the number of processes, the integrations and the security requirements. We covered what makes up that price, and the ranges visible in Lithuanian public procurement data, in How much custom software development costs.

When you set it against Odoo, the shape of the cost is what matters:

• The upfront build costs more, because features are built rather than configured.
• There is no per-user licence. Twenty or two hundred users cost roughly the same; only server costs grow.
• Maintenance and development are ongoing and worth budgeting from day one: bug fixes, security updates, small changes.
• The code and the data are yours, provided the contract says so explicitly. We listed what to check in How to choose a software development partner.

A five-year comparison: a worked example

This example is made up and the company is fictional. "Northline Components" makes metal parts to order, has 25 people who will work in the system, and runs its own warehouse. Orders from its website have to flow into the business system, so it needs the external API, which means Odoo's Custom plan.

The Odoo side, using published prices:

What the numbers tell you:

• At 25 users, licences cost about €8,370 a year. Licence savings alone won't pay for a custom build. A custom system has to earn its keep elsewhere: through a process that doesn't fit Odoo, or through lower customisation costs.
• At 100 users, the picture changes. The same Custom plan would cost about €33,480 a year, or roughly €161,400 over five years (with the first-year discount) in licences alone. At that point it's worth asking how many of those 100 people really need the full system, and how many could manage with a Light User licence or a simple portal.
• Development is the biggest unknown. If the analysis shows Odoo needs five or ten custom modules, you pay for the licence, the custom development and the upkeep of that code at every upgrade.

We deliberately don't put a single number on the custom side, because it depends entirely on scope. A fair comparison is simple: ask for two quotes against the same written scope, then add up the five-year cost of each with every line from the table above. Our guide to writing a technical specification for a software project shows how to write that scope so the quotes are comparable.

When Odoo is the better choice

• Your processes are standard. Sales, purchasing, inventory, invoicing and simple manufacturing already exist in Odoo, and configuring them is cheaper than building them.
• You need many modules at once, and the standard features are enough in each: CRM, accounting, inventory, HR and e-commerce in one place.
• You're willing to adapt to the software. Odoo projects go best when the company adjusts its process to the standard, not the other way round.
• You have a small or mid-sized user base, so licences stay a modest share of the budget.
• You want to get started quickly. A standard configuration goes live faster than a custom system designed from scratch.

When a custom system is cheaper or simply smarter

• Your core process is your competitive edge. Think pricing based on complex rules, scheduling orders around machine capacity, or a service workflow nobody else runs quite like you. Fitting that into Odoo often means writing most of the code anyway.
• Lots of users, simple actions. For example, 150 drivers or field technicians who only tick off jobs and upload photos. Paying a licence for each of them quickly becomes the biggest cost.
• Your accounting already works. If Rivilė, Directo or another accounting package serves you well, it is often cheaper to build a custom operations system and connect it to what you have than to replace everything at once. We explained how in Integrating Rivilė, Directo and Agnum.
• You have specific security or data requirements, for example in the public sector or as an entity under NIS2, where you need to know exactly where data is hosted and who can access it.
• The fit-gap analysis shows big gaps. If a partner's fit-gap analysis finds that a large part of your process doesn't fit the standard, treat that as a signal to look seriously at the alternative.

The third route: a combination

It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Two combinations often work well in practice:

1. Odoo for the standard areas, plus a custom module or app for the one unique process, connected through Odoo's API. You pay licences only where they save development, and the unique process doesn't depend on Odoo's upgrade cycle.
2. Your existing accounting software plus a custom operations system, joined by an integration. This is a common path for companies that have outgrown spreadsheets but don't want to change their bookkeeping tools.

Either way, the integration decides whether it works: which system is the source of truth for each type of data, how errors are handled, and who gets alerted when data fails to sync.

Common mistakes when choosing

• Comparing only the licence price. €14.90 a month sounds cheap, but implementation and customisation are usually the biggest lines in a five-year budget.
• Budgeting for the wrong plan. A company prices the Standard plan, then finds out its integrations need the external API and the Custom plan, a licence that costs almost twice as much.
• Ordering lots of custom modules inside Odoo. That's the most expensive combination: licences, custom development, and re-upgrading those modules with every version.
• Not asking who maintains the Lithuanian tax reports. Someone has to own the changes to i.SAF, i.VAZ and other VMI requirements.
• Choosing before the processes are written down. Without a clear process description, both quotes are guesses.

Questions to ask before you decide

1. How many people will work in the system every day, and how many will only perform a few actions?
2. Which other systems will need to call into your business system (online store, warehouse scanners, production equipment)?
3. Which part of your process is unique, and what would it cost to build it separately on top of Odoo?
4. Who will update the custom code when a new Odoo version comes out, and at what cost?
5. How will Lithuanian tax reports be produced, and who is responsible when the rules change?
6. In five years, how will you get your data out, and who will own the code that was written?

FAQ

Is Odoo Community really free?

The licence is free, because it's open-source software under LGPLv3. Implementation, hosting, upgrades and support still cost money, and some features are only in Enterprise. "Free" covers the licence line, not the whole project.

Does Odoo handle Lithuanian accounting?

Odoo's official code includes a Lithuanian localisation module with a chart of accounts and taxes, and Lithuanian partners say they configure the VMI reports during implementation. Before deciding, ask to see the reports you need working in a live system.

Can we start on Odoo and move to a custom system later?

Yes, and Odoo lets you export your data. But switching means another data migration and another round of user training. If you can already see that your core process doesn't fit the standard, it's worth weighing that up now.

How long does implementation take?

It depends on the modules and the volume of data. With either Odoo or a custom system, it pays to limit the first phase to a few key processes, launch them early and add the rest later.

Does a custom system lock us into one developer?

It can, if the contract doesn't cover code ownership, documentation and access to servers. With a proper contract, another team can take over the code, just as you can switch Odoo partners.

Next steps

Start with two lists: how many people will do which tasks in the system, and the one or two processes that work differently in your company than anywhere else. Those two lists usually show whether Odoo will be enough, whether a custom build makes sense, or whether a combination fits best.

DESAmedia builds business management systems and integrates them with accounting software, online stores and other applications. If you'd like an independent view of which route costs less over five years, our IT consulting and system design team can help. Get in touch.

Sources

• Odoo pricing (Lithuanian page), checked 3 November 2026
• Odoo.sh pricing
• Odoo licence (LGPLv3), odoo/odoo GitHub repository
• Odoo "Lithuania - Accounting" module (l10n_lt)
• Odoo documentation: fiscal localisations
• LONGRUN: Odoo system pricing (in Lithuanian)