7 Top-Rated Affordable ERP Software
Curious how manufacturers predict demands, retailers personalize customer experiences and project managers maneuver tasks to meet deadlines? The answer lies in an ERP solution that helps optimize resources and plan workflows, ensuring stable business growth.
An enterprise resource planning (ERP) software collects, stores, and centralizes data from different departments for users to access the right information at all times. Live reports offered by the tool give a clear picture of the team’s performance and productivity.
Worry not if your business is running on a budget; this article highlights seven top-rated affordable ERP software based on their pricing as found on vendor websites and verified software reviews. Based on our research, we've considered products priced less than $64 per month as affordable software and have arranged them in ascending order. Read more about our methodology at the bottom of the article.
The software tools listed in this article focus on providing integrated ERP solutions, including accounting and finance, human resource (HR), customer relationship management (CRM), inventory management, warehouse management, asset management, supply chain management, and project management.
1. monday.com
monday.com offers project, task management, and resource management capabilities for your enterprise resource planning. The tool’s project management capability lets you create boards to manage tasks for different teams or business processes within the organization. You can customize columns based on the data that you need to track, including tasks, deadlines, project stages, or other relevant information. Its resource management feature allows you to assign roles, and responsibilities to team members, and define workflows. You can set goals based on business priorities and track their progress for different time intervals.
Product features of interest:*
Timeline and Gantt charts: Track all upcoming and existing task statuses in a visual timeline. The feature allows you to add timeline columns to your boards with start and end dates and customize the view by adjusting settings, including the time scale (day, week, month) and weekends.
Multi-level permissions: Control access to boards, items, and deadlines by specifying which team members can view or edit specific columns within the boards. The feature allows restricting access to specific items in real time to prevent unauthorized access to information.
Automation rules: Automate routine tasks within workflows using triggers based on specific conditions. Common triggers include changes to status columns, dates, or new items.
Starting price: $9 per user per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Knowledge base, webinars, FAQs, blog, and user community
Who should consider monday.com?
monday.com’s ERP system is well-suited for businesses seeking to manage tasks and project portfolios in one place. This allows users to view task deadlines clearly, helping to devise an informed project plan. It can be used to create custom lists for every project, including steps, deadlines, and priorities. The tool’s project management capabilities provide users with a snapshot of employees assigned to each task, assisting managers assess their team’s bandwidth. They can adjust workflows and reassign tasks to keep the portfolio flexible and responsive to changing project demands.
Analysis performed December 2023**
2. Striven
Striven is another ERP solution that offers project management capabilities. Besides, the tool combines diverse business functionalities, including accounting, HR, supply chain, inventory, CRM, and workflow management. Its accounting capabilities help consolidate financial data from different teams, providing a comprehensive view of the business’s financial health. Its HR modules manage employee data, including payroll and onboarding. The tool’s supply chain and inventory management feature can assist in forecasting demand planning, optimizing inventory levels, and procuring items. Additionally, the CRM systems centralize customer interactions and feedback, and the project and workflow modules can assist in planning, scheduling, and tracking progress.
Product features of interest:*
Reporting and analytics: Access real-time data reflecting the current business state in different departments. The feature allows you to create custom reports tailored to specific business goals, including financial, sales, inventory, and project reports. You can use the tool’s dashboard to visualize reports for key performance indicators (KPIs) and action points.
Billing and invoicing: Create invoices with customer information, product and service details, quantities, and prices with a custom logo, font, and other design elements. The feature supports different billing cycles, such as one-time, monthly, quarterly, or annual.
Self-service portals: Create personalized portals for employees, vendors, and clients pertaining to their needs and objectives. With this tool, employees can access payroll information, request time off, and manage various HR-related tasks and vendors can view purchase orders, submit invoices, and track payments. Customers can use the tool to access order history, track shipments, and submit support tickets.
Starting price: $35 per user per month
Billing cycle: Monthly
Customer support options: FAQs, product demos, user guides, video library, blogs, phone calls, and online form
Who should consider Striven?
Striven’s comprehensive ERP capabilities make it suitable for businesses looking to give customers, clients, and vendors the flexibility to manage their data. They can add or update information and download required documents at their convenience. The tool allows users to raise support tickets for their queries and concerns. Users can raise tailored invoices directly from the platform and share them with concerned parties via email or dedicated portals.
Analysis performed December 2023**
Pro tip
Assess the data sources, including business resources and software repositories utilized by the software. This can benefit businesses that rely on real-time information about product stocks, sales leads, and currency rates, to make quick and effective decisions.
3. Bitrix24
Bitrix24’s live activity stream feature provides real-time insights into ERP task progress and milestones during business processes, keeping all team members in the loop. The tool allows switching between chats, video calls, and document editing for teams to discuss planning techniques or discuss urgent issues. Bitrix24 offers shared calendars, Gantt charts, and Kanban boards for teams to check and modify task assignments and deadlines and optimize the workflow to prioritize tasks.
Product features of interest:*
Document sharing: Access cloud storage to upload, store, share, and organize documents in a secure and centralized location. The feature allows storing different versions of a document and controlling its access by setting role-based permissions.
Work time tracking: Allow the employees to start, pause, and finish their working day using a built-in time clock. The tracked employee work hours are recorded into log sheets and can be checked anytime.
Task templates and automation: Use predefined task templates with fields and descriptions specific to different tasks or projects. The feature allows you to set triggers (automation rules) to update real-time task statuses and notify relevant stakeholders about modified task statuses.
Starting price: $43 per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Blogs, chat, FAQs, how-to videos, online courses, webinars, and help desk
Who should consider Bitrix24?
Businesses looking to improve overall information flow, task management, and coordination across teams and departments could consider Bitrix24 for its collaborative features. Businesses can utilize its unified collaboration platform to facilitate chats, video calls, and document-sharing features among team members, especially when working with remote teams. Such robust collaboration leads to speedy decision-making and reduces communication delays.
Analysis performed December 2023**
4. MRPeasy
MRPeasy manufacturing ERP system assists in production planning to schedule and manage the manufacturing processes, including order planning, work order generation, and resource allocation. The tool offers inventory management capabilities, such as tracking stock levels, and managing raw materials and finished goods. Additionally, its production dashboard provides an overview of predefined KPIs, including order-cycle time, on-time delivery, inventory turnover, backorder, and capacity utilization, which can be utilized to get insights into procurement, supplier management, and order fulfillment.
Product features of interest:*
Order management: Create sales orders to initiate manufacturing or procurement processes based on customer demand. The feature allows tracking the real-time order status.
Bills of Material (BoM): Define BoMs for each manufactured product and specify the required components. The feature supports multi-level BoMs, allowing you to create hierarchical structures for complex manufacturing processes.
Financial management: Generate product manufacturing estimates, including both direct and indirect costs. The feature also provides insights into the financial health of the business, including reports on revenue, expenses, profit margins, and other financial metrics.
Starting price: $45 per user per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Tutorial, demo videos, user manual, blogs, AI chatbot, and support ticket
Who should consider MRPeasy?
MRPeasy manufacturing ERP tool is a viable option for businesses catering to individuals and teams involved in production planning, inventory management, and financial analysis. In addition to managing the entire manufacturing lifecycle, the tool can help monitor the business performance and optimize the KPIs using the tool’s analytics dashboard. The reports generated using the dashboard can be downloaded in PDF formats and shared with other team members involved in the projects.
Analysis performed December 2023**
Pro tip
Anticipate the future needs of an ERP solution to simplify and combine business activities. This includes considering the existing business functionalities and the scope of future expansion.
5. ERPAG
As an ERP solution, ERPAG software focuses on manufacturing, accounting, and inventory management of ecommerce websites. The tool supports managing the operations of multiple warehouses and ecommerce websites. You just have to integrate with their operations management systems, PoS (Point of Sale) systems, or websites. The tool will automatically import all the data, including sales, supply chain, inventory, and finance. The ERP system helps to create labels for goods and materials. You can design the label layouts with specific fields and descriptions and print them directly by instructing the connected printing device.
Product features of interest:*
Automated reordering: Define reorder points for each item in the inventory. The reorder points represent the minimum quantity of a product at which a new order should be triggered.
Currency converter: Perform transactions and generate financial statements in different currencies that your global clients or vendors prefer. The tool offers an integrated currency converter, which is updated at regular intervals to provide the latest currency rates.
Payment integration: Provide an integrated payment gateway for clients and vendors to make online payments via a debit card, credit card, or bank transfer.
Starting price: $49 per month
Billing cycle: Monthly
Customer support options: Blogs, case studies, video materials, tutorials, user manual, chat, online tickets, and FAQs
Who should consider ERPAG?
Consider ERPAG when looking for a centralized resource management solution with consolidated reporting. The tool offers all operations required for a business’s warehouses and websites within a single system, saving the time and effort of switching between systems for data collection and analysis. Additionally, currency converter and payment integration features help to manage global clients. Users can provide clients with a transparent and efficient global transaction experience, enhancing customer satisfaction while reducing purchase barriers and supporting the growth of international business operations.
Analysis performed December 2023**
6. ERPNext
ERPNext is another ERP solution catering to accounting and finance, HR and payroll, order management, customer relationship management, manufacturing, and project management. The tool lets you manage your assets and their lifecycle. With automated asset accounting features, the tool eliminates the need for manual depreciation entries. It can automatically configure the depreciation schedules for various assets, calculate the amount or dates, and add entries to the accounting books. The multi-lingual open source platform lets you customize its language, features, and capabilities for your unique business needs.
Product features of interest:*
Scrapping assets: Scrap an asset anytime using the ‘Scrap Asset’ button. The feature allows you to restore the asset using the asset master list, which is a detailed list of business assets with name, description, technical specifications, location, and purchase date).
Asset value adjustment: Adjust the recorded asset value in the journal entries when its value increases or decreases at any point in time. The tool automatically calculates its depreciation value based on the change in asset value.
On-the-fly customization: Create your open source asset management tool by mapping the data you need and adding custom fields to the forms. The tool lets you customize the behavior by auto-fetching values, hiding files based on user roles, and creating a custom print format.
Starting price: $50 per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Blogs, videos, developer forum, phone calls, and online ticketing system
Who should consider ERPNext?
Businesses looking for an ERP solution that focuses on asset management along with other business processes can consider ERPNext for its asset management capabilities. With this tool, users can automate various asset management processes, from inventory to lifecycle management. Besides, they can take advantage of the tool’s multi-lingual and open source ERP capabilities that’ll help them choose the preferred language and set up the resource management features that work best for their needs.
Analysis performed December 2023**
Pro tip
Analyze the capabilities of a standardized or customizable ERP system. The ability to create a system with tailored ERP integration gives you a competitive edge, while standardization allows you to stay on the vendor path and benefit from innovations developed by the Software-as-a-Service software.
7. OneHash
OneHash open source solution allows you to automate your finance, warehouse, HR, and project management. The tool lets you analyze your business’s financial performance, maintain custom warehouses, automate employee onboarding and payroll, and track the profitability of projects. The tool offers a ‘master report’ feature for every supported business functionality, letting you review performance, identify trends, and generate custom reports with specific metrics. It also provides an advanced analytics dashboard for you to view, modify, and download all the master reports.
Product features of interest:*
Bird-eye view: Access performance reports with a 360-degree view of the business performance. The feature allows changing the view of highlighted metrics and insights using Kanban boards, Gantt charts, and Tree views.
Exponential smoothing: Use the time-series forecasting method to assess business performance on past sales orders, deliveries, notes, quotes, etc. The feature allows applying filters to the data and predicting future performance.
Number cards and charts: Get the total count of ongoing job cards and work orders that are open, in progress, and completed. The charts provide information about the total number of jobs completed or products manufactured.
Starting price: $99 per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: FAQs, chat, blogs, help documents, emails, tutorials, and demos
Who should consider OneHash?
OneHash can assist businesses wanting a detailed analysis of their business performance in various aspects, including finance, warehouse, HR, and project management. The tool stores all analyzed KPIs in a central database that can be viewed by other teams according to the chosen role-based access. Users can leverage the tool’s analytics dashboard to get an overview of all business operations instead of individually addressing specific reports and dashboards. These dashboards can be filtered and sorted using boards, charts, number cards, or simple views.
Analysis performed December 2023**
How much does ERP software cost?
ERP software solutions can cost as low as $8 per month or up to $799+ per month, depending on various factors—features, number of users, functionality integrations, automation, training availability, deployment options, and storage. Most ERP solutions typically include the following pricing plans:
Free trial: No-cost trial plans ranging from 7 to 30 days, giving users access to all or limited software features. These are ideal for businesses that wish to try out a tool before purchasing it.
Free version: Free software plans offer basic features and limited premium features access. These are ideal for small business owners with a limited budget.
Entry-level: Starts at $8 per month and offers limited features, such as charts, calendars, and dashboards. These are ideal for small businesses with basic ERP needs.
Mid-tier: Range from $10 to $299 per month and offers features such as feature customization and automation rules. These are ideal for businesses that have outgrown basic ERP solutions and don’t require the full range of functionality offered by enterprise-level tools.
High-end: Advanced software plans going up to or over $799 per month offer unlimited entry-level and mid-tier features with cloud storage and priority support. These are ideal for larger businesses spread across the globe.
Hidden costs associated with affordable ERP software
Besides the software license, additional costs may be associated with the best ERP system, including
Implementation and training: These include data migration, customization, and employee training. These can be substantial, especially for complex systems or large organizations.
Hidden fees: Beware of per-user fees, transaction charges, and other seemingly minor costs that can add up quickly, particularly for larger workforces.
Software upgrades: Additional costs may be incurred for software upgrades to access the latest features and security patches, ensuring the software remains up-to-date and functional.
Frequently asked questions when selecting affordable ERP software
Here are some questions to ask software providers before making a final purchase of the best ERP software:
What business functionalities does the software support?
ERP solutions cater to varied business functions, including project management, HR and payroll, asset management, warehouse management, and finance and accounting. Each software application offers different functionalities. You should assess the available functionality integrations that align with your small business’s enterprise resource planning needs and objectives.
What is the level of customization allowed?
The customization feature in an ERP software solution helps determine how well the software can align with your business’s unique processes and requirements. The customization ranges from modifying existing features with the help of the vendor’s developer team or using the open source code to add or remove features for tailored ERP software. Check the available customization options and the extent of technical support required from the vendor.
What are the reporting and analysis capabilities of the software?
Check if you can customize and create ad-hoc reports without extensive technical expertise. Additionally, the software should offer real-time reporting capabilities, ensuring you have access to the latest performance reports for audits and forecasting. Most ERP systems provide an analytics dashboard with visualization, including charts, tables, and graphs, to monitor data and generate reports. You can also download these reports in a PDF format and share them with other team members via chat or email.
Methodology
To be considered for this list, products had to:
Each product should be a part of Software Advice’s Frontrunners Report 2023 for ERP software.
Include financial management and integrated business operations as core features.
Must meet our market definition for ERP software: “ERP software integrates all of an organization's departments and functions into a single system.”
We assessed all products that met the first three criteria for their monthly pricing and considered the products with publicly available pricing information. Based on the assessment, the average price was calculated to be $64. Products with a monthly subscription price lower than $64 were then shortlisted to be included in this list and arranged in ascending order.
*Our research team identified these features from vendor websites (as of Dec. 15, 2023) based on their analysis of what users find valuable in or expect from ERP software. This list is not exhaustive. For additional features, refer to the vendor's website.
**To present the most up-to-date information, the information in the product cards shows the latest real-time ratings, which may differ from the ratings values at the time this report's analysis was conducted, since new reviews may have been left in the meantime.
Editorial Independence: We select and rank products based on an objective methodology developed by our research team. While some vendors may pay us when they receive web traffic or leads, this has no influence on our methodology.
Note: Products evaluated for the pricing calculation were taken from Software Advice’s ERP software directory. The pricing ranges exclude freemium versions of the products. The features highlighted were identified based on their relevance and the percentage of products in the Software Advice directory that offer them.