When open source web apps compete with SaaS, it's interesting.
After learning about Baserow on HN, I decided that I needed to write about that trend in the open-source/startups world, to create an alternative of X (SaaS) that is self-hosted, but also that you can pay to have hosted for you, if you're not technically inclined.
Here is a list of high-quality products that I've seen so far using that approach:
| SaaS | Open, Self-Hosted Alternative |
|---|---|
| Google Drive | Nextcloud |
| Excel in Office 365 | Grist |
| AirTable | Baserow |
| Power Apps | Budibase |
| IFTTT | n8n |
| Google Analytics | Plausible, umami |
| Roam Research | Athens |
| Slack | Mattermost |
| LastPass | Bitwarden |
| GitHub | Gitlab |
| Trello | Focalboard |
| Confluence | BookStack |
| Intercom | Typebot |
What's cool with those alternatives is that even though they offer a free self-hosted version that is open-source, they still offer their very own service to help monetize their project.
It helps getting market adoption, since there's no lock-in because you can (in most cases I think) always export the data to your self-hosted version when you want to manage your own instance.
