Hi community, I understand that it is acceptable to have in-house hosted environment. I am curious if it is acceptable to provide hosted erpnext paid service to my clients ?
I think many companies are already doing that but ERPNext cloud offers you automatic updates & functional support, so you can also suggest your customers to go for ERPNext cloud and you can register as a reseller.
If you focus on an unmet need for a vertical, develop a customized app on ERPNext, that helps meet that unmet need and then provide hosting services for that vertical, it could help you build a competitive positioning in the time it takes for Frappe to integrate your app on ERPNext (surely you were not thinking of not contributing your app back to ERPNext), after that you can focus on the services revenue from that vertical - the market will already recognize you as a leader in that vertical, and then you focus on another vertical and meet their unmet needs through an app.
This way, with constant innovation and a focus on services you can build a business that can work synergistically with Frappe, ERPNext Community and the ERPNext Foundation.
If you don’t do all of this, but still focus hugely on outbound sales (you knock on doors and get them to sign up for ERPNext), you could still build a decent sized business, but you have to factor in a certain churn from your business to AWS, to Frappe, etc.
But building another stack, and only waiting for inbound sales will hardly let you carve out a competitive positioning in the market place.
There is considerable services revenue there is to be made on every implementation. On today’s Frappe’s costing, I’d like to think that there is a 1:3 to 1:5 services revenue that is possible. Meaning if an organization spends $1000.00 on signing up for N users on Frappe, there is $3000-5000 implementation revenue that can be had. $5000/ when you do outbound sales and $3000 (or even less) when you wait for customers to come to you.
But this is Open Source, there is nothing (within the licensing limits) you cannot do. You are welcome to try, but I think you will have a easier and better crack at success if you carve a niche out for yourself in the market.
Hope this helps.
Thanks
Jay
Thank you Jay. Your advise is well received.
I appreciate Pawan.