Proposal from the team at Invoice Ninja

General Discussion
1

Hello InvoicePlane community,

I’m one of the lead developers of Invoice Ninja.

I was sad to read Kovah’s post. He’s put a tremendous amount of energy into this project, I’m sure it’s very hard for him to move on.

Creating a feature complete online invoicing platform requires a substantial investment of developer resources. Throughout the years we’ve had an ongoing discussion about possibly combining projects.

We’re just getting started on a complete rewrite of our web app (you can read more about it here: https://www.invoiceninja.com/invoice-ninja-v2-0/). If there’s interest in the InvoicePlane community we’d be more than happy to try to support the features currently missing in Invoice Ninja which are supported by InvoicePlane.

You can automatically transfer your data from InvoicePlane to v1, and we’ll support an automatic migration to v2. You can join the discussion on the #v2 channel on our Slack group: http://slack.invoiceninja.com/

If you aren’t familiar with our app here are some links to learn more:

If you have any questions feel free to post them here.

Kind regards.
The team at Invoice Ninja

2

Wow! I’m using invoiceninja for one project and invoiceplane for another… combining them can be HUGE!

Invoiceplane have “invoice groups” that invoiceninja haven’t… but invoiceninja have other features that invoiceplane have not.

This could become very Interesting!

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3

This is why open source is awesome, and why it is the future - thank you Invoice Ninja Team!

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4

Great to hear!

Supporting groups is definitely on the list for v2.

5

i gave invoice ninja a shot as well for a few days to try out the software.

all in all i encountered many shortcomings with the app.

  • first of all it’s super bulky, the initial uploading of (didn’t count) like 30.000 files was a bummer for me. (I know there’s options to unpack a zip-file on the server)

  • when submitting changes to an invoice i ran into temporary ip bans

  • the mobile app does not support time entries

  • well open source doesn’t mean it’s free. while selfhosting enables all functions, putting an “ad” on the invoice itself is not the best choice (but maybe that converts the best) i would’ve rather had the advertisments placed at the client area other than the printing area

  • i didn’t like the client area login at all

  • if i remember correctly invoice ninja also only uses dompdf

all in all it’s a great software someone can try out, but i wasn’t really digging it as far as sticking with it.

6

Sorry to hear you had a bad experience, maybe this is a chance to ensure our next version suits you better…

first of all it’s super bulky, the initial uploading of (didn’t count) like 30.000 files was a bummer for me. (I know there’s options to unpack a zip-file on the server)

You can download a smaller version of the code from GitHub and then use Composer to install the 3rd party libs. We support a lot of features using many third part libraries, the app itself is closer to 1,000 files.

when submitting changes to an invoice i ran into temporary ip bans

I’m not sure… I would guess it’s related to the web server configuration, maybe a filter. There could be more details in the server logs.

the mobile app does not support time entries

We have two versions of our mobile apps: our ‘Legacy’ apps support tasks and expenses however the new one built with Google Flutter does not yet. We just deployed the initial release a few weeks ago, we plan to complete the new mobile app over the next few months.

well open source doesn’t mean it’s free. while selfhosting enables all functions, putting an “ad” on the invoice itself is not the best choice (but maybe that converts the best) i would’ve rather had the advertisments placed at the client area other than the printing area

Many of our users disable the client portal. This is a hard balance to find. We’ve adjusted the white label plan in the past, it’s certainly possible we could adjust it in v2.

i didn’t like the client area login at all

Agreed, it can be improved. This will be a key focus for v2.

if i remember correctly invoice ninja also only uses dompdf

For the main invoice generation we use http://pdfmake.org, it enables a realtime preview of the PDF.

7

Is one allowed to download the “Open Source” InvoiceNinja and run it as a SAAS the way you do here: https://www.invoiceninja.com/invoicing-pricing-plans/ ?

8

@Maintainers @Developers please have a look at this.

9

Hello everybody,

As I remember, I have bad experience too with invoicenninja, that is the reason I’m active more on invoiceplan and one of the followers to brother Kovah.

I think the IP is more widespread than others because it’s Pure Free,

I sent already my proposal to Kovah & will wait the next few days his final decision.

Best Regards

10

Hi Guys

also considered InvoiceNinja but needed something I could open up entirely along with not having to worry about potential pay walls.

I’ll install a local copy again and compare to v1 and v2 IP to see where we have common features and where we differ.

11

Thanks for everyone’s feedback!

@musa With v1 we have a reseller program to setup our app as a SaaS solution.

@snake_eyes Sorry to hear it! If you’re able to share any specifics it would be helpful.

@Severenth Understood. Thanks for your help!

I’m not sure what the best answer is for white label fees/reseller licensing in v2 but would very much appreciate suggestions.

12

I can understand the white-label fees since you would manage the hosting and support, but the reseller licensing bothers me. Basically devs/maintainers would work for free for your exclusive business.
You would need to clarify that point for v2. Right now that’s a big “no” from me as far as my opinion matters.

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13

That’s a fair point.

In my experience the vast majority of developers who make contributions want to add a feature they need themselves. They want the feature merged so they don’t need to maintain a custom fork of the repo, it typically isn’t about making money of their work.

SaaS resellers are an extremely small minority of our user base. To me it seems reasonable that people can use the app for personal use but not be able to resell it. Our AAL open source license is basically a non-commercial license.

Writing software is expensive, the income from the hosted platform is what covers the costs. Having to compete against our own app would make it much harder.

14

What I liked about invoiceplane a lot was that

  1. adding custom fields was that easy
  2. adapting the quotes and invoices was that easy
  3. I can host it myself and connect other of our internal applications to the system - also directly to the database.

What I do not like about invoiceplane v1 is that:

  1. There are not order confirmations (I do a trick by using an adapted template if an order in in the “accepted” state) and
  2. There is not delivery note.

@musa @hillelcoren I did not take a deeper look at invoiceninja. To my understanding the BSD based license completely allows another hosting. You are not redistributing the code, when you are hosting. After all, this is what the AGPL is about.
I am running an enterprise level OSS project myself, so I understand the challenge of making money with open source.

Of course it would be great to gather the the peoples power. In this case the resulting invoicerocket, which I would call bookkeepR would have to be flexible enough so that everybody from both communities can configure a tool, that fits well for himself. Workflows, how one form transfers to another would have to be designable. “After a quote is accepted, which form should then be created? An invoice, a delivery note, an order confirmation?”
Of course this should not result in another ERP system like odoo or whatever. After all - why did we choose invoiceplane? Because it was easy to start with. Such a resulting tool should still be easy to start with, but be flexible and adaptable, so that it will still attract a big community.

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15

Just wanted to bump this topic…

We recently released the beta for our new app, if the InvoicePlane community is up for it I think it could be great to collaborate.

Demo: https://demo.invoiceninja.com

More Info: https://forum.invoiceninja.com/t/the-invoice-ninja-v5-beta-is-now-available/4066

16

Thanks for you dump, but I think the main difference between these two projects are:

  1. InvoicePlane is:
    1.1 free
    1.2 open-source
    1.3 promissed to be free forever
  2. InvoiceNinja is:
    2.1 not free (unless you like InvoiceNinja-Brandings, so basically you pay with advertising)
    2.2 not open-sopurce
    2.3 if you really wanna enjoy it you have to pay for it

I read the initial Post and as we are soon ready (when all of us are ready to put work in this again) to work on v2 which will be all IPv1 is and more and have a fresh super new stack its build on.
So the only chance I see here of “combining” is to first start a talk with the maintainers.
But to clear out things:

  • it will have to be free forever (without brandings etc)
  • also have to be open source.

I actually think our projects in the end do the same but with different intentions and with different approaches. But feel free to contact us on Slack if you want.

Have a good day!

17

Thank you for your response and for summarising the differences. I agree with points 1 and 3 but why do you think Invoice Ninja isn’t open source? We deploy to our hosted platform straight from GitHub and use an OSI approved license.

If the only issue is the white label license maybe there’s something to discuss? It would be helpful to understand any underlying differences you see between the apps, I’m not super familiar with InvoicePlane but at a high level the apps seems similar to me.

If this isn’t what’s best for your community that completely understandable, just wanted to suggest it…

18

True, my fault, it is open-source.
I would have to talk to the other 2 maintainers about this and ask what they think about this.

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