ERPNext vs. Tryton

ERPNext User Forum
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Finding people who are experienced with both Tryton and ERPNext, who can provide an unbiased comparison? Probably -very- difficult.

Back in 2016, I was looking for a new ERP career path. Tryton was a top contender, but I ultimately chose ERPNext.

After reading your post, I examined Tryton’s website, and -briefly- gave their demo a spin. My impression today is: “Wow…Tryton has improved a lot in 4 years !” Back in 2016, there wasn’t any Web UI option.

With only 10 minutes “experience”, here’s the best comparison advice I can give you.

  • +1 point for Tryton having a Desktop Client option! Their desktop client will likely have superior performance vs. ERPNext. That’s just the nature of Desktop App vs. Browser App. The browser must work harder, fetching both Data and Design from the web server. The desktop client only needs data, and as a binary executable, can really get efficient. Similar to how Excel on a PC is more-responsive than Excel Web or Google Cloud Sheets in a browser.

  • +1 point for ERPNext’s modern and responsive Web UI. ERPNext was born a web application. It transforms well on tons of devices. If you open on a phone or tablet, it’s very usable. It’s doing modern things like Flexbox, Grid, Vue.js, and more. But kudos to Tryton for making the effort. Their demo site does scale down to mobile, to my surprise. But it’s a very complex UI, and it’s going to feel quite “clunky” on a small device.

  • +1 for Tryton installation options. I remember installing in 2016, and it took about 5 minutes. I’m also very impressed (jealous) to learn they offer pre-made packages for Arch, Debian, Gentoo, etc. ERPNext installation is…not great (probably the nicest words I’ve ever used). If you search the forum, you’ll discover many hundreds of posts where people struggled with ERPNext installation.

  • +1 for ERPNext reporting. Tryton reports appear harder to use, create, and customize. ERPNext makes this very easy. And has more of them “out-of-the-box”

  • Customization “Potential” : Both are open-source projects. Both are built with modern languages (Python, JS). Assuming you’re an experienced developer, both are equally customizable. No limits.

  • Customization “Accessibility”: +1 point for ERPNext. You can perform quite a lot of Customization, directly in your browser, without being a programming guru. There’s a lot of flexibility for a beginner. However…with great power comes great responsibility! You can totally screw-up your ERPNext during Customization. I sometimes think it’s almost “too accessible” for the power users. They can end up breaking things. Because of Tryton’s dual Web/Desktop nature, I’m assuming it’s a lot harder for the average user to change any code.

  • +1 for Tryton’s sophisticated UI design. I really like how many widgets there are, and how they’re utilizing all the screen-space. ERPNext has few design widgets, mostly limiting your design to Column/Section breaks (or go 100% custom, which is a big endeavor). ERPNext struggles to display more than 4-5 columns in a grid, like when viewing Purchase and Sales Order lines.

    Granted, Tryton’s UI is very traditional (1990s style, two colors). You’ll either love it or hate it. Regardless, it appears to offer more UI flexibility by default.

  • I cannot believe I’m actually typing this … but +1 point for ERPNext documentation. I greatly dislike ERPNext’s documentation (it’s one of my Top 5 complaints). However, Tryton’s online documentation is really minimal and abysmal. Let’s take Purchasing for example:

    Neither one gives you enough information to actually operate in a production environment. But ERPNext clearly tries a lot harder.

  • Both support solid databases (MariaDB, PostgreSQL). It would be nice if either product offered us Choices. Still, you cannot go wrong either way.

Conclusion
If I had to describe each product:

ERPNext is a modern web application framework, where the #1 app is an ERP tool.
Tryton is an ERP system with a classic look, that offers both Desktop and Web UIs.

Tough decision, @jmiller. Personally, I suspect their capabilities are quite similar. If I had to choose again today in 2021? I’d probably still choose ERPNext. I think I’d have a hard time selling the Tryton UI, especially to newer generations of business owners.

That’s not to say ERPNext could not learn a lot from Tryton. It definitely appears to have big advantages in certain areas.

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