Five years ago, we started erxes after being frustrated at paying almost +90% of our revenue to the number of tools, including Hubspot & Intercom, as a Digital Marketing Agency called The New Media Group in Mongolia. Initially, we thought we would start developing the software that would solve our unique problem, which takes parts of Intercom, Hubspot, PipeDrive, and Salesforce, but works as a whole. Then, it quickly escalates to something even more significant by adding more and more features from other departments.  

Why did we not follow the path of open-source from the beginning?

Fast forward to 2018, when we decided to make it a business after successfully closing the first deal with Golomt Bank, the company erxes started operating as a separate legal entity in the same year.  Having been bootstrapping and being started with enterprise clients, we haven’t gone through the same path as traditional open-source software companies. After almost four years of providing tailored solutions to larger enterprises, we realized that it’s time to focus on what matters to us from the start “making marketing technology more accessible and affordable by giving our source code open for anyone to use it for free.” 

Why open source? 

Marketing technology is one of the largest and fastest growing industries where most of the software is developed. However, those tools only serve the part of business cycles, and the ones who have more money can use a few numbers of all-in-one solutions, and every year  millions spend on marketing tools that makes it almost like luxury products in this field. 

But we love democracy where anyone has equal opportunity to grow and, at the same time, the idea that everybody can freely use and extend what we created. We also understand that the world is a better place when it’s built by many diverse bodies than few. Contributors are the main drivers who make our project evolve in the long run creating open space for everyone to find what they need and what they can create.

And today, we’re thrilled to share that more than 25,000 enterprises throughout the world use erxes daily. Most importantly, hearing about how erxes can help their businesses from our clients proves to us that we’re in the right direction. 

How erxes XOS different from the older versions?

Because we started with large enterprises, our older versions weren’t developer friendly and requires large resources. But now erxes XOS is different because:

• Architecture changed into micro frontend & plugins-based, which helps the system run smoothly without interfering with one & another as each plugin operates as an independently working feature.
• License converted into AGPLv3 from “fair-code distributed GPLv3 with common clause“, which encourages our contributors to keep their development work on the main code open, so it helps the product to grow faster. 
• An innovative marketplace where you can place your own plugins and earn from them. It will be a great place to add your revenue source and grow together. 

In summary, helping others figure out how to grow their businesses and create passive income has always been a labor of love and can make a direct impact on our community and world in the bigger picture. It consequently boosts our productivity, so we can thrive and improve our bottom line while growing our businesses.

So let’s enjoy erxes XOS together.