Three days of Odoo Experience in Brussels once again showed how quickly the way companies use business software is changing.
Inovado was at Odoo Experience again this year, where we witnessed the presentation of Odoo 20, new AI capabilities, changes in the licensing model, and the direction in which Odoo wants to develop the platform in the coming years.
After presentations, discussions, and demonstrations of new functionalities, our main conclusion is not related to one new application or feature.
Odoo no longer wants to be just an ERP.
The ambition is much greater: to create a platform that connects almost the entire company, and then use AI and automation to make as much of the daily business processes simpler.
Odoo 20: AI enters directly into business processes
Artificial intelligence was one of the central themes of this year's Odoo Experience.
But the approach is different from simply adding another AI chat window to the ERP.
Odoo wants to integrate AI directly into business processes.
This means that AI can increasingly use business context, assist the user in working with data, automate certain activities, and enable a more natural interaction with the system.
A particularly interesting direction is MCP (Model Context Protocol) and the ability to connect Odoo with AI tools and agents.
For companies, this can mean a very important change in the long term.
ERP is no longer just a system where employees enter information and from which they later extract reports.
It is gradually becoming a system that actively participates in the business process.
Less manual labor, more automation
AI has attracted the most attention, but perhaps what is happening throughout the rest of the platform is even more important.
Odoo continues to simplify and automate processes through CRM, sales, accounting, warehouse, manufacturing, projects, HR, and other applications.
And this is where we see the greatest value of Odoo 20.
In the end, the company does not care whether the new version has 50 or 150 new features.
It is important:
Can we make the offer faster?
Can we avoid double data entry?
Can the warehouse have accurate information without additional Excel sheets?
Can we automate part of the accounting activities?
Can manufacturing more easily record what is actually happening on the shop floor?
Can management get quality information without waiting for someone to manually prepare the report?
If new technology does not improve such processes, the mere fact that it is new does not have much business value.
Price changes: Custom +20%, but Light User is also coming.
One of the more important business news from Odoo Experience 2026 is not related to new functionality.
It is related to prices.
Odoo has introduced a new structure according to which:
- One App Free — remains unchanged
- Standard — remains unchanged
- Custom — the price increases by 20%
- Light User — a new type of user from 7.90 € per month per user
The price increase of the Custom plan will certainly impact companies that use or plan more advanced Odoo implementations.
Odoo's price increase puts it in the context of rising infrastructure and AI costs and the fact that prices have not changed since 2022.
Fabien Pinckaers, the founder and CEO of Odoo, very directly described the company's philosophy during the presentation of the pricing strategy:
"Even if we doubled or tripled the price of Odoo, I think all our clients would stay, but I would never do that. Because this is not about costs or profits, but about accessibility and fairness."
Of course, for the user, a 20% increase is still an increase.
But at the same time, a change is coming that could significantly alter how certain companies calculate the total costs of Odoo licenses.
Light User could be more important than it seems at first glance
So far, one of the basic questions in planning Odoo implementation has been:
- How many users will use the system?
With the new Light User model, the question becomes more precise:
- How many employees really need a full Odoo license?
That's not the same thing.
Let's take a manufacturing company with 100 employees.
Finance, sales, procurement, administration, management, and certain other functions require a serious approach to the ERP system.
But a worker on the production line may only need to record a production operation.
An employee in the warehouse may only need barcode operations.
Someone else may only need attendance, absence, or expense records.
- Why should they all have the same type of license?
This is where Light User.
According to the presented model, a Light User can cover selected functionalities such as:
self-onboarding,
attendance and absence records,
expenses and performance evaluation,
POS,
barcode operations,
production facility,
planning,
field services,
employee directory.
For manufacturing, retail, service, and other companies with a larger number of operational employees, this can be a very significant change.
Custom is more expensive. But the overall calculation is not that simple.
Therefore, the increase in the price of the Custom plan should not be viewed completely separately from the introduction of the Light User license.
In a company with a small number of users, the effect of the increase in Custom price can be quite direct.
In a company with dozens or hundreds of employees, the situation can be different.
If users are properly divided according to actual needs, a combination of full and Light licenses can create a completely different structure of total cost.
That is why we expect that the analysis of user roles will become an even more important part of the Odoo implementation.
The goal is not to buy as many licenses as possible.
The goal is to provide each employee with exactly the level of access they need to perform their job effectively.
Odoo wants to reach the entire company
Light User actually tells us something much bigger about Odoo's strategy.
Odoo no longer wants to be a system used only by accounting, sales, and administration.
It wants to reach practically every part of the company:
- sales and CRM,
- finance,
- procurement,
- warehouse,
- production,
- field workers,
- retail,
- HR,
- projects,
- management.
When all these processes use the same platform and the same database, automation becomes much more powerful.
And when AI is added to such a base, a completely new category of possibilities opens up.
Open source remains an important part of the Odoo story
With AI, growth, and new commercial models, Odoo continues to emphasize another important part of its identity – open source.
This is especially relevant at a time when companies are becoming increasingly dependent on large cloud platforms and closed software ecosystems.
The ability to customize, integrate, and have greater control over the business system remains one of the important advantages of the Odoo ecosystem.
Fabien Pinckaers described Odoo's ambition after another year of strong growth with the words:
"With Odoo, I think ambitiously. Providing a platform for business leaders that allows them to easily manage their company while keeping up with the latest trends will always be my top priority."
The numbers show how much that ambition has grown.
During Odoo Experience 2026, the company spoke about a valuation of approximately 10 billion euros, tens of millions of users worldwide, and the continued strong growth of the Odoo ecosystem.
Odoo Experience simultaneously gathered tens of thousands of visitors, hundreds of exhibitors, partners, developers, and users from around the world.
This is no longer a small open-source ERP project.
Odoo is becoming one of the serious global players in business software.
Our conclusion from Brussels
After Odoo Experience 2026, our biggest conclusion is actually not Odoo 20.
It’s not even AI.
It’s not even a new pricing structure.
The most important change is the direction in which all of this is going together.
Odoo is trying to connect as much of the company as possible into one platform.
Light User allows the system to reach a larger number of employees.
Odoo 20 continues to connect and automate business processes.
AI then gains the context of those processes and data.
It is a combination that can be very powerful.
But there is one thing that no AI, new version, or ERP platform can solve on its own:
- a bad business process.
If the process is not well defined, technology will not magically fix it.
In the worst case, we will just automate the problem.
That is why, after everything we saw in Brussels, we stick to the principle we apply to Odoo projects at Inovado:
- First, understand the business.
- Then define the process.
- Only then implement the technology.
Odoo 20 gives us more tools to do this than ever before.
And now comes the more interesting part – turning what we saw at Odoo Experience into real value for companies using Odoo.
See you at Odoo Experience 2027. 🇧🇪
What do Odoo 20 and the new prices mean for your company?
If you are already using Odoo, we can analyze how Odoo 20, the new Light User model, and pricing changes affect your existing implementation.
If you are just thinking about Odoo, we can analyze your processes, number of employees, and user roles and suggest the optimal system and license structure.
Inovado — Odoo solutions tailored to real business.