Dolibarr
Hosting
Install Dolibarr in one click on our fast, reliable UK web hosting. Fully managed with free SSL, daily backups, and dedicated expert support.
What is Dolibarr?
Dolibarr is an open-source ERP and CRM platform built for small and medium businesses. It started in France in 2002 and has grown into a modular system that handles customers, suppliers, quotes, invoices, orders, stock, projects, expenses, HR records and accounting from a single install.
The architecture is module-based. You enable only the parts you need, which keeps the admin uncluttered and the database manageable. There are several hundred official and community modules, including connectors for payment gateways, ecommerce platforms, point-of-sale systems and accounting integrations.
Dolibarr suits service businesses, small distributors, consultancies, charities and small manufacturers that want one place for customers, invoicing and project work without paying per-user SaaS fees forever. It runs on standard PHP and MySQL, so any decent shared host can run it, and the data is yours in a database you control.
365i’s editorial review of Dolibarr
Dolibarr is one of those quiet workhorses that most people outside open-source ERP have never heard of, and that's a shame because it solves a real problem for small businesses. If you've ever looked at the price of QuickBooks Online plus a CRM plus a project tracker plus a stock module, you'll know what I mean. Dolibarr does most of that for the cost of hosting, which on our platform starts at £5.99 a month.
I've hosted it for accountancy practices, small import/export firms, charities, training providers and one rather unusual client running a small fleet of vintage cars for hire. The pattern is the same. They'd outgrown spreadsheets, looked at SaaS, gulped at the per-seat pricing for five staff, and wanted something they could run themselves and modify if they needed to. Dolibarr fits that profile beautifully.
"In over 20 years of hosting I've seen small firms waste fortunes on enterprise ERP systems they only use 10% of. Dolibarr is the opposite problem. It's so reasonably priced that some businesses dismiss it on instinct, when in reality it does the job perfectly well for under a tenth of the cost."
Mark McNeece, Founder, 365i Hosting
The modular design is the key thing to understand. Out of the box, Dolibarr is almost empty. You go into the modules screen, switch on Customers, Invoices, Projects, Stock or whatever you actually need, and the navigation reshapes itself. Switch a module off and the menu items disappear. This makes it much easier to get staff using it, because they aren't drowning in features they'll never touch.
On the hosting side, Dolibarr is well behaved on shared infrastructure. The database is sensibly normalised, the queries are reasonable, and our PHP 8.5 plus MySQL 8 plus OPcache stack handles it without complaint. I've run it for a small business with 12 users and several years of invoice history on a £5.99 plan and the only thing they noticed was that it was faster than their previous SaaS option.
One thing to know up front. Dolibarr's UI feels different from polished SaaS products. It's functional and dense rather than beautiful, and the documentation is good but spread across a wiki and a forum that have a French-language tilt. Set aside a weekend to learn the layout, and don't try to roll it out to staff on day one. Configure the modules you need, build a few sample records, then train the team.
For UK businesses, the VAT handling, multi-currency support and accounting export work fine, though if you want a direct link to Xero or a UK Making Tax Digital filing flow you'll be using a third-party module or building your own. We can help with the hosting side of any of that.
Why Host Dolibarr with 365i?
Our web hosting is built for PHP applications like Dolibarr. Every plan includes everything you need to launch and grow.
One-Click Installation
Install Dolibarr with a single click from your control panel. No manual configuration, no FTP uploads, no database setup.
Free SSL Certificate
Every site gets a free SSL certificate, automatically configured and renewed. Keep your Dolibarr installation secure from day one.
99.9%+ Uptime Track Record
Enterprise-grade data centres in the UK, US & Asia with redundant power, cooling, and network connectivity. Shared hosting runs on autoscaling cloud infrastructure with a 99.9%+ historical uptime record; Managed Cloud Servers target 99.99% uptime; our VPS products carry a contractual 99.99% network availability SLA with service credits.
Daily Backups
Automatic daily backups with easy one-click restore. Your Dolibarr data is always safe and recoverable.
7-Day Expert Support
UK-based hosting specialists available 7 days a week including evenings, weekends, and bank holidays. Real people, real help.
SSD Storage
All plans run on fast SSD storage for snappy page loads and responsive admin panels. Dolibarr performs at its best.
Where Dolibarr Fits
Best for
Small and medium businesses that want one self-hosted system covering CRM, invoicing, quotes, stock, projects and basic accounting without paying per-user SaaS fees. Particularly suited to service firms, consultancies, charities, small distributors and training providers with 3-30 staff who want to own their data and have flexibility to enable only the modules they actually need.
Watch for
Dolibarr's interface is functional rather than polished, and new users sometimes find the density off-putting until they get used to it. Documentation is good but spread across multiple sources, with some French-language assumptions. Native UK Making Tax Digital filing is not built in, and direct integrations with Xero or Sage usually need a community module or custom work. Plan training time before rollout.
Web Hosting for Dolibarr
Get Dolibarr up and running in minutes with our fast, reliable web hosting. Every plan includes one-click installation, free SSL, UK, US & Asia data centres, and dedicated expert support.
- 1 website
- 10 GB SSD storage
- Free SSL certificate
- 80+ 1-click installs
- Unlimited LVE resources
- Autoscaling cloud platform
- UK, US & Asia data centres
- 5 websites
- Unlimited SSD storage
- Free SSL certificate
- 80+ 1-click installs
- CDN included
-
Timeline Backup/Restore
Timeline Backup
- Website files and databases
- Daily snapshots, 30-day retention
- One-click file and database restore
- Everything above, plus email mailbox backups
- 60-day database retention
- Mailbox restore (to a temporary mailbox first, then sync back)
- Unlimited LVE resources
- Autoscaling cloud platform
- UK, US & Asia data centres
- 10 websites
- Unlimited SSD storage
- Free SSL certificate
- 80+ 1-click installs
- CDN included
-
Timeline Backup/Restore (Pro)
Timeline Backup
- Website files and databases
- Daily snapshots, 30-day retention
- One-click file and database restore
- Everything above, plus email mailbox backups
- 60-day database retention
- Mailbox restore (to a temporary mailbox first, then sync back)
- Unlimited LVE resources
- Autoscaling cloud platform
- UK, US & Asia data centres
All prices exclude VAT. No contract, cancel any time.
Need More Power for Dolibarr?
For high-traffic sites, large catalogues, or mission-critical deployments, our fully managed cloud servers give Dolibarr dedicated resources and enterprise-grade performance.
- Dedicated CPU, RAM & SSD storage
- 99.99% uptime
- Fully managed by our team
- Choose 365i, AWS, or Google Cloud
Servers
Servers
Servers
A Dolibarr case from our books
A small UK training provider with eight staff came to us in 2023 looking for an alternative to a SaaS bundle that had hit £340 a month and was still growing. They needed CRM, project tracking, course bookings, invoicing and basic stock management for course materials. They were considering moving everything to spreadsheets and a free invoicing tool, which would have created a different mess.
We installed Dolibarr on a £5.99 shared plan, helped them configure the modules they needed (CRM, Projects, Invoices, Stock, plus a community module for course bookings) and migrated their customer list and outstanding invoices over a long weekend. They spent the following two weeks training staff and tidying data, then went live. Twelve months later their total IT cost for the same workflow was around £80 a year on hosting plus a one-off £400 for an outside consultant who built a custom report. Their previous SaaS bill over the same year would have been around £4,100.
What we would tell anyone in the same spot: Dolibarr will save you serious money over SaaS, but only if you commit to learning it properly in the first month. Treat the install like a project, not a download.
Anonymised at the client's request. Industry, scale, and timeline preserved.
What we look for in crm hosting
CRM hosting comes down to two things people underestimate: cron reliability and outbound email deliverability. Workflows fire on cron, email-to-case automations live or die by the same loop, and a CRM with broken cron is a CRM that quietly loses leads. We run a one-minute cron on every plan and we set up outbound SMTP properly with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC during install. PHP memory at 512MB by default because Studio customisations and report queries push it.
More applications you can install on 365i hosting
Beyond CRM, our one-click installer covers 79 open-source PHP applications across 27 categories. A small selection from across the catalogue:
Dolibarr Hosting FAQ
Common questions we hear from people running Dolibarr on our hosting.
Yes, Dolibarr is included in our one-click installer. You choose the domain or subdomain, set the admin user and password, and it deploys with a clean database in under a minute. After installation you go through the module activation screen to enable only the parts you need, and the system reshapes the menu accordingly.
Yes. Dolibarr supports UK VAT rates including standard, reduced, zero-rated and exempt categories, and you can set per-customer VAT rules for B2B exempt or reverse-charge supplies. For Making Tax Digital filing to HMRC you would either export the VAT report and submit through bridging software, or use a community module that handles the API submission directly. Either approach works, but neither is built into the core install.
QuickBooks and Xero are dedicated accounting platforms with deep UK accountancy support and native HMRC filing. Dolibarr is broader but lighter on pure accounting. Many small businesses run Dolibarr for CRM, invoicing, projects and stock, then export VAT figures to their accountant, who handles the books in Xero or similar. If accountancy is the heart of what you need, stay with the dedicated tool. If you need everything tied together and basic books are enough, Dolibarr is excellent value.
Yes. Dolibarr is modular by design and has a built-in extra fields system that lets non-developers add custom fields to most record types from the admin area. For deeper changes you can write your own modules in PHP, and there is a healthy community marketplace of free and paid modules. The framework is well documented, though writing modules is a developer task rather than a configuration one.
Your data lives in a standard MySQL database that you own, on hosting that you own. Exporting any table to CSV is built in, and the full SQL database can be exported with one click. We also take daily backups for you. There is no proprietary lock-in, which is one of the genuine advantages of running open-source ERP on your own infrastructure rather than a closed SaaS platform.
Ready to Host Dolibarr?
Get started with Dolibarr on our fast UK web hosting. One-click installation, free SSL, and dedicated expert support included.