Highlights
- Open source is good for teams with smaller budgets, as well as larger teams with rapid evolution goals.
- 66% of our polled audience said they used open source tools in their Salesforce projects.
- There are a whole slew of open source projects that can be used to benefit Salesforce teams.
- Contributing to community projects is a great way to build credentials and give back to the wider Salesforce community.
- Supply chain attacks are becoming a larger attack vector, causing issues in some open source projects.
Salesforce is a brilliant platform and one that can be extended with functionality from their official AgentExchange (formerly AppExchange). This functions similarly to how your iPhone’s App Store works – you’ve got the core platform, and you install additional features and functionality as you require it. The problem is that a lot of these features and functions, while super helpful, are locked down and come with a heavy price tag as well.
You may be aware that there are other avenues to adding features to your Salesforce org without having to build them yourself. One such way to do this is through open source software. These are free, community-built projects that you can install into your Salesforce org. You can even contribute to some of these projects if you’re skilled enough!
Why Open Source Is Great for Salesforce Customers
I recently ran a small poll on LinkedIn to see how many Salesforce professionals already used some form of open source tooling in their Salesforce orgs or projects, and two-thirds came back and said they did! This leaves one-third who did not, yet.
Open source software is beneficial for many reasons. It offers transparency in that you can read, audit, and understand exactly what the code is going to do. There are no secrets, no miscommunication between a vendor and you, the customer. It comes with zero licensing fees as well, meaning you don’t have to worry about finding the budget for a tool.
This is particularly beneficial for smaller businesses or non-profits who need to add simple functionality, but don’t have a big budget.
Open source software offers flexibility beyond what a closed-source solution does in that you can adapt the code to your business’s unique needs. Speed is another benefit of open source, as contributors can move faster than they can with a closed-source solution, often embracing new technologies before commercial tools can. Finally, they’re community-driven, and bugs can be addressed and fixed by anyone with the skills to do so.
It’s not just Salesforce Developers that should pay attention to the open source offerings, as they can be readily installed and useful for a variety of Salesforce professionals. Admins, for example, can benefit from open source tooling to achieve goals quickly, and without needing budget approval. Consultants and Salesforce SI partners who want to offer cost-effective solutions that they can deploy across multiple clients should look at leveraging open source software as well.
Non-profit organizations and bootstrapped startups are a key audience for open source Salesforce tooling. These businesses need features, and don’t have the budget for additional SaaS subscriptions just to beef up their Salesforce functionality.
Open source shouldn’t just be limited to smaller, budget-conscious teams. Enterprise orgs with multiple in-house Salesforce teams can leverage open source tools to evaluate, adopt, and adapt tooling for their own use. This saves them from needing to build everything from scratch, which enables them to focus on more unique features and higher-value tasks.
Some Open Source Examples
It wouldn’t be a Salesforce open source article without pointing out a few available solutions! I’ve got a few here that I’ve found quite handy, but this is not a complete list. In fact, I’d love it if you could share some open source tools that you use in your Salesforce projects in the comments so others can benefit from your experience!
DocGen by Dave Moudy (Portwood)
After seeing Salesforce customers spend thousands of dollars per year on document automation tools, Dave Moudy believed a better solution could be built. His goal was to build a solution that ran natively and didn’t come with a price tag. His DocGen for Salesforce was the output of this, built as a way to give back to the Salesforce community.
Dave Moudy eventually moved the project under the Portwood name, where the tool grew even more mature. It empowers businesses to merge documents, handle e-signature processes, render barcodes and QR codes, and perform calculations. All of this happens within your Salesforce org – no more sending data in and out of the platform.
Dave Moudy’s DocGen tool is available on GitHub.
Salesforce Inspector Reloaded
I don’t know a single Salesforce professional that doesn’t use (or at least, hasn’t tried before) the Salesforce Inspector Reloaded tool. This browser extension adds an additional layer on top of the standard Salesforce UI, providing a whole swath of tools for Salesforce professionals to perform tasks. From the ability to see fields that aren’t available on the page, to being able to export or import data in bulk, to new features in tools like Flow Builder, this tool has something for everyone.
It is constantly evolving, too. New features are being added all the time to add even more value to this tool. The best part… It’s free, and open source! That means there’s no cost of entry to such a powerful tool, and you can take advantage of it today (assuming you’ve got the right permissions inside of Salesforce).
Salesforce Inspector Reloaded can be found on GitHub, or as a browser extension (links in the GitHub readme).
Nebula Logger
Nebula Logger empowers those building in Salesforce to set up and manage robust logging functions for free. Designed to work seamlessly with Apex, LWC, Flow, OmniStudio, and custom integrations, this tool has become a staple for Salesforce Developers looking to build in greater logging functionality into their tools.
Your tools can sometimes have hiccups, and they need the ability to tell their story – to explain what’s happening, what data and context they have, what errors are being encountered, etc. A tool like Nebula Logger is a great way to enable them to do so. The best part is that Nebula Logger is open source and doesn’t come with a pricetag!
You can read more about Nebula Logger’s features on their GitHub page.
DLRS
You may have heard me incorrectly refer to this tool as DLRUST (“Dee el rust”), short for “declarative lookup roll up summary tool”, but in reality the name is even simpler: DLRS (“declarative lookup rollup summary”). This open source provides an admin-friendly interface that allows you to perform automatic calculations based on lookup relationship fields in a similar way that the out-of-the-box rollup summary fields work with master detail relationships.
Technically speaking, having an automation run and calculate values when details change on either side of a lookup relationship isn’t overly difficult, particularly when using Apex to do so. The problem is that this is not a friendly approach for Salesforce Admins. DLRS changes this by enabling a clean UI over the top of some automated Apex jobs so that calculations can be configured with ease.
Download DLRS today from their GitHub.
SFDX Hardis
If you love the Salesforce CLI, but think it’s not quite strong enough for everything you need, then look no further than SFDX-Hardis! It’s a CLI and visual productivity suite for Salesforce. At its core, it lets you set up a complete CI/CD pipeline for delivering Salesforce projects. Changes can be tested and deployed automatically and safely, instead of having to click through Setup menus or manually juggle deployment packages.
It also has backup and monitoring capabilities, as well as the ability to generate project documentation using AI. No wonder the original creators and contributors refer to it as the “french army knife” of Salesforce tools!
You can take a look at SFDX-Hardis here.
Who Should Contribute, and Why?
The beautiful thing about open source projects is that they’re not a one-man or one-team product; They’re built by many hands who have a genuine interest in the solution itself and making it better.
Many different kinds of Salesforce professionals can contribute to open source projects – not just developers! Sure, Salesforce Developers can build out the tool itself by fixing bugs, adding features, or contributing tests; this is a given. However, other roles can contribute in other ways as well. Salesforce Admins and Architects can document use cases as they encounter them, or raise issues when they come across them. They can also consider writing tutorials for the tool to show others how to use it.
The benefit to contributing to an open source project is that you build your reputation as someone who knows Salesforce intimately, not just from a core technology perspective. You show others that you’re not just a consumer, but someone who builds and contributes to the Salesforce community at large.
A Word of Caution: Supply Chain Attacks
Unfortunately, open source isn’t perfect. We’ve recently seen a significant increase in what is known as ‘supply chain attacks’. These are instances where malicious code is introduced into a package or repository, often by a compromised maintainer’s account. One such example was the Axios attack back in March 2026.
What is often safe open source software can be compromised and used to deliver hidden payloads that can damage a business. Unfortunately, there’s no foolproof way to avoid a supply chain attack. It’s more a case of being vigilant.
You can do your best to avoid these attacks by reviewing source code before using it in your projects. Keep an eye out in particular for abandoned projects, or single-maintainer projects. While not always the case, these factors increase the likelihood that a project could become compromised or updated with malicious code.
This is not a reason to avoid open source projects by any means, but rather a reason to adopt them in a thoughtful, calculated manner.
Summary
Salesforce has always thrived on community, and open source Salesforce projects are one of the best displays of this. Tools that are built by passionate individuals with a love for the game, the platform, and the community at large. Open source tooling empowers businesses with smaller budgets to expand the functionality that Salesforce offers, and larger businesses to evolve faster.
What are some of the lesser-known open source tools that you find invaluable in your business? Have you contributed to, or started, an open source project before? I’d love to hear your experiences!
