# SAP ERP 30 Hacker News commenters recommended SAP ERP and 66 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months. **Verdict:** Large enterprise suite with many premade business processes, valued for visibility and configurability. Common caveats are costly implementations, clunky user experience, and heavy customization causing upgrade headaches. ## Why people recommend it - Configurable for many use cases (2 comments): "their product really is built to be configurable for every use case under the sun" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46904888)) "chances are they don't know even 50% of what it can do" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47400642)) - Default choice for enterprise ERP (3 comments): "Nobody gets fired for choosing SAP, Salesforce etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46893048)) "default to using SAP for ERP and be done with it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46203425)) "Salesforce, SAP, etc exist for a reason." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47165700)) - Widely used by large companies (3 comments): "SAP is more capable and widespread" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46335673)) "ASML, SAP, Airbus to say a few." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47889100)) "LOL, Novartis also uses SAP." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47589505)) ## What people warn about - Expensive, slow implementations (2 comments): "they cost 5x of initially estimated and take much longer than initially planned" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46275631)) "The big companies that sell services are not really accountable, and in many cases will bankrupt their customers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48918610)) - Clunky and hard to use (3 comments): "The only bad things I've heard about SAP are "making clunky software" and "charging too much money"." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48526578)) "It's not fun to use for the users, and so many compromises need to be made" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49730561)) ""Enterprise software" has been awful for decades, things like Lotus Notes and SAP." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48019562)) - Customization creates bespoke SaaS headaches (3 comments): "SAP is already the worst of both worlds. It'll have been highly customized for your flow so you've got all of the headaches of bespoke software and all of the headaches of SaaS." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46860611)) "This particular section of your comment sounds a helluvalot like some of the SAP implementations I've seen" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083229)) "I'm reliably informed by an army of consultants that they can customize it to fit the exacting needs of the department of war!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45894376)) - Chosen for compliance, not quality (3 comments): "people get onto SAP not because its good, but there's a bunch of compliance regs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48010202)) "You become an expert in using SalesForce, or SAP, for the same reason you get a medical license in the US." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46723609)) "the people making purchasing decisions for SAP and Salesforce are not people who spend any substantial share of their time using it directly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47809779)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Odoo ERP](https://hackerapproved.com/p/odoo.md): 22 recommend - [ERPNext](https://hackerapproved.com/p/erpnext.md): 5 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://www.sap.com/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "SAP ERP", https://hackerapproved.com/p/sap/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).