SAP ERP
The most recommended of 3 ERP software
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.
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.
96 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 30
- criticize it
- 66
- approval share
- 31%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 30 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Configurable for many use cases
“their product really is built to be configurable for every use case under the sun”
Comment from 5 Feb 2026 in “European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams” “chances are they don't know even 50% of what it can do”
Comment from 16 Mar 2026 in “Why the World Still Runs on SAP” Default choice for enterprise ERP
“Nobody gets fired for choosing SAP, Salesforce etc.”
Comment from 4 Feb 2026 in “AI Is Killing B2B SaaS” “default to using SAP for ERP and be done with it”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices” “Salesforce, SAP, etc exist for a reason.”
Comment from 26 Feb 2026 in “Ed Zitron loses his mind annotating an AI doomer macro memo” Widely used by large companies
“SAP is more capable and widespread”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Airbus to migrate critical apps to a sovereign Euro cloud” “ASML, SAP, Airbus to say a few.”
Comment from 24 Apr 2026 in “DeepSeek v4” “LOL, Novartis also uses SAP.”
Comment from 31 Mar 2026 in “Oracle slashes 30k jobs with a cold 6 a.m. email”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Expensive, slow implementations
“they cost 5x of initially estimated and take much longer than initially planned”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “IBM to acquire Confluent” “The big companies that sell services are not really accountable, and in many cases will bankrupt their customers.”
Comment from 15 Jul 2026 in “The bread paradox: why convenience always wins, and why SaaS isn't doomed” Clunky and hard to use
“The only bad things I've heard about SAP are "making clunky software" and "charging too much money".”
Comment from 14 Jun 2026 in “How to Earn a Billion Dollars” “It's not fun to use for the users, and so many compromises need to be made”
Comment from 16 Sep 2026 in “Salesforce Global Outage” “"Enterprise software" has been awful for decades, things like Lotus Notes and SAP.”
Comment from 5 May 2026 in “Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?” Customization creates bespoke SaaS headaches
“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.”
Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Why software stocks are getting pummelled” “This particular section of your comment sounds a helluvalot like some of the SAP implementations I've seen”
Comment from 10 May 2026 in “Canvas (Instructure) LMS Down in Ongoing Ransomware Attack” “I'm reliably informed by an army of consultants that they can customize it to fit the exacting needs of the department of war!”
Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed” Chosen for compliance, not quality
“people get onto SAP not because its good, but there's a bunch of compliance regs”
Comment from 4 May 2026 in “Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons” “You become an expert in using SalesForce, or SAP, for the same reason you get a medical license in the US.”
Comment from 22 Jan 2026 in “It looks like the status/need-triage label was removed” “the people making purchasing decisions for SAP and Salesforce are not people who spend any substantial share of their time using it directly”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Claude Design”
Other ERP software people recommend
The two most recommended other ERP software, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 3 ERP software, rankedWhat people said
40 of the 99 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It's not fun to use for the users, and so many compromises need to be made”
“the same could be said about Turbotax, Jira, SAP”
“Just because the pretend to be European-based with so-called firewalls means exactly...nothing.”
“Only Schwarz and SAP are free from that by being German companies.”
“The big companies that sell services are not really accountable, and in many cases will bankrupt their customers.”
“The only bad things I've heard about SAP are "making clunky software" and "charging too much money".”
“its been Microsoft, Azure, and SAP.”
“This particular section of your comment sounds a helluvalot like some of the SAP implementations I've seen”
“"Enterprise software" has been awful for decades, things like Lotus Notes and SAP.”
“people get onto SAP not because its good, but there's a bunch of compliance regs”
“ASML, SAP, Airbus to say a few.”
“the performance is terrible too”
“the people making purchasing decisions for SAP and Salesforce are not people who spend any substantial share of their time using it directly”
“SAP is a great example of this”
“it is equipped with a large library of premade processes so you don't have to reinvent the wheel”
“Not even recognising that the failures are mostly self instricted policies.”
“it'd be hard to say that SAP is not good”
“LOL, Novartis also uses SAP.”
“It is the custom code, user exits and mods that causes issues in the upgrade, not vanilla SAP.”
“chances are they don't know even 50% of what it can do”
“The new system missed so many edge cases of the lab process that they had to fall back to pen, paper and phone.”
“SAP is much better than the home-grown stuff Tesla, Space X, or Amazon are using”
“It has some data entry screens that are super efficient, cursor always goes to the right place”
“Dirt, Sap and Jar of Flies sound just as good as they did back in the day”
“Salesforce, SAP, etc exist for a reason.”
“We had such a great visibility into all the processes, it was unreal.”
“their product really is built to be configurable for every use case under the sun”
“Nobody gets fired for choosing SAP, Salesforce etc.”
“it does not need to be SAP or Dynamics365 or something along this line to work”
“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.”
“A SAP imitation (a very bad SAP imitation)”
“You become an expert in using SalesForce, or SAP, for the same reason you get a medical license in the US.”
“those things are horrible. You pay in money, and in sanity, and in productivity”
“start feeling like calcified systems that the end users start hating”
“SAP is more capable and widespread”
“they cost 5x of initially estimated and take much longer than initially planned”
“But in terms of EU sovereignty it could be.”
“while the SAP application seemed solid”
“default to using SAP for ERP and be done with it”
“I'm reliably informed by an army of consultants that they can customize it to fit the exacting needs of the department of war!”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.