Managed hosting from
£45/month equivalent +VAT
Small resource profile: 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 50 GB SSD storage. Typically suits project teams of up to around 25 people. OpenProject runs a Rails web process, a background worker and a cache, and its attachment and database volumes alone take 20 GB before you upload anything, so this is the entry tier: we do not offer a smaller one, because it would not run the software honestly. Billed hourly against our rate card with no commitments; deployment, upgrades, daily backups, monitoring, SSL and UK hosting included, with no per-user fees. How our pricing works
Plan the work, own the plan.
Project tools are sold by the seat, so the price of planning rises with every person who has to see the plan. OpenProject is the open source alternative: work packages, Gantt scheduling, wikis, meetings and time tracking in one place, self-hosted so your project data stays on infrastructure you control. We host, patch and support it on UK infrastructure, with no per-user licence.
Gantt charts and work packages without the seat count
OpenProject is a mature open source project management application, published by OpenProject GmbH and descended from the Redmine and ChiliProject lineage. It is built for organisations that plan work rather than only track it.
Work is recorded as work packages: tasks, features, bugs, milestones, phases, or whatever type structure your process needs, with custom fields, hierarchies and relations. Those work packages sit on a Gantt chart with dependencies and milestones, which is the part most SaaS tools charge extra for or omit entirely. Around them sit per-project wikis, meeting agendas and minutes that link straight to the work they concern, time and cost tracking with budgets and cost reports, and a full REST API for everything else.
It is a project management system in the traditional sense: good at schedules, dependencies, documentation and the audit trail of who agreed what and when.
What we host, and what we do not
We host the Community edition, and we say plainly what that means before you buy.
OpenProject sells some features as Enterprise add-ons under its own licence: single sign-on, the Kanban-style board views and the team planner among them. We do not resell those add-ons and we do not ship an Enterprise token, so they are not available in what we run for you. If you need them, you buy them from OpenProject GmbH directly, and we will tell you so rather than let you discover it after migration.
Because single sign-on is inside that gate, access to your workspace is protected by the node.uk sign-in instead: it sits in front of OpenProject, so somebody who is not a member of your workspace never reaches the application. The accounts inside OpenProject are local to it, so your team signs in to the workspace and then holds an OpenProject login behind that door. Removing a person from your workspace cuts their access immediately, which is the property that actually matters for joiners and leavers, but it is two steps rather than one and we would rather describe it accurately than call it SSO.
Why Hosting for OpenProject with Node
No per-user licence - Jira, Microsoft Project and Asana all bill by the seat, so the cost of visibility grows with the team. OpenProject has no per-user fee. You pay a flat managed platform cost, billed hourly against our published rate card.
Your project data stays yours - schedules, requirements, meeting records and time entries live on UK infrastructure you control, in a database you can export, under an Article 28 data processing agreement.
Scheduling as a first-class feature - Gantt scheduling with dependencies and milestones is part of the edition we host rather than a premium tier, which is unusual in this market and is the main reason teams pick OpenProject over a board-first tool.
Run by named engineers - Chris Evans and Matt Collier deploy it, patch it, back it up and answer the phone. Upgrades, database migrations and monitoring are ours, not a project your team has to staff.
How it fits with the rest of your platform
OpenProject sits alongside the other applications in your Node workspace. Time recorded against projects lines up with the billing picture you keep in ERPNext or Dolibarr, project documentation can live next to your wider knowledge base in BookStack, code and issues stay in Gitea, and every application in the workspace is reached through the same Keycloak sign-in. The platform is watched by our Zabbix and Grafana monitoring and backed up nightly.
Open source alternative to Jira, Microsoft Project and Asana
| Consideration | Jira / Microsoft Project / Asana | Hosting for OpenProject |
|---|---|---|
| Cost model | Per-user monthly subscription that grows with headcount | No per-user licence, flat managed platform fee |
| Data location | Vendor cloud, commonly outside the UK | UK infrastructure you control, or your own environment |
| Gantt and dependencies | Higher tiers, or a separate product | Included in the Community edition we host |
| Boards, team planner, SSO | Included in the paid plans | Enterprise add-ons we do not resell; see the honesty section above |
| Access control | Vendor identity platform | node.uk workspace sign-in in front of the app; in-app accounts are local |
| Lock-in | Export within the vendor's terms | Open source, your database, exportable whenever you choose |
A plan everyone can see should not cost more because more people can see it. Hosting for OpenProject replaces the per-seat project subscription with a managed open source deployment on UK infrastructure: you own the schedule, the documents and the data, and we own keeping it running. Ask us what it does not do before you ask what it does, and we will answer that first.
Open source provenance
OpenProject
is
GPL-3.0-only
software maintained upstream
(source, ref v17.7.2).
Node provides managed hosting, configuration and support. We are not the publisher.
- Hosting for paying customers: permitted under this licence.
- Trademark: "OpenProject" is a mark of OpenProject GmbH. We describe the product as "Hosting for OpenProject" and we are not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by OpenProject GmbH.
Frequently asked questions
What is OpenProject?
OpenProject is open source project management software. Work is tracked as work packages (tasks, features, bugs, milestones and whatever else your process needs), scheduled on a Gantt chart with dependencies and milestones, and documented in per-project wikis, meeting agendas and minutes. It also covers time and cost tracking, budgets, cost reports and a full REST API. It is published by OpenProject GmbH under the GPL, so it can be self-hosted on infrastructure you control.
Which edition do you host, and what is not included?
We host the Community edition. OpenProject sells some features as Enterprise add-ons under its own licence, including single sign-on, the Kanban-style board views and the team planner. We do not resell those add-ons and we do not ship an Enterprise token, so they are not part of what you get from us. Everything else in the Community edition, including work packages, Gantt scheduling, wikis, meetings, time and cost tracking and the API, is yours in full.
How do people sign in if single sign-on is an Enterprise feature?
Access to your workspace is protected by the node.uk sign-in, which sits in front of OpenProject: a person who is not a member of your workspace group never reaches the application at all. The accounts inside OpenProject are local to it, so people have an OpenProject login behind that gate, and removing someone from your workspace stops them reaching the app immediately. It is an honest description of a two-step arrangement rather than the single-click experience the Enterprise add-on gives you.
Is OpenProject a good alternative to Jira, Microsoft Project or Asana?
For teams that plan work on a schedule it is a strong fit: Gantt scheduling with dependencies and milestones is part of the edition we host rather than a premium tier, and work packages, wikis, meetings and time tracking live in the same project. What you give up against Jira and Asana in the edition we host is the board and team-planner views, which OpenProject gates behind its Enterprise licence. If your team works primarily on a Kanban board, read that limitation first and talk to us before you move.
Can we migrate from Jira or Microsoft Project?
Yes, with planning rather than a button. OpenProject has a complete REST API and file-based work package import, so we build and validate the import from your existing export: projects, work packages, statuses, custom fields, attachments and users. There is no one-click Jira importer, so we scope the migration honestly and run both systems in parallel until the new one is proven.
Where does the data live, and who runs it?
On Node's UK infrastructure by default, or in your own environment when that is the engagement, with an Article 28 data processing agreement. Node Digital is Chris Evans and Matt Collier: we handle deployment, upgrades, database migrations, backups, monitoring, TLS and UK-based support.
What does a managed deployment include?
A production configuration with the database, background worker, cache and file storage sized and wired up, TLS and your domain, daily backups, monitoring, security patching and version upgrades. You get the project management tool; we own the operational risk underneath it.
Talk to us about project management.
Tell us how your team plans work and how many people need access, and an engineer will tell you honestly whether Hosting for OpenProject fits or whether something else in the catalogue suits you better.