Carbon vs Dokuly

Carbon combines ERP, MRP, MES, and QMS functions for manufacturers planning materials, running production, managing quality, and tracking actual costs. Product rules can generate bills of materials, routings, and quoted prices, with revision control and effectivity dates. Shop-floor tools include digital travelers, work instructions, QR and barcode tracking, and finite-capacity scheduling. First articles, nonconformances, CAPAs, and calibrations can be linked to production records, serials, and lots. Carbon is aimed at discrete manufacturers, including makers in defense, aerospace, automotive, medical devices, electronics, robotics, energy, space, semiconductors, and industrial equipment. Integrations include Onshape, SolidWorks, Slack, Jira, QuickBooks, Xero, and others. It provides REST endpoints, webhooks, an MCP server, and typed client generation for several languages. Deployment options include managed cloud, customer cloud accounts, Docker, on-premises, and air-gapped networks; air-gapped deployment is an Enterprise feature. Community includes core functionality under AGPL-3.0. Starter costs $40 a month, billed per user monthly, and a 30-day trial is listed.

Dokuly is a free, open-source Product Lifecycle Management system for engineering and operations teams. It manages parts, PCB assemblies, assemblies, bills of materials, revisions, releases, and alternate parts. Document controls include automatic numbering, revision management, PDF front-page generation, a built-in viewer, and browser editing through OnlyOffice. Purchasing covers suppliers, price breaks, purchase orders, and order tracking, including selection of the cheapest supplier for BOM orders. Inventory and production features track stock locations, transactions, lots, serial numbers, and assembly progress. Requirements can be linked hierarchically or as derived and superseding items, with verification tracking; engineering change orders record affected items for review. Projects provide access control, time tracking, tasks, and Gantt charts. Dokuly runs as a self-hosted Docker stack using PostgreSQL, Django, and nginx. Integrations include DigiKey API, Nexar API, and OnlyOffice. Its REST API uses project-scoped keys with configurable expiry and includes Swagger and ReDoc documentation. The documentation describes project-based API access controls; no security certification is stated on the pages reviewed.