Manage Any Scientific Laboratory with this Amazing Fee Open-source LIMS Software: eLabFTW

LIMS or Laboratory Information Management Systems are designed to run labs, function as a collaborative platform for researchers as well as a laboratory notebook.

LIMS boosts teams productivity, organize lab assets and resources, improve collaborative teamwork and keep organized records in digital forms that eases  researchers and technician work.

Our topic today is about eLabFTW and why do we recommend it as LIMS?

eLabFTW is a self-hosted completely free open-source (Libre) laboratory information management system.  It's designed as a general-purpose laboratory system but proven reliable in medical and biology laboratories,  it also works exceptionally for experimental research laboratories.  

In different sentence that we borrowed from eLabFTW, It is an electronic lab notebook manager for research teams, Which makes it well suited for universities, tinkerers or biotech companies.

Why do we recommend eLabFTW?

1. Easy to install with multiple installation options.
2. Highly customizable
3. Large supported community of developers and advanced users
4. Regularly updated
5. Secure
6. Scalable

Features

1. Open-source (AGPL License)
2. Supports multiple languages
3. Cross-platform (Windows, Linux and macOS)
4. Resources efficient (RAM and processing power)
5. Responsive designs which means it works on mobile and tablet screens
6. Inventory management that works with everything
7. Scheduler and reminder
8. Experiments management tools
9. Operations and procedures manager
10. User manager
11. Built-in access management
12. Advanced import and export manager
13. Supports PDF, ZIP, CSV and JSON exports
14. Rest API
15. Images upload
16. Chemdoodle integration for drawing molecules
17. Style and interface customization manager
18. Custom shortcuts
19. Unlimited number of users and records
20. SAML2 authentication with IDM "Identity Management" external provider support
21. Docker support
22. Built-in protection against CSRF, XSS and bruteforce login
23. Automated security scanning
24. Advanced security configuration  
25. Cloud install and on-premise install
26. Supports all popular browsers with minimal  resource's consumption: Google Chrome, Chromium, Mozilla Firefox, Safari (macOS)
27. Smooth performance on mobile browsers Safari (iOS: iPhone/ iPad) and Android (Chrome).

Install eLabFTW

Requirements

1. RAM 512 MB (1 GB is recommended)
2. 300 MB disk space

eLabFTW can be installed using docker on almost any server or desktop computer. It also can be deployed on the cloud hosting as DigitalOcean and  Nanobox.io.

Installation options:

1. Windows (Docker)
2. macOS (Docker)
3. Linux server (Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch Linux)
4. FreeBSD
5. Cloud hosting

Resources

1. eLabFTW: https://www.elabftw.net/
2. eLabFTW GitHub: https://github.com/elabftw/elabftw
3. Documentation: https://doc.elabftw.net/
4. Photo by Chokniti Khongchum from Pexels