LIMS Buyer's Guide

The LIMS Buyer's Guide was a publication focused on providing information about laboratory information management systems (LIMS) with public pricing. It was offered by the Laboratory Informatics Institute (LII), an open trade association associated with LabLynx, Inc.^[1]^[2]

In 2013, the LII and LabLynx discontinued publishing a copyrighted version and chose to release future guides to the public domain via this wiki. Per the Creative Commons license and the copyright terms of this site, you are free to copy, adapt, distribute, and transmit this guide as long as you 1. give proper attribution and 2. distribute the work only under the same or a similar license.

About this guide

What exactly is a laboratory information management system (LIMS) or laboratory information system (LIS) anyway? Do I need one? What options are available and how do I compare them? What about a request for information (RFI), request for proposal (RFP), or request for quotation (RFQ)? These are questions laboratory professionals typically ponder upon finding themselves charged with the mission of finding software for their lab. It can be a daunting proposition, and there doesn't seem to be any objective reference to help with it all. This guide hopes to change that.

For this free public domain version of the guide, we've added more vendors, updated new information, and added links to video demonstrations of their systems, with the goal of providing the accurate information you need to make decisions for your lab. This guide also strives to be different from any buyer's guide that has ever come before by including pricing. For the first time you have real information as well as pricing so you can quickly pursue only the vendors and products that make sense for you and your lab. While in the past vendors have refrained from providing public pricing, the trend is arguably changing towards a more open information process, though not without its own set of caveats.^[3] In theory, that means prices should decrease as LIMS become commodities that labs can compare and contrast in a more competitive fashion.

At the core all labs are in the business of producing reports, data... essentially information.^[4] Everything else is just a means to that central goal. So in a very real sense, information management is the core of any lab. In a world where we use the latest technology for most of our daily tasks and pleasures, why do so many labs still rely on hand-written notes and spreadsheets? Spend thousands of dollars on a sophisticated analytical instrument yet hesitate when faced with purchasing an information management system? Why? The primary reason is price priorities.

Since LIMS are increasingly becoming commodities, driving down prices, potential buyers don't need to make the tough decision of one or the other anymore. As technology has improved, smaller LIMS companies have emerged, along with affordable SaaS online subscription models that are trustworthy. This means any lab can put their resources where they belong: in information and its management.

Notes about the content

The LIMS Buyers Guide is here to help you wade through the mire. Use the information and vendor profiles to get a feel for what's out there and what makes the most sense. This guide contains information on everything from "what is a LIMS?" to maintaining and supporting your system. Additionally, whether you call it a LIMS, LIS, or even a LMS, in the end it's simply a tool to better manage your lab's data. This guide will refer to it all as “LIMS” for the sake of simplicity and consistency, though this guide may include systems officially dubbed as a LIS. Finally, a primary criterion for inclusion in this guide is publicly available pricing information that can thusly be cited. If citeable public pricing is not available, the vendor will not be listed in this guide. Any inappropriate additions will be removed.