Indigo ELN vs LabArchives

Indigo ELN is a free electronic lab notebook for creating, storing, retrieving, and sharing chemistry records. It organizes work into projects, notebooks, experiments, and components, while allowing experiment templates and added components without changing the core code. Ketcher provides chemical structure editing, and Indigo handles reaction rendering and chemical property calculations. Searches can use entity attributes, or product structures and reaction schemes with BingoDB integration. APIs connect customer services, databases, and electronic signature services. Role-based authorities and access control lists govern projects, notebooks, and experiments. Pages can be printed to PDF, and SDF files can be imported or exported. The system runs on the web and can be self-hosted; the maker says a Docker image is available, with documented local Docker and AWS deployment. The core product is free under GNU GPL version 3 and provided without warranty. EPAM offers paid customization, integration, support, and maintenance. The demo environment is unavailable while work continues toward a public version 3.0 environment.

LabArchives is a suite of online applications for documenting research data and managing laboratory resources. Its ELN for Research records, organizes, searches, and shares scientific data; Inventory organizes, tracks, and orders lab inventory; and Scheduler manages equipment and other resources. The ELN includes more than 20 built-in widgets and supports custom widgets, with integrations such as GraphPad Prism, SnapGene, REDCap, Jupyter, and Protocols.io. A free plan includes two owned notebooks, 1GB per user, and a 25MB file limit. Professional Academic costs $330 a year per user, with unlimited owned notebooks, 100GB per user, and a 250MB file limit. Browser access works on Windows, macOS, and Linux, while mobile browsers support image, video, and audio capture; an Android app wraps the browser-based session. LabArchives lists audit trails, electronic signatures, approval workflows, and offline access, with PDF and read-only offline HTML in ZIP export formats. It states certifications including FedRAMP, SOC 2, and ISO 27001, and support for HIPAA and GDPR requirements.