Best Self Hosted Alternatives to Dotmatics ELN

eLabFTW is an open source electronic lab notebook (ELN) designed for research teams to document experiments and protocols in a structured, searchable way. It also includes a flexible database for managing lab resources and supports multi-team deployments on a single instance.

Key Features

• Experiment and protocol notebook with tags, categories, and full-text search
• Inventory/database for lab resources (e.g., plasmids, antibodies, cell lines, chemicals, equipment)
• Equipment and resource booking via a built-in scheduler/calendar
• Multi-team support with advanced permissions and team-based access control
• Trusted timestamping and optional blockchain timestamping for traceability
• Import/export in multiple formats to support interoperability and FAIR data practices
• Public REST API for integrations and automation
• Internationalized interface (20+ languages) and responsive web UI

Use Cases

• Centralized experiment documentation and reproducibility tracking for academic labs
• Lab inventory and reagent/equipment traceability for shared facilities
• Organization-wide ELN platform hosting multiple research groups with controlled access

Limitations and Considerations

• Intended to be deployed and maintained on a server by an administrator (commonly via containers)

eLabFTW is a strong fit for labs and organizations needing a secure, auditable ELN with integrated inventory and scheduling. Its permissions model, export options, and API make it suitable for both daily lab work and institution-level deployments.