Labs keep a LIMS for many years. That makes the first choice expensive in a way the first invoice does not show. A poor fit shows up later, when the workflow has grown, a new instrument needs connecting, and the only party allowed to change the system quotes in months. This article is about that long view, not about the demo.
Two procurement models
A commercial LIMS is licensed, usually per user and per month or year, with an implementation project on top. The vendor owns the code and decides the roadmap. In return you get one party accountable for the product, and often a polished interface for the workflows the vendor has seen most.
An open-source LIMS such as SENAITE has no licence fee. You pay the people who set it up, adapt it, train your team and keep it running, whether they are your own staff or a partner. You own the configuration, the custom code and the data, and the development of the core happens in public.
Neither is better in general. They put the cost and the control in different places.
Cost over ten years
Total cost sits in four lines:
- Licence or subscription. Per user for a commercial LIMS, zero for SENAITE.
- Implementation. Both need it. For SENAITE it usually means a workshop and the configuration and development that follow it.
- Customisation and integrations. Both need it. The difference is who is allowed to do it, see below.
- Operations. Hosting, monitoring, backups, updates. Your IT does it, or you pay someone.
Some figures for orientation, from RFPs and engagements we have seen for mid-size labs (roughly 15 to 40 users) in the German speaking market. They bracket, they do not quote:
- Commercial subscriptions for a 25-user lab at EUR 2,500 to 3,000 per month, which is EUR 300,000 to 360,000 over ten years on the licence line alone.
- Commercial implementation projects at EUR 24,000 to 60,000.
On the SENAITE side, the recurring line is operations. Our SENAITE Care plans cost EUR 300, 600 or 1,200 per month. With the Professional plan at EUR 600 that is EUR 72,000 over ten years. Add the workshop, any development specific to your lab, and either your own server or hosting, which we quote per installation.
Your own figures depend on users, sites, integrations and how much of the operations work your IT keeps. Put all four lines side by side for ten years before comparing.
Who can change the system
The useful question is not whether a LIMS can be customised, but by whom.
With SENAITE, custom calculations, new fields, a specific report layout, an import for an instrument nobody else uses: all of it lives in an add-on next to the core and can be written by anyone who knows Python and SENAITE’s add-on structure. We do it as our daily work. Your own developer can do it, and so can another contractor. The code is in your repository.
With a commercial LIMS, changes are made by the vendor, quoted and scheduled by the vendor. For mainstream features that works. For specialised workflows it is the most common reason labs give us for leaving their previous system.
Lock-in
A LIMS holds data that is hard to recreate. The cost of leaving comes from three places:
- Data. Can you read your own data in full? With SENAITE the data model is in the code and the JSON API returns every object. With a commercial LIMS you get what the vendor exports.
- Configuration. States, roles, specifications, calculations and report templates are years of your lab’s work. In SENAITE they live in your system and in your add-on.
- Integrations. Instrument connections, exports to other systems, scripts. With SENAITE that code belongs to you.
Compliance
ISO 17025 asks whether your lab’s procedures, the people and the system together produce traceable, controlled results. The licence model does not decide that. What the system contributes is an audit trail, access control and an enforced workflow.
SENAITE stores a snapshot of every change with user and time, enforces who may receive, submit, verify and publish, and can require up to four verifications per result. Whether the submitter may verify their own result, and whether one person may verify twice, are settings your lab decides. What it does not have out of the box is a 21 CFR Part 11 electronic signature: a separate signing act with password re-entry and a stated meaning. A lab under Part 11 adds that layer and validates the system, or picks a product that ships it pre-validated. Our compliance post walks through the clauses.
One advantage of open source here: an auditor can see exactly what runs. Where a vendor answers with a statement, you can answer with the code.
When a commercial LIMS is the better choice
We say so when it is:
- The vendor sells exactly your workflow. Some vertical products come shaped to one kind of lab. If yours is that kind and stays that way, a ready fit costs less than flexibility.
- You want no technical partner at all. Open source needs someone who can configure, update and extend it, internal or external. If you want neither, a vendor is simpler.
- You need Part 11 signatures validated by the supplier. A product that ships them saves you that project.
When SENAITE is the better choice
- Your workflow is your own. Industrial QC, environmental and water labs, research institutes, labs with unusual calculations. Domains where no two labs work quite alike.
- User counts grow. Without per-user fees, adding the tenth or the fortieth login costs nothing.
- You want to read the code. Security-minded IT departments, regulated labs, organisations that have been stuck with a vendor before.
- Your data has to stay with you. Public bodies, utilities, anyone with a data sovereignty requirement. SENAITE runs on your own servers.
How to evaluate
- Run a test system. The public Docker image runs in a few minutes and shows the interface and the sample workflow.
- Take the workshop. Three days with your own sample types, services and workflow, and you leave with a configured system you can keep. Details here.
- Cost ten years, not one. The licence is one line of four.
If you would like to talk it through, we are here.
