I have been playing with Labguru for the past few weeks and thinking about using it as my lab management software. My research students and I currently use the software Notebook by Circus Ponies to maintain lab notes that are backed up on Dropbox. Labguru is designed specifically for life science labs, and seems to have some nice features, but costs $10 per month per user. Has anyone tried Labguru? Do you like it, and is it worth the cost?
I have only tried it by myself (only I was using it in the lab) and its really nice. But I think its true potential is in using it as a whole lab. Specially with the ordering list, shared reagent boxes etc.
For my personal use, I stuck with Evernote. I tried Notebook by Circus Ponies and didn't like it that much, but that was a few years ago.
Evernote has an online interface which is really nice if you are traveling etc.
If I was a PI, and had some motivated students who are willing to adapt to something like Labguru, I would do it :)
Plus points if you have an iPad!
I have been using LabGuru exclusively as my lab notebook for the last 2+ years. I like it but it is buggy- tends to logout periodically and lose whatever data you have entered in the last few hours. The problem seems to come and go with ongoing revisions but has been happening every few days lately so it is top of mind right now. Anecdotally, it seems to happen more when I have other tabs open in the same browser, so I currently use Google Chrome for LabGuru only and other browsers for e-mail, searching, etc.
I would give it a qualified thumbs up, as long as you are willing to suffer with occasional data loss.
I tried Labguru - I found it an interesting solution, however - it's not versatile enough in my personal opinion. Plus, the nearly daily ads and phone calls of their staff I found rather unprofessional. I'm using JIRA/Confluence and it is the perfect combination for management, even for lab management. Takes more time at the beginning, but you'll be able to enjoy full control over your software.
labfolder is a good option for what you need. It's ideal for documenting and sharing data, and it's a web-based software with dedicated servers owned by labfolder (in accordance with CFR part 11). This means that data is backed up on these servers, rather than a dropbox (which aren't as secure). Like labguru, labfolder is designed for biotech/life science R&D labs, so it fits well with your requirements.
https://www.labfolder.com/
Just wanted to update this old question - I have had a great experience over the last year with Benchling as our digital, cloud lab notebook. I would highly recommend it!
I have also switched to Benchling for our lab notebooks- works great.
these links may be of interest
https://datamanagement.hms.harvard.edu/electronic-lab-notebooks-labstep https://www.gurdon.cam.ac.uk/institute-life/computing/elnguidance
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