Introduction

When choosing how to deploy eLabFTW, organizations usually compare two options: SaaS and On-Premise.

At first glance, the difference seems simple. With SaaS, the service is hosted and maintained by the provider. With On-Premise, the organization installs and operates the software on its own infrastructure.

Both models are valid. On-Premise can be the right choice for organizations with strict internal policies, dedicated infrastructure teams, or specific regulatory constraints. But in practice, the real difference is not only where the software runs. The real difference is who is responsible for keeping it secure, updated, backed up, and operational over time.

🌟 Community Meeting XI

This eLabFTW Community Meeting featured two presentations from the community:

• Dionyssis Antypas (Heidelberg University Biochemistry Center) - “elAPI Plugins: Facilitating Batch Uploads and Downloads from eLabFTW”
• Leonid Bovkun (Postdoc, Chair for Applied Physics, University of Würzburg) - “Bridging people, data, and infrared devices: a User’s perspective for collaborative research and development using elabFTW”

In the first presentation, Dionyssis described how the elAPI Plugins desktop application enables batch upload and download of research data to eLabFTW through Excel and CSV files. The application makes it possible to import data into existing templates in eLabFTW, thus improving options for data standardization. In the second presentation, Leonid shared how physicists use eLabFTW for project management in quantum device development, highlighting the challenges of tracking complex experimental data across different instruments and team members.

eLabFTW release schedule

eLabFTW follows a frequent release model: new minor versions are published regularly, and patch releases are issued when needed. We do not provide Long Term Support (LTS) versions.

This post explains why.

Release schedules are a tradeoff

Software projects adopt many different release strategies. Some publish major versions on a fixed schedule. Some release continuously. Others have long gaps between releases.

No single approach is objectively best. Each model comes with tradeoffs between stability, maintenance effort, development speed, and security response. The right choice depends on the nature of the software and the resources available to maintain it.

🌟 RDM Club Meeting 6

Thank you to everyone who attended the most recent RDM Club meeting, which was held on January 27, 2026.

In this meeting we first discussed the template sharing website, and attendees suggested additional improvements to add before we open the site to the public. Some great ideas and improvements were considered, and we are hard at work implementing them now! We hope that the template sharing website will be open to the public soon.

Introduction

«Wait a minute! Wasn’t 5.4 released not long ago?» you might be thinking. And you are right. eLabFTW 5.5 follows closely the release of 5.4, as we have modified our release process to allow faster iterations and longer support for older releases. But this change also makes it difficult to continue release 5.4, so we decided to quickly jump to 5.5 which uses the new build process.

🌟 Community Meeting X – eLabFTW 5.4, new documentation website and perspectives

In this eLabFTW Community Meeting, we discussed the new documentation website based on Docusaurus. We then went over some of the major new features of 5.4, and talked about the planned changes for the new edit page User Interface (see Discussion).

Watch recording

Youtube link

Introduction

eLabFTW 5.4 has been released! This new version brings many new features, enhancements and a few bugfixes. This blog post highlights some of these changes, but the complete list of changes is available on the release page.

Important note about 5.4.0

Use directly 5.4.1!

A note about “stable” releases

eLabFTW is a living project — “stable” would imply it is no longer evolving. Version 5.4.0 is production-ready, but minor bugs will surface once it is in wide use, and patches will follow.

🌟 Community Meeting IX – PASTA-ELN, AI & Interface Updates

In this eLabFTW Community Meeting, we welcomed two presenters. First, Steffen Brinckmann gave a presentation on data synchronization between PASTA-ELN and eLabFTW, with a technical demonstration of PASTA-ELN and its integration capabilities. Second, Nandjafot Mendy gave a presentation about plans for the integration of AI tools into ELNs. We also discussed improvements to the user interface, such as navigation enhancements and new accessibility features. The team responded to various technical questions and development plans, including template sharing and interoperability standards, while touching on future improvements like dark mode development.

🌟 RDM Club Meeting 5

Thank you to everyone who attended the latest eLabFTW RDM Club meeting, which was held on November 27, 2025. In this meeting, we presented the new features of the pre-Alpha version of the ELN template sharing hub to members of the RDM Club.

The template hub is now undergoing user testing, and once we are able to incorporate user feedback, it will be opened to the public. Very exciting!

🌟 RDM Club Meeting 4

Thank you to everyone who attended this RDM club meeting, which was held on Sept 30, 2025. In this meeting, we discussed the continued development of the ELN Community template sharing website.

Specifically, we considered the following:

• Whether users should be able to delete templates. Attendees pointed out that it is important to make sure that the metadata is retained so that people know why a specific template got deleted.