Vendor Evaluation Checklist: 32 Questions to Ask Before You Buy Lab Software
A vendor evaluation checklist for R&D, lab operations, and IT leaders comparing an ELN, a LIMS, or a unified platform.
Every vendor will tell you their system connects your data, and the demo is built to prove it. What a demo does not tell you is what happens when you add a new measurement type, when an instrument is not on the supported list, or when a major release lands on top of your integrations. Those answers only surface when someone asks for them in the room.
This checklist gives you 32 questions, grouped into seven categories: data model, instrument and system integration, implementation and migration, workflow and usability, AI and future readiness, security and compliance, and total cost and commercial terms. Each one has a box to check off live. It closes with seven red flags, from capabilities deferred to the roadmap through to answers that change between the sales demo and the technical validation session. Print one copy per vendor, record answers as each session ends, and compare side by side within 24 hours, before the details blur.
Ask for the answer in the room, not in a follow-up email.
FAQs
Cover seven areas: how the data model handles multiple measurement types, what instrument integration actually involves and who maintains it, what migration from your current system loses, how scientists retrieve historical data day to day, what the AI gets wrong today, how access is controlled across R&D, QC, and IT, and the all-in three-year cost. Ask for each to be demonstrated live rather than described.
The clearest are a capability deferred to a future roadmap, a refusal to show the system running on your data or a realistic equivalent, and integration answers that stop at “we can integrate with anything.” Also watch for a lack of reference customers with a similar workflow, and answers that shift between the sales demo and the technical validation session.
It depends on whether your bottleneck is capturing work, managing samples and tests, or connecting the two to quality and product data. The companion guide walks through all three options and where each one breaks down. This checklist applies to any of them, so every vendor answers the same questions.
