# Alma Reviews **Vendor:** Ex Libris, a ProQuest Company **Category:** [Library Management Systems](https://www.g2.com/categories/library-management-systems) **Average Rating:** 3.3/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 23 ## About Alma Alma is a library management solution that supports your library operations from selection to meta management, digitization, and fulfillment that helps you consolidate, manage and extend workflows systems and more. ## Alma Reviews ### 1. Powerful tool, slow implementation of improvements, customer service is lacking **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 20, 2024 **What do you like best about Alma?** Alma allows a library good access to their own data - the Alma Analytics tool is pretty accessible for all staff to use and can let us create most of the reports we want. The implementation team that we worked with was excellent. Some tasks are easier in Alma than they were in our previous system (Sierra). **What do you dislike about Alma?** The customer service is not good. We regularly open tickets that take more than a week to get a substantive response, and occasionally have tickets open for months that we can't get answers on even with multiple requests for updates. Customer service relies heavily on the enhancements process - if something isn't working the way a library expects, they tell us to submit an enhancement request for it. Because this happens so often, there are far too many important features that don't get developed. They offer chat support, which is occasionally helpful. More often than not, though, their response is that they will open a ticket to investigate further. In those cases it would be better to have a chatbot that could open a ticket for you - at least the response times would be faster. We've also had support issues where, a few days after the ticket is opened, they will ask for information about the issue that has already been provided in the initial ticket. **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** Alma is our central system for acquiring, describing, and providing access to information resources, including physical materials, subscription online resources, and digitized versions of our own unique collections ### 2. Not intuitive like other learning management systems. **Rating:** 0.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Darlene H. | Secondary School Principal, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 24, 2021 **What do you like best about Alma?** It gave a customized product. Report cards and progress reports were made to our specifications. **What do you dislike about Alma?** The reports section was awful. Unless you knew the name of the report you had scroll through all the reports in order to find the one you wanted. Nothing felt organized. I've worked with many LMS and of all of them, Alma was the least intuitive. At the time that I began using alma, they didn't even have a transcript function for schools. Later, it was full of errors and had to be checked constantly. **Recommendations to others considering Alma:** Look elsewhere, there are other LMS that are much better. **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** Alma was able to give the freedom to report on what we wanted and not just standard. For instance, we had characteristics that most schools do not evaluate such as zest, social intelligence, etc. It also linked to schoology. ### 3. Not very user friendly, but useful for managing inventory **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tommy S. | Student Technology Assistant, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 29, 2019 **What do you like best about Alma?** I am able to track library patron "checkout" history, as well as manage my inventory to see what items are outstanding at the end of a given day **What do you dislike about Alma?** The interface is not very user friendly. Only with the guidance of my boss, was I able to figure out how to run certain report functions. I was hoping I would have been able to figure it out on my own, but it was almost impossible. There are too many options to select in the system **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** Inventory management has helped us track down students who have either forgotten to return an item, or verify if an item was outstanding or not. ### 4. Useful software, but constantly changing **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Libraries | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 20, 2019 **What do you like best about Alma?** I love the ability to add notes to accounts and it makes item circulation very simple. **What do you dislike about Alma?** With every update that fixes or augments the software, some unrelated problems seems to pop up. Right now, we have to wait for the quick print pop up to go away before we can scan another book in and it slows down our process. Also, whenever I access the calendar, the copy option pops up and blocks the view of some of the calendar's contents (mainly the month). **Recommendations to others considering Alma:** It's really good and useful overall, but there are some kinks that need to be worked out before I can fully recommend it to someone. It being cloud-based means that sometimes there are outages in all of our libraries, but it helps to be able to access your personalized version of Alma anywhere and have the information and tools where you expect it to be. **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** With the ability to look at the history of patron accounts and item records we are able to problem solve and verify information that patrons give us. It is also very useful to be able to see what emails Alma has sent out to patrons. ### 5. Why Alma for your library. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Libraries | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 13, 2019 **What do you like best about Alma?** To my opinion Alma supports the entire suite of library operations, selection, acquisition, metadata management, digitization, and fulfillment. **What do you dislike about Alma?** Alma is serving our library operations just as we thought it should and therefore i haven't experienced any disappointment. **Recommendations to others considering Alma:** This software is continually updated to support and promote open standards and initiatives. **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** Through my interactions with Alma i have been able to optimize workflow through shared data and collaborative services as well as a cloud-based infrastructure. Alma provided us with automated and exception-based workflows with dynamic notifications to streamline workflows. Why i love using this tool is because management of digital and electronic resources is unified with shelf management and automated storage integration within a single system. ### 6. My views, insights and recommendations on Alma. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Emily A. | Library Aide, Libraries, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 30, 2019 **What do you like best about Alma?** To start with i surely enjoy the user friendly interface provided by this software. It is email enabled and this communication is simple, quick and cheap. **What do you dislike about Alma?** I hard for me to point out any dislikes for now about this software. **Recommendations to others considering Alma:** Since i started using this application it have been running smoothly and the fact that new updates keeps coming up i love using it even more. I hope you will try it out **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is easy to primary integrate functions of the library in one browser and this makes work easier. It also wonderful in cataloging and the whole management process. ### 7. Useful for Academic Library Circulation **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lesley D. | Library Circulation Aide, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 10, 2019 **What do you like best about Alma?** Customization of quick links on the main page allows for easy access to most-used tools and pages. Tools for various departments can be in the same place while allowing differing levels of access based on user. There is lots of customization available to best fit our needs, and we are able to link new patrons to pre-existing institutional records. **What do you dislike about Alma?** Instead of circulation staff having their own log-in, we had to switch to one log-in for each of the two circulation computers because there was a limited number of users allowed within our budget. **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's a much more intuitive and user-friendly system that we previously had, with easy catalog, user, or material search. ### 8. A Necessity for Libraries **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Libraries | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 06, 2019 **What do you like best about Alma?** Alma makes it easy to organize requested books by their location, which largely increases efficiency and productivity. **What do you dislike about Alma?** Sometimes Alma generates duplicate slips, which can cause an employee to mark a book as missing, when in reality it has just been checked out already. **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** The largest benefit of Alma is how it streamlines many tasks at the library. ### 9. ALMA - The New and Improved Check-Out System **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Autumn F. | Account Representative, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 12, 2018 **What do you like best about Alma?** As a circulation desk assistant, I use this software every day at work. It is much more modern than the last system we used, and I enjoy the functionality. **What do you dislike about Alma?** It was difficult to understand it all at first, and there were some issues that arose that had to be worked out. **Recommendations to others considering Alma:** If you are considering ALMA, go for it! While you may be hesitant to change or try something new, after working with ALMA for a short time, you will love all that it has to offer. It is a great asset for businesses and now that I use it, I'm not sure how our business functioned beforehand. **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** The main librarians using ALMA had some conflicts between each other at first, simply due to the updated change. It also resulted in some issues with item check-outs. However, the benefits outweigh the problems greatly. This updated version is easier for all users, and provides accurate information. ### 10. Why? **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2018 **What do you like best about Alma?** At the end of the day I get to leave it. **What do you dislike about Alma?** It takes more time to do everything now. It is by far less efficient than our last system, aleph. We work with many different languages but our pick list cannot separate the languages so they are all mixed up and they are horribly ordered. Also, the simplest of things like discharging and checking out to patrons, which is by far the greatest volume of work done, is much slower than before. Simply terrible. **Recommendations to others considering Alma:** Don't **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** N/A ### 11. Better with the new updates **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Avery L. | Technology & Digital Services Librarian and Professor of Legal Research, Higher Education, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 29, 2018 **What do you like best about Alma?** The interface recently got a facelift and although the navigation still has no clear organization, the look and ease of use is a bit better than the previous version. **What do you dislike about Alma?** The names of each top menu category make no sense and if you are a beginner or in training, it takes some time to figure out where each feature and function is located. **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use this as our main circulation system at Emory to check out and return items, as well as look up patron records. It is a lot smoother than the systems I have used at other universities, however, there is plenty of room for improvement. The cleanliness of the new look does add value to the product. ### 12. Quick and easy way to manage equipment rentals **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Alma?** Alma automatically generates receipts and reminders via email to members of our campus community who use our Classroom AV equipment. It cuts down on the additional phone calls we receive in our busy office about due dates. **What do you dislike about Alma?** There isn't anything specific I don't like about Alma. It's pretty straightforward. **Recommendations to others considering Alma:** Alma is a good choice for organization looking to more efficiently manage rentals of equipment and library materials. It offers the opportunity to classify your clients into categories. that determine the level of permissions they have regarding the types of equipment they have available to them and the length of loan time. **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are easily able to manage the length of equipment rentals to users based on the permissions afforded to them based on their role in the university. If an extension is needed for legitimate reasons we can make adjustments to the due date fairly easily. ### 13. Not very straighforward **Rating:** 2.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Libraries | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 21, 2018 **What do you like best about Alma?** I like that with Alma there is more than one way of cataloging materials, and that you can synchronize systems **What do you dislike about Alma?** Many times it has made me hunt for what i was looking for. Other systems, such as polaris ILS, have been much more straightforward. **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** Alma is a sort of one stop shop, and if you're willing to take more time to look for what you're trying to find, you're able to customize search results. ### 14. Good Circulation System **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 01, 2018 **What do you like best about Alma?** It gets the job done. We use it for equipment check out and it does what its supposed to do. They have made it easier to navigate sometime within the last year so that has been helpful. You no longer have to go to a drop down menu to get to the check out or return page. It's now an option on the first page. **What do you dislike about Alma?** The system is primarily used in the library and fits the purpose there, but my department uses it for equipment checkout and it isn't the most helpful when the information on who checked out what is deleted after returning something. Especially if something is found to be broken. **Recommendations to others considering Alma:** It gets the job done for a circulation system. **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** n/a ### 15. Alma Review **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Libraries | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2018 **What do you like best about Alma?** I enjoy the friendly user-interface. i also enjoy the aesthetic and overall simplicity of the home screen. **What do you dislike about Alma?** The advanced features could be more user friendly. There could be more admin options to help resolve client issues easier. **Recommendations to others considering Alma:** I recommend this to anyone having a system where they are loaning out equipment. **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use this to loan out audio-visual equipment. The library also uses this to check out books and other non-A/v equipment. This is the go-to tool that out department uses to check out audio-visual equipment. We use this and another system but this one is more effective . For that reason we use this for our daily check out items and other high use items. ### 16. Good ideas, execution needs work **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 13, 2017 **What do you like best about Alma?** The fact that Alma is browser-based, is in theory a huge plus institutionally, however the downside is the delay in records appearing in the database once they are added by staff. The interface is decent once you become familiar with it. My understanding is that support is very good although the laundry list of things to fix is so long at the moment that actually fixing something take some time. This should get ironed out over time. **What do you dislike about Alma?** The use of alma is not intuitive, there are far too many clicks required to accomplish basic tasks. Specifically with regard to non-latin cataloguing, there is no easy way to add diacritics in transliterated fields forcing me to use another software then importing. This often means going back and forth importing, merging, deleting, exporting etc. Also, then you often have to wait anywhere from 12 to 72 hours for new catalogued entries to appear as searchable from the user perspective. Non-latin scripts that read from right to left display very poorly! **Recommendations to others considering Alma:** Work with other libraries regionally to negotiate better terms in pricing. Expect a long on-boarding for staff. **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** Integrate all of the primary functions of the library in one browser-based ILS. Allow for flexibility and responsiveness in tailoring the system to institutional needs. ### 17. Bumpy Implementation, powerful software **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chris A. | Library Service Specialist, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 20, 2018 **What do you like best about Alma?** Looks great, wonderful for catalog searching. **What do you dislike about Alma?** Difficult to work with. Feel like I'm constantly peeling back layers to get to where I want to be. **Recommendations to others considering Alma:** Establish detailed & accurate workflows before implementation. **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** Very reliable service, seem to be responsive and knowledgeable about their product. ### 18. ALMA Pluses and Minuses **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 25, 2017 **What do you like best about Alma?** ALMA is fairly easy to use once you get the hang of it. It enables you to complete many workflow operations with a few clicks of a button - once you get it configured right. **What do you dislike about Alma?** It is not as intuitive as other systems - and many processes that should be one-step require multiple. It could be more streamlined. It has been harder for our student workers to use than previous systems that were not as powerful. **Recommendations to others considering Alma:** ALMA is a great tool if it is configured correctly. Once you get it configured it works great! **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use Alma as our circulation management software. It enables us to circulate items across the entire network of all our campuses. It enables us to quickly receive and send items across the campus or across the street. ### 19. A simple program with lots of great features **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Fostina C. | Director of Housing, Higher Education, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 02, 2017 **What do you like best about Alma?** I used this program at my school library to check out and check in books. Look up books and process. It is very easy to use and teach. There are several student workers who use our system on a daily and we never have issues. **What do you dislike about Alma?** Updates can set you back. There should be an offline back up for books. Changing passwords too frequently- this is hard to keep up with. We normally rotate between 2 passwords as a means to deal with the demands of this program. **Recommendations to others considering Alma:** Practice **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easy way to find out what is there and whats not. Who has what and who doesn't. I like the times that are incorporated checking out items. ### 20. Alma **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Agnes L. | Resource Sharing Manager, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 19, 2017 **What do you like best about Alma?** I used mostly the Interlibrary Loan module with Alma. I like the messaging within this module and the simple interface. Very intuitive not difficult to train and comprehend for staff **What do you dislike about Alma?** Not very customizable and each institution generally has different workflow **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** Interlibrary Loan collaboration with libraries to submit requests amongst each other ### 21. Not the most intuitive system out there. **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 12, 2017 **What do you like best about Alma?** It was a browser based system that allows for individual configuration. **What do you dislike about Alma?** It is so unintuitive. Simple tasks like marking a book missing is incredibly difficult to locate within the system. **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our old ILS had not been updates in decades. It was easy to use, intuitive but not up to date with modern needs of a library. ALMA was supposed to correct that but it's been a difficult implementation. ### 22. Easy to use and access. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 25, 2017 **What do you like best about Alma?** The ease and user-friendliness. It is better than the previous software. **What do you dislike about Alma?** It did not perform as well when using internet explorer. Thus, now we use google chrome and it works better. **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** Not any problems at the moment. ### 23. It works but it's a software you live with **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 15, 2017 **What do you like best about Alma?** The cloud based function. Also, as a cataloger, I like how I can be in the same mode when processing new and incoming books. **What do you dislike about Alma?** It sucks for managing ongoing subscriptions, both monographs and serials. It also is one program where being more comfortable with computers helps. I will say one of the highlights of our Alma training was getting some joy out of seeing how flustered the dinosaur staff who had been around since the Carter and Reagan administrations got. I was really hoping that Alma would make them realize they can't keep up with the job anymore. **Recommendations to others considering Alma:** It's not ideal for a consortium system, at least it wasn't two years ago. We're still having issues with it playing nice between system schools, including something that is causing difficulty for patrons currently. **What problems is Alma solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's solved the issue of finding a good platform for cataloging digitial and electronic materials. ## Alma Discussions - [What is Alma used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-alma-used-for) - [What does Alma do?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-does-alma-do) - [What is the best school management software?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-the-best-school-management-software) - [How much does alma cost?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-much-does-alma-cost) - [What is Alma app?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-alma-app) - [View Alma pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/ex-libris-alma/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-11+06%3A28%3A59+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=27076cf5-285a-4b78-a618-42c15a991398&secure%5Btoken%5D=c711b638176565b64daa4395b31517623f44120b6af18f371bfb1757c447377d&format=llm_user) ## Top Alma Alternatives - [Sierra ILS](https://www.g2.com/products/sierra-ils/reviews) - 4.0/5.0 (24 reviews) - [SirsiDynix Symphony](https://www.g2.com/products/sirsidynix-symphony/reviews) - 3.7/5.0 (16 reviews) - [Koha](https://www.g2.com/products/koha/reviews) - 4.2/5.0 (11 reviews)