iBabs is a per-seat board portal listed at £12.64 a user a month on the UK Government's G-Cloud 14 framework and used by more than 30 NHS trusts (both checked on 2026-08-03). Boards whose need has grown past meeting and pack management, particularly to formal effectiveness assessment, should compare Convene, Diligent, Decision Time and BoardServe.
This comparison of iBabs alternatives is BoardServe's own, written from our own research into what each vendor publishes on its own site and on the UK Digital Marketplace. It is not an independent review, and BoardServe is one of the alternatives described below. Every claim about another vendor carries its source and the date we checked it.
It is written for the company secretary or governance lead at an NHS trust, public body or other UK board that already runs on iBabs, or has it on a shortlist, and is now being asked for something the portal was not bought to do: a formal board performance review, a skills matrix that survives the year, or an evidence trail an auditor will accept. That is a change of category, not a change of supplier, and it is worth naming as such before a procurement starts.
What the board needs to decide before switching from iBabs
- Whether the need is still papers, minutes and actions. If meeting and pack management is genuinely the whole requirement, iBabs is a low-cost, published-price answer to it and a switch adds cost without adding capability. The case for moving rests on scope that has grown, not on dissatisfaction with what a portal does.
- Whether assessment is now in scope. Board, committee, chair and individual director reviews, skills audits and declarations are a different product category from board packs. Decide whether they belong in the same system as the meetings or in a separate one, because that answer rules half the market in or out.
- Procurement continuity. iBabs, Convene, Diligent and Decision Time all appear on G-Cloud 14 (all checked on 2026-08-03). If a call-off through the Digital Marketplace is how your organisation buys, confirm each shortlisted vendor's own framework status before the business case is written, not after.
- The real per-seat position at your board size. A published per-user rate is easy to compare and easy to underestimate. Count observers, co-opted members, committee-only attendees and the executive team, then add any one-off setup fee, before comparing that total against a platform-level quote.
- Whether AI-assisted analysis is actually wanted. Some boards want drafting and analysis support; some will not accept it near director feedback. Settle the position first, because it changes the shortlist and it changes the security questions.
- Data residency and sector security requirements. NHS and public-sector buyers typically have their own hosting, certification and information-governance conditions. Put them in the specification rather than discovering them at contract stage.
Which iBabs alternatives suit a UK board?
Four alternatives cover most UK cases. Convene suits housing associations, with a dedicated governance, risk and compliance product. Diligent suits large multi-entity groups. Decision Time suits UK public bodies wanting a UK-headquartered vendor on G-Cloud. BoardServe suits boards adding effectiveness assessment, skills audits and an evidence trail to what a portal already does.
Convene, from Azeus, is the closest like-for-like portal with stronger sector-specific positioning in one segment. Its pricing page lists three tiers, Lite, Standard and Enterprise, each ending in a request to quote rather than a figure (Azeus Convene pricing, checked on 2026-08-03). Its housing page states that a wide range of housing associations rely on it, and that its Convene Assure GRC suite supports governance reviews, board evaluations and skills assessments for the housing sector (Convene housing sector page, checked on 2026-08-03); it is also listed on G-Cloud 14 (checked on 2026-08-03).
Diligent is the scale answer rather than the like-for-like one: a governance suite covering board meetings, entity management, ESG reporting and director questionnaires, with evaluation sold as a module alongside the rest. Diligent BoardBooks Limited lists Diligent Board Portal: Governance Cloud at £700 a licence a year on G-Cloud 14 (checked on 2026-08-03); commercial pricing outside that route is quote-only. It publishes SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, ISO 27001, ISO 27017 and ISO 27018 certifications across Boards, BoardEffect, Entities and related services (Diligent newsroom, checked on 2026-08-03), which matters if certification evidence is part of your specification.
Decision Time is the option for buyers who weight a UK vendor and a G-Cloud call-off heavily. Decision Time Meetings is listed on G-Cloud 14 alongside separate risk and grants listings (checked on 2026-08-03). No published price was found in this research pass; board-rooms.co.uk records the company as headquartered in Antrim, Northern Ireland and acquired by Advanced in April 2022 (board-rooms.co.uk, checked on 2026-08-03), which is a third-party account rather than the vendor's own statement.
BoardServe is the option for a board whose gap is assessment rather than meetings. It covers board, committee, chair and individual director effectiveness reviews, board skills audits and competency matrices, AI governance maturity assessments aligned to ISO/IEC 42001 and the EU AI Act, declarations of interests and conflicts with audit trails, and AI-assisted analytics exported to Word for the pack, alongside board and committee administration, meeting packs, attendance and actions. Every response and request is time-stamped, with access scoped by organisation and role. It is licensed per organisation and quoted after a walkthrough.
| Platform | What it primarily is | Published UK price (checked on 2026-08-03) | Effectiveness-review support as published | AI features as published | UK sector evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| iBabs | Meeting and board-pack management | G-Cloud: £12.64 a user a month; board-room.org reports £10 a user and a £995 one-off setup fee | No board-assessment capability found in this research pass | None found in this research pass | Vendor states 30+ NHS trusts; Salisbury NHS Trust case study; G-Cloud 14 |
| Convene | Board portal with a housing-sector governance, risk and compliance product | Quote-only across Lite, Standard and Enterprise | Vendor states Convene Assure supports governance reviews, board evaluations and skills assessments | Not sourced in this research pass | Housing-sector product page; G-Cloud 14 |
| Diligent Boards | Governance suite: boards, entities, ESG, director questionnaires | G-Cloud: £700 a licence a year; commercial pricing quote-only | Evaluation sold as a module alongside the wider suite | Not sourced in this research pass | UK entity, Diligent BoardBooks Limited, on G-Cloud 14 |
| Decision Time | Meetings, with separate risk and grants products | No published figure found in this research pass | Not sourced in this research pass | Not sourced in this research pass | Listed on G-Cloud 14; UK headquarters per board-rooms.co.uk |
| BoardServe | Governance platform built around assessment cycles, with board and committee administration | Licensed per organisation, quoted after a walkthrough | Board, committee, chair and individual director reviews, internal or externally facilitated, with findings tracked to an action plan | AI-assisted analytics and board-ready Word reports; AI governance maturity assessments | Built around UK codes: Provision 21, the Charity Governance Code, NHS England's well-led framework, the NHF Code of Governance |
Sources for the table, all checked on 2026-08-03: iBabs G-Cloud listing and board-room.org's iBabs review; Convene pricing, housing sector page and G-Cloud listing; Diligent G-Cloud listing; Decision Time Meetings G-Cloud listing. "Not sourced in this research pass" means our 3 August 2026 pass did not find published material confirming the capability, not that the vendor lacks it: confirm with the vendor before it decides a shortlist. G-Cloud figures are UK public-sector rate-card prices and may differ from a commercial quote for the same product. The full UK market comparison covers the wider vendor set, including the three that publish a complete price list.
What does iBabs do well?
iBabs publishes a per-seat price, which most of this market does not, and it has an evidenced UK public-sector track record. It is sold in the UK through Euronext Corporate Solutions UK Limited, listed on G-Cloud 14, used by more than 30 NHS trusts on the vendor's own account, and rated 4.6 out of 5 on Capterra.
The published price is the substantive point. On G-Cloud 14 the Board Portal and Meeting Management Solution is listed at £12.64 a user a month, roughly £152 a user a year before any organisation-wide minimum (checked on 2026-08-03). Separately, board-room.org's review cites a lower figure of £10 a user, plus a one-off £995 setup fee covering onsite or offsite training and further training sessions at £595 (board-room.org, checked on 2026-08-03). Those two figures do not reconcile and iBabs does not publish a single commercial price list, so treat the G-Cloud rate as the firm number and the rest as reported.
The sector evidence is real rather than implied. iBabs states it is used by over 30 NHS trusts and publishes a case study with Salisbury NHS Trust (iBabs case study, checked on 2026-08-03). On review sites it holds 4.6 out of 5 from 56 reviews, scoring 4.6 for ease of use and 4.7 for customer service (Capterra, checked on 2026-08-03). For a trust board whose requirement is packs, minutes and actions, that combination of a published rate, a G-Cloud route and a comparable NHS reference is a strong position, and none of it is displaced by anything below.
Does iBabs include board effectiveness assessment?
No board-assessment capability was found in BoardServe's 2026-08-03 research pass into iBabs' published material. That is a statement about what iBabs publishes, not about what it may hold on a roadmap. Boards that need a formal Provision 21 review instrument should confirm the position directly with iBabs before assuming a portal upgrade covers it.
The distinction that matters is between a survey field and a review instrument. A portal can hold a questionnaire; a performance review needs the same questions across cycles so that change is measurable, confidential handling of feedback about named individuals, coverage of all four lenses the Code sets out, and findings that become tracked actions with owners and dates. Our guide to what software actually supports an external board effectiveness review sets out those tests in full, including how other vendors position assessment within their tier structures.
Which governance codes expect a board performance review?
Provision 21 of the UK Corporate Governance Code 2024 asks listed boards for a formal annual review of the board, its committees, the chair and individual directors, externally facilitated at least every three years in FTSE 350 companies. NHS England and the Charity Governance Code set comparable expectations for trusts and charities.
| Sector | What the code or framework expects | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Listed and FTSE 350 companies | A formal and rigorous annual review of the board, its committees, the chair and individual directors, with a regular externally facilitated review at least every three years in FTSE 350 companies, applying for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2025 | FRC, UK Corporate Governance Code 2024 |
| NHS provider trusts | Self-review against the well-led framework, with in-depth, independently facilitated developmental reviews every three to five years treated as good practice | NHS England, the insightful provider board and well-led framework |
| Charities | An annual review of governance, with larger charities expected to involve an external expert every three years | Charity Governance Code |
| Housing associations | Board effectiveness is one of four core principles, alongside mission and values, strategy and delivery, and control and assurance | National Housing Federation, Code of Governance 2020 |
For an NHS trust, this is the point at which the software question stops being about meetings. The well-led framework expects self-review to be evidenced, and a developmental review every three to five years produces findings someone has to own and track between cycles. A portal holds the papers from that process. It does not run it.
Common mistakes when replacing a board portal
Assuming a survey feature is a review instrument. A free-text form collects answers. It does not hold a consistent question set across cycles, scope access to feedback about named individuals, or carry findings into a tracked action plan, and those are the parts a chair is asked to evidence.
Switching for AI features without checking which tier they sit in. Capability that appears on a vendor's feature page is not always in the tier being quoted. OnBoard's published tier breakdown places board assessments, director questionnaires and skills tracking on Ultimate, its top tier, rather than on Essentials or Premium (checked on 2026-08-03, via OnBoard's tier documentation as recorded by I'mBoard). Confirm the tier before the budget is set.
Losing the procurement route by accident. If G-Cloud is how the organisation buys, a shortlisted vendor without a current framework listing means a different, slower procurement. Check each vendor's own Digital Marketplace entry at shortlist stage rather than assuming category-wide coverage.
Comparing a per-seat rate against a platform quote as though they were the same number. Count every person who needs access, including committee-only members and observers, add any one-off setup fee, and compare annual totals against annual totals for the same scope.
Running the switch and the first review at once. A migration year is a poor year to also change the review instrument. Move the meetings first, or run the first assessment cycle before the packs move, but do not do both across the same board calendar.
Treating director feedback as ordinary board content. Responses about named individuals are more sensitive than most papers a portal holds. Agree access, retention and reporting routes before the first question goes out, whichever platform holds them.
Where to start
Write the specification around the capability that prompted the review, not around the vendor you already have. If it is genuinely packs and minutes, iBabs' published G-Cloud rate is a clear benchmark to hold every other quote against. If it is assessment, skills, declarations and an evidence trail, price those as a separate line and ask each vendor to show them working rather than list them.
If assessment is the gap, BoardServe's board effectiveness reviews cover the board, its committees, the chair and individual directors, internally or with an external facilitator, with findings tracked to an action plan between cycles and a time-stamped record behind every response, alongside the board and committee administration a portal already does.