IBEAMS alternatives for UK madrasahs and maktabs
IBEAMS is the name most UK maktabs have heard of, and for good reason: it has been around longer than almost anything else in this market. If you are looking at alternatives, it is worth being clear about what it actually does well before you move, because switching a live register mid-year is not a small job.
What IBEAMS is, fairly stated
IBEAMS is built and maintained by IBEUK in Leicester. It says it is trusted by more than 200 Islamic schools and maktabs, and displays a Trustpilot rating of 4.4 out of 5. Among UK madrasah software, that is the strongest track record on the table, and no honest comparison should skip past it.
Its published feature list is genuinely broad. Registers, fees with integrated payments, invoicing and fee reminders, a parent portal, messaging and newsletters, role-based access, syllabus tracking, exam and test logging, merits and demerits, a custom curriculum builder, Hifz progress diaries, daily automated backups, a data migration service and onboarding webinars.
Pricing is published, which is more than most of its rivals manage: £15 a month for up to 50 students, £30 for up to 150, and £60 for unlimited. Several things sit outside that as paid add-ons, including the student diary and phone support at £10 a month each, and custom SMTP at £3 a month. No free trial is advertised on the pricing page.
The honest reasons people look for an alternative
None of these are criticisms of IBEAMS as a product. They are simply things it does not set out to do, and if one of them is your problem then no amount of good register software will fix it.
- You pay teachers and you are running payroll separately. IBEAMS does not mention staff payroll, PAYE, National Insurance, pensions or payslips anywhere. Neither does any other UK madrasah platform we could find. If you have paid staff, this is usually the real gap.
- You want the price to include everything. Paid add-ons are a legitimate way to price software, but if the student diary and phone support both matter to you, the monthly figure is £20 higher than the headline.
- You want to try it properly before committing. IBEAMS does not advertise a free trial, so you are relying on a demo rather than your own data in your own hands.
- You want teachers to have their own portal. The feature list covers a staff sign-in system, but not a separate teacher portal with its own register, records and marking.
The alternatives worth comparing
These are the platforms a UK madrasah realistically weighs up against IBEAMS. Everything here comes from each product's own public website, read in August 2026.
| IBEAMS | MaktabMate | e-Maktab | IlmFlow | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built in | UK, Leicester | UK, London data | UK | UK |
| Hifz tracking | Yes, progress diaries | Yes, juz by juz with tests | Not mentioned | Yes, Sabak, Sabak Para, Dhor |
| Fees and payments | Yes, integrated | Yes, card in testing | Yes, direct debit | Yes, to your own bank |
| Teacher portal | Staff sign-in only | Not mentioned | Not mentioned | Yes |
| UK staff payroll | Not mentioned | Not mentioned | Not mentioned | Yes |
| Free trial | Not advertised | 30 days | Not published | 30 days |
| Price at 150 students | £30 per month | £19.99 per month | On request | £37.50 per month |
On price, plainly
IlmFlow is not the cheapest of these and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. At 150 students IBEAMS is £30 a month and MaktabMate is £19.99, against £37.50 on IlmFlow's 25p per active student. The gap widens as you grow.
What changes the arithmetic is what sits inside the price. IlmFlow has no add-on tiers, so support, the parent portal, the teacher portal, exams, reports and payroll are all included at that figure. If you would be paying IBEAMS for the student diary and phone support on top, the two land closer together than the headline suggests. And if payroll is currently costing you a separate subscription or an accountant's time, that is the number worth comparing against.
Work it out at your actual student count rather than the advertised price. For a small madrasah under 60 children, IBEAMS at £15 and IlmFlow at its £15 minimum are the same money.
When you should stay with IBEAMS
A comparison written by a competitor is worth very little if it never reaches this conclusion, so here it is.
- You are on it, it works, and nobody is complaining. Migrating a live madrasah mid-year carries real risk, and "slightly better software" is not a good enough reason.
- You rely on something IlmFlow does not have. Merits and demerits, a custom curriculum builder and detailed syllabus tracking are all IBEAMS features with no direct IlmFlow equivalent.
- Track record matters more to your committee than features. IBEAMS has 200+ institutions and years of history. IlmFlow is in its first year and has no comparable list. If your trustees need proven, that is a fair and reasonable answer.
- You are over 300 students and price is the deciding factor. IBEAMS at £60 for unlimited will beat per-student pricing at that size.
How to switch without losing anything, if you do move
Whichever platform you move to, the risk is the same: half your records end up in one system and half in another. This sequence avoids that.
- Move at a term boundary, never mid-term. The register is the thing you cannot reconstruct afterwards.
- Export everything from your current system first and keep the file, even after the migration looks successful.
- Import the student list before anything else, then check the count matches your own register by hand.
- Run both systems in parallel for two weeks. Tedious, but it is how you find the gap while you still have both.
- Send parents their new login only once staff are comfortable. Parents asking questions your teachers cannot answer yet is the fastest way to lose confidence in a switch.
Your data, your madrasah
Switching software means moving named children's attendance and progress records, so it is worth asking any platform, IlmFlow included, where that data lives, who can see it, and whether you can get it back out. On IlmFlow, each madrasah's data is kept private to that madrasah, fee payments go straight to your own bank rather than through IlmFlow, and a full export is available on request.
See our plain-English guide to what UK GDPR actually requires of a madrasah, and how IlmFlow protects the data it holds.
Where IlmFlow fits
IlmFlow publishes this page, so weigh this section accordingly and judge the rest on whether it was fair to IBEAMS.
IlmFlow is UK built, covers the register, Hifz and Quran tracking, fees to your own bank, exams and reports, and parent and teacher portals, with everything included in one price and a 30-day free trial. The thing it does that no other UK madrasah platform advertises is staff payroll: PAYE, National Insurance, pension deductions, payslips and P60s. Filing directly to HMRC through RTI is on the roadmap and is not live yet.
It is newer and dearer at scale than IBEAMS. If neither of those is the deciding factor for you, it is worth thirty days of your own data to find out.
Common questions
What are the best IBEAMS alternatives in the UK?
The realistic UK alternatives are IlmFlow, MaktabMate and e-Maktab, with MadrasaSIMS as a broader school-administration option. MaktabMate is the cheapest at £4.99 to £19.99 a month flat and does juz-by-juz Hifdh tracking. e-Maktab is strongest on collecting fees by direct debit. IlmFlow is the only one that also runs UK staff payroll. Ilmify and Alif Cloud are often suggested but are built for India and the Gulf, and for North America, respectively.
How much does IBEAMS cost?
IBEAMS publishes three tiers: £15 a month for up to 50 students, £30 a month for up to 150, and £60 a month for unlimited students and teachers, with no setup fee. Some features are paid add-ons on top, including the student diary and phone support at £10 a month each and custom SMTP at £3 a month. No free trial is advertised on its pricing page.
Does IBEAMS do Hifz tracking?
Yes. IBEAMS lists Hifz progress diaries, which record Hifz progress, revision, targets and teacher notes. If detailed daily memorisation tracking is your main requirement, it is worth comparing that against IlmFlow, which records the three daily listenings of Sabak, Sabak Para and Dhor separately, and MaktabMate, which tracks juz by juz with tests.
Does IBEAMS handle UK payroll for madrasah teachers?
No. IBEAMS does not mention staff payroll, PAYE, National Insurance, pensions or payslips in its published feature list. We checked the published feature list of every other UK madrasah platform we could find and none of them offers payroll either, apart from IlmFlow. Most madrasahs therefore run payroll separately from their student management software.
Should I switch away from IBEAMS?
Not automatically. If it works and nobody is complaining, staying put is usually the right call, because migrating a live madrasah carries real risk. The clearest reasons to look elsewhere are paying staff and needing payroll, wanting everything included rather than priced as add-ons, or wanting to trial software with your own data before committing. If you do move, switch at a term boundary, export everything first, and run both systems in parallel for a fortnight.
IlmFlow is UK built, includes staff payroll and every feature in one price, and comes with a 30-day free trial so you can compare it against IBEAMS using your own register rather than a demo.