Summary: In this Article, you’ll get to read about —
Data room services are a great solution for companies that want to simplify business processes, work more efficiently, and yet reduce resources needed for successful dealmaking.
In the article below you’ll learn what the top virtual data room providers are and how to choose the best one. Also, find out why free cloud storage and physical data rooms are no good for business needs.
What is a Virtual Data Room?
A virtual data room (VDR) is a cloud solution designed for the secure storing and sharing of confidential business information.
Organizations from a variety of industries use data rooms in the following cases:
- Mergers and acquisitions (M&A). This transaction involves a lot of documents that contain confidential information. Companies undergoing an M&A use a VDR as a secure place where they can store and share data fast and easily.
- Due diligence. Due diligence occurs during business transactions like M&A, joint venture, or project finance. A data room helps to simplify and streamline such a complex and time-consuming process.
- Fundraising. Raising money for business is especially relevant for startups. With a data room, they can reduce fundraising time and maximize chances of success by quickly and effortlessly sharing data with investors.
- Initial public offering (IPO). Going public requires a big amount of paperwork, transparency, and yet security. Data room providers offer all necessary features and compliance to complete an IPO quickly and successfully.
How to Choose the Best Data Room Provider
Here are five main steps to take when looking for an electronic data room:
- Define your needs. Consider what you need a data room for, what kind of files will be stored, how many people will use it, and how much storage volume a project needs.
- Consider your budget. Define your budget limits, as data rooms’ pricing models and tariff plans vary a lot. It’s also important to make sure a VDR provider has transparent pricing without any hidden fees.
- Read the reviews. Find out what other users think about particular VDR services. You can read the reviews of the best data rooms here: https://data-rooms.us/.
- Schedule a demo. Contact the team of a VDR provider you got interested in and book a demo to learn more about its prices, features, and experience.
- Use a free trial. Test a data room and evaluate its features, user-friendliness, and efficiency to see if it corresponds to your project needs.
5 best Virtual Data Room Providers
Here’s a comparison of five top VDR vendors, so you can choose who’s best for your project in terms of features, prices, data storage capacity, and ease of use.
iDeals
Price: customized pricing
Data storage capacity: up to 1 TB
Number of users: unlimited
Free trial: 30 days
iDeals has been providing VDR services since 2008. Now it has 700,000 customers from 120,000 organizations. The company sees its mission in delivering an exceptional customer experience.
The service offers a variety of features among which are two-factor authentication, redaction, fence view, user activity tracking, reports, drag-n-drop upload, and live discussions. You can click here to read more about dataroom provider.
Ansarada
Price: from $399/month
Data storage capacity: from 250 MB to 4+GB
Number of users: unlimited
Free trial: 14 days
Ansarada has 15 years of experience in data room services. During this time, they have helped their clients to complete over 24,000+ critical deals. Among their customers are top companies, advisors, and governments.
Users choose Ansarada for its intuitive interface, high-security standards, professional customer support, and advanced features like four permission levels, customizable document watermarks, audit trail, and a mobile app.
DealRoom
Price: from $1,250/month
Data storage capacity: from 1 GB to 10 TB
Number of users: unlimited
Free trial: 14 days
DealRoom is a secure and easy-to-use service with over 2,000 customers. They mostly use it for pipeline management, due diligence, post-merger integration, and M&A projects.
Its best features are multi-factor authentication, customizable permissions, analytics, progress tracking, drag-n-drop, and bulk uploads.
Intralinks
Price: customized pricing
Data storage capacity: per-request information
Number of users: per-request information
Free trial: no
Intralinks was founded over 20 years ago. Customers mostly use its services for M&A transactions and due diligence.
Users choose Intralinks for a simplified process for adding users, detailed reporting, one-step document approval, and video support with Zoom Integration. The company also has an award-winning dedicated services group.
Firmex
Price: per-request information
Data storage capacity: up to 10 GB
Number of users: unlimited
Free trial: 14 days
Firmex is one of the most trusted virtual data room providers. It has over 4,000 clients from 110 countries who open 20,000 data rooms per year.
Users choose the vendor for quick and easy setup, 24/7/365 support, easy document uploading, and advanced user management features.
Bonus Content
To make sure a virtual data room is the best choice for your business, learn why it’s better than physical data rooms and free cloud storage. The differences are described below.
Virtual Data Rooms vs Physical Data Rooms
Companies used to store confidential data in physical data rooms. They were usually located in the head offices or banks, guarded 24/7, and filled with filing cabinets containing lots of paper documents. Only authorized people could have access to those data centers.
But today businesses choose online data room software as it’s more advantageous in comparison with traditional storage.
| Physical data rooms | Virtual data rooms | |
| Affordability | Extra expenses on rent, maintenance, security, and additional personnel | Prices start at about $99 per month |
| Accessibility | Pre-agreed schedule | Anytime and anywhere |
| Security | Risk of data loss during transit or because of natural calamities | Minimum risk of data loss due to real-time data backup and advanced security features |
Virtual Data Rooms vs Cloud Storage
The best cloud-based storage examples are Google Drive, OneDrive, and iCloud. These services are usually free or low-cost and have sufficient storage capacities for individual users. But they aren’t efficient for business purposes.
| Cloud storage | Virtual data rooms | |
| Security | Basic security features | Advanced security features like two-factor authentication, dynamic watermarking, audit logs, and granular user permissions |
| Features | Basic features for storing and sharing data | Advanced features like user activity tracking, reports, notifications, automatic index numbering, and customization |
| Support | Help Center | 24/7 support service via email, phone, or chat in multiple languages |
Key Takeaways
Here’s what you should know about choosing a virtual data room provider:
- The most common use cases are M&A, due diligence, IPO, and fundraising.
- To choose a VDR, you need to define your needs and budget, read reviews, and use a free trial.
- The best VDR providers are iDeals, Ansarada, DealRoom, Intralinks, and Firmex.
- Physical data rooms are more expensive and less accessible than VDRs.
Traditional cloud storage is less secure and convenient than VDRs.
