Virtual Data Room Providers

Virtual data room providers facilitate deals like mergers and acquisitions, tenders, capital raises and IPOs by enabling crucial information to be shared between companies and authorized third parties like bidders, advisors and investors through highly secure, purpose-built software.

Virtual data rooms make effective due diligence possible, and the best virtual data rooms can even increase the likelihood of a deal succeeding and improve its outcome.

Learn more: what is a virtual data room?

In deals like M&A, where a data room is needed, there is a lot at stake and the virtual data room has to be highly secure, reliable and powerful to be up to the job. But not every solution offered as virtual data rooms are.

When everything is on the line, from your business to your career to your reputation, being able to compare and choose the best virtual data room provider is vital.

How to compare virtual data rooms

A virtual data room is a critical tool in a complex process. Virtual data rooms need to be reviewed and compared on:

Security

Your virtual data room will need to allow a small number of people outside your organization to see your most sensitive information - while ensuring that none of it is exposed to unauthorized parties.

The best virtual data rooms offer this level of security, plus easy-to-use security controls that let you safely determine which users can access what, and when.

Learn more: how secure is a virtual data room?

Control

Managing a high-stakes deal is stressful at the best of times. A virtual data room that gives you all the controls you need - without being difficult to use - is important for keeping stress and risk to an absolute minimum.

A virtual data room should be easy to setup, customize and assign permissions and roles.

Speed

When you’re dealing with potential bidders and investors, you need to be able to move fast. Virtual data rooms should be fast to setup and configure, allow you to bulk upload documents over high-speed connections and respond to any questions immediately.

Q&A

Q&A is a complex and crucial part of the due diligence process, but not all virtual data rooms have Q&A tools sophisticated yet simple enough to handle the task. Some virtual data rooms can’t handle Q&A at all.

Any virtual data room used for due diligence needs powerful Q&A workflows, roles and features.

Features

Most virtual data room providers offer a different set of features depending on the specific purpose their data rooms are built for.

When comparing virtual data rooms on their features, you should choose those that match your use case. Don’t pay for extra features you don’t need that only complicate using the data room. Insight

The more intelligence you have about your material information and the activity in your virtual data room, the better positioned you are to close your deal and maximize value.

The best Data Room software offers detailed, customizable reporting on potential bidders, investors and their activity.

Support

Immediate access to expert virtual data rooms support 24/7 can be the difference between a successful deal and a failed one.

With an experienced support team on tap at all times, you won’t have to juggle any problems in your virtual data room.

Pricing

A bottom dollar virtual data room will be a bottom shelf solution, but comparing virtual data rooms on price is still useful.

More important than comparing total price is making sure you pay only for what you need, that everything you do need is included and there are no nasty surprises in the pricing.