Virtual Data Room Software Rating

Data Room Providers Ranking 2020

Virtual Data Room Guide

Are you looking for virtual data room software? Review the rating of the best data room providers on our website. Potential users expect to get safety, multi functional tools, and quality technical support. Take the most out of our independent review of virtual data rooms. We act in the best interest of the data room users-to-be and do not cooperate with VDR providers for their purposes. We gain a lot of experience in the course of our work and know for sure which aspects are critical for companies. We offer:

Data Room Providers Comparison

To keep the rating as comprehensive as possible, we break down each of the VDR features into components. Later we evaluate them separately on a scale from 1 to 5.

For example, we evaluate the web security protocols of virtual data rooms not as a whole, but as an average. Here is a sneak peek of the security components we assess:

• 2FA (two-factor authentication) protocol;
• SSL or TLS protocols;
• 256-bit AES end-to-end data encryption;
• DRM (digital rights management) limits;
• DLP system;
• ISO-27001 (digital asset security standard);
• ISO-27081;
• GDPR;
• HIPAA;
• FINRA.

Thus, if the VDR complies with popular security protocols and does not use less popular ones, it will not receive a high rating on our website.

VDR Selection Recommendations

We apply such a detailed approach to every criterion in our online data room comparison. On our website, we share step-by-step guides for choosing and testing VDR providers. These guides help our users avoid disappointment and regret after signing the contract. They also show what things to pay attention to — from choosing data room providers to crash-testing its trial version.

Data Room Usage Guide

Setting up a virtual data room according to the needs of a particular business can be time-consuming. Registering, branding, managing files, inviting and onboarding new users, allowing and denying of the usage rights takes time. You will find a detailed tutorial on this website on how to keep such processes simple and controlled.

VDR Dictionary

Users face many VDR terms when choosing a virtual data room software. That’s why we prepared a VDR Dictionary to help users understand the difference between electronic data room providers. You will find definitions and terms in the field of secure cloud services. The VDR Dictionary will help you better understand the services provided by the data room vendors. Become familiar with the terms of the virtual data room and find the answers to all questions. Learn more about VDR software, certifications, and choose the right provider for your business needs.

Tips for Choosing Data Room for M&A and Due Diligence

M&A and due diligence are among the most common use cases for virtual data rooms. That’s why we have separated these scenarios from the rest. Also, we have collected recommendations for choosing VDRs as part of these particular tasks.

What Is a Virtual Data Room?

A virtual data room is a cloud-based solution to share files and interact with other users in a completely secure manner from any device and location. 

Even those companies that managed data rooms in the past have already moved to the clouds. Within the next couple of years, there will be no white-collars in the business space who remember how these rooms looked like.

How Do Virtual Data Room Providers Differ?

A reliable virtual data room is not only a tech solution. It’s also the company (provider) behind it.

When choosing software for business, you need to pay attention to the experience and reputation of the provider. Review the ranking of virtual data room providers. Compare the best providers and explore services and features. Examine the year the providers were founded and the location of the head office.

VDR providers differ from each other on many levels. These are the experience, reputation, support service quality, SLA, and other additional benefits. An extra important indicator is the provider’s understanding of its customers’ industry and how well they customize their services to the needs of the industry. For example, a provider that works primarily with banks is unlikely to be the right solution for a medical research company.

Here is a short checklist for choosing a VDR provider:

• The provider has been on the market for a long time
• Rating above 4.5
• Experience with both small companies-of-one along with global brands with a large number of employees
• SLA certification
• Fast response time (no more than 30 minutes)
• Expertise in due diligence processes
• The provider’s technical solution meets the needs of your business (95% or higher)
• Regardless of the client’s attitude towards cybersecurity, the provider focuses on protecting data
• The provider constantly introduces innovations to make the user experience within the VDR faster, more convenient, and easier

The most important criteria for choosing a VDR provider is a “crash test.” It’s the examination of data room services during the trial period. To be sure that the chosen provider will suit your company’s needs, you should test its work in every way possible. Anything from “dumb” questions to the “this feature doesn’t work properly” scenario goes.

But, before proceeding to a trial, your team must prepare and choose a provider. To make it easier for you, we have arranged a small guide on how to select a virtual data room and its provider among dozens of virtual data rooms.

Best Virtual Data Rooms Comparison

How to Choose an Online Data Room Provider?

Choosing a VDR provider is a rather complicated task since businesses share sensitive data with a provider. Unlike any other web service businesses use (Slack, Hangouts, etc.), a virtual data room requires a more efficient approach to its selection — since you give the provider access to the sensitive data. The future of your business depends on the quantity and quality of security levels a virtual data room provider ensures.

Here is an out-of-the-box guide a company can use to compare virtual data rooms when choosing a virtual data room vendor:

• Describe the custom scenarios: how, when, and what tasks your team will use the virtual data room for. You can use the User Story Mapping (USM) approach to do this. This methodology is mostly used to develop digital products, but it is ideal for the first step of choosing a VDR provider.
• Define a team responsible for selecting and implementing VDR into business processes and defining the timelines and milestones for the project.
• Based on the USM, compile a checklist of the features your business needs from the VDR. You can break it down into components depending on their importance to your business.
• Select those VDR providers that match your checklist.
• Analyze the technical solution in combination with the vendor’s reputation.
• Check virtual data room reviews. Pay attention to the cases from your industry.
• Select the top 2-3 vendors that meet both technical and business criteria.
• Sign up for a free trial (top providers always offer one).
• At the end of every trial, analyze the usability of the VDR and the quality of the provider’s communication.
• Choose the provider that meets your requirements.

Choosing a VDR Provider for Small Businesses

For small businesses, flexibility is one of the most important criteria. Thus, small businesses need to look at exactly those features that involve large and frequent changes:

• The pay-as-you-go option allows small businesses to flexibly change users and payment options.
• Convenient and quick management of documents; users get access to the documents on-the-go from any device.
• Fast and easy onboarding: small businesses don’t have months or even days to spend learning how to use a virtual data room. Everything should be clear and user-friendly.

Choosing a VDR Provider for Medium Businesses

For midsize businesses, security and scalability are a must. But, the list below also includes all the options specific to small businesses:

• Documents and files security.
• An ability to scale up from small to large and back rapidly.
• Transparent pricing policy and reliable support.

Choosing a VDR Provider for Large Businesses

For large companies, enterprise-level security comes first. The second requirement is migration options since large businesses are likely to have used a different provider before. It is the use of the safety and convenience of VDR data sharing options to acquire companies or raise an investment that allows a medium-sized business to become a large one.

• Enterprise-level security.
• Ease of migration.
• A dedicated manager (-s) who helps large businesses to adapt the VDR to their needs as much as possible.

Virtual Data Room Solutions

Different types of businesses from various industries use virtual data rooms in different ways. Some companies use VDRs exclusively as a data storage solution. Others use them as a unified system for project management and communication within the company.

Why Use Online Data Rooms?

Despite the fact the most known virtual data room providers have their use cases in almost every business vertical, the most popular use cases for VDRs are merger and acquisition, and IPO deals (M&A). 

Here are the most popular VDR use cases:

• M&A Due Diligence
• Capital raising
• Legal Document Management (Licensing Deals)
• Regulatory Risk Management
• Commercial Real Estate Transactions
• Corporate Repository

Such transactions usually involve several parties. These are the sell-side, the buyer, legal consultants, and banks, etc.

As the number of participants grows, the risk of sensitive data leaks also increases. Thus, a VDR becomes a necessary and universal tool to ensure the transaction’s security and confidentiality. It also unifies all the communication channels related to the transaction.

Who Uses Virtual Data Room?

In the meantime, the use of VDRs is not limited to M&A transactions or due diligence. This means that the list of business industries that choose virtual data room service providers grow year-over-year:

• Investment companies
• Law firms
• Banks
• SaaS companies
• Biotech & Pharma

How to Use Deal Room Software?

If you are searching for a deal room software and considering a trial from several data room vendors, here’s a checklist for you below. It will speed up testing and team onboarding, and make the whole flow as organic as possible. Let’s consider a VDR getting started workflow:

• Registration. The standard procedure for any online service.
• Installation. Some VDRs work only in the cloud. Others provide native clients for every platform (Windows, Mac, Ubuntu, Android, iPad OS, iOS, etc.). Such clients, especially desktop ones, often have an advanced functionality or speed compared to the cloud version. Therefore, we recommend installing them on the selected devices.
• Setting up the structure. Please note that the top VDR providers let users create a new data room structure from scratch. Another option is to use templates prepared for different use cases.
• Uploading the files. A familiar drug & drop procedure of moving selected files into created folders.
• Adding users. It’s also possible to set up user groups and distribute access rights between users and groups.
• Sending email invitations to users.
• Working inside a virtual room in a regular mode or conducting situational transactions.
• Analyzing the usage stats and user activity. The best virtual deal rooms provide admins with tools to analyze user activity and all processes that occur with documents and data in the VDR.
• In some cases, when the VDR is used only for conducting a single transaction, the point “Close VDR” follows. In other cases, point 7 is supplemented by the item “Feedback collection and workflow optimization.”

Data Room Software Advantages

Even a simple listing of the benefits helps to understand why businesses around the globe choose this solution to manage documentation internally or conduct external transactions:

• Security.
• Agile access control and document management.
• Accelerating the speed of transactions, deals, or internal processes.
• Ease of use.
• Management of a significant part of business processes within one solution.
• Increased transparency of users’ activities with documents.
• Optimizing due diligence and M&A deals.
• A decrease in software maintenance expenses.

You can use this constantly updated website and VDR ranking to choose the optimal VDR provider and enjoy all the advantages that a virtual data room gives to the business world powered by remote work.

How to Compare VDR Providers?

We brought together independent experts to create a special methodology to test virtual data rooms. We wanted to come up with an approach that would take into account both the technical and behavioral factors of the services.

This approach allowed us to collect the best data room providers on this site. These providers meet all the security and distributed work requirements regardless of the industry the business operates in.

Here is a consolidated list of criteria that our experts used to create a comparison table of online data room providers. Many components are the basis for each of these criteria:

We use two independent flows to test each of these criteria biweekly:

• Our experts sign up for trials and evaluate the provider of virtual data rooms using an extended expert questionnaire.
• We ask real users of the best virtual data rooms to fill out the user’s questionnaire. A simplified version of the expert questionnaire, it does not require the evaluation of data security protocols.

This approach ensures that our experts are unbiased — each of us has our favorite brands, you have to admit. Thus, our users get an updated independent rating of the best virtual data rooms twice per month.

So, this website provides the most up-to-date information for businesses looking for the best data room providers.