The Comprehensive Guide to Finding the Best Data Room Providers in 2023

For many businesses, choosing the right virtual data room provider can be challenging.

There are lots of virtual data room vendors out there that provide similar services, which can make it hard for you to decide on one.

There are many things to consider when choosing one of the best data room providers, which includes your unique business needs, ease of use, features, reputation, support, and pricing.

In this guide, we’ll help you find the best data room provider for your organization.

1. Define your requirements

Before deciding on a virtual data room provider, it’s important that you define your unique business needs.

Schedule a meeting with your team to discuss your company’s requirements and how each department and team member will use the data room.

In the meeting, consider asking these questions:

• What will we use the data room for?
• How much storage do we need?
• How many users will use the data room?
• How will the solution fit into our existing systems and process?
• What other applications do we have to integrate with the data room?
• What type of data do we need to store?

You should also consider your team’s technical background. Will they be comfortable using an advanced data room solution with lots of features? And will they require training and onboarding?

2. Consider your budget

Once you’re developed an idea of your data room requirements, determine how much you’re willing to shell out for a data room solution each month.

You’d want to discuss this with your financial team as this will help you narrow down your research by considering the data room providers that are within budget.

Some of the factors that influence data room pricing include:

• Number of users
• Storage requirements
• Number of documents
• Project length
• Number of features

Ideally, you’d want to choose a provider that doesn’t put a cap on the number of users. It’s also recommended that you pick a provider with flat rate plans.

3. Compare virtual data rooms

Once you’ve figured out your requirements and decided on a budget, it’s time to compare different data room services to pick the best fit.

Some of the best virtual data room providers include:

• iDeals
• Intralinks
• Box
• Smartroom
• Citrix
• Firmex
• SecureDocs
• Brainloop

A good data room should provide uncompromised protection for your documents with 256-bit encryption, multi factor authentication, single sign on, and watermarking.

Reliable electronic data room solutions also make it easy for you to upload, organize, manage, and control access to your documents.

Other features to look for include:

• Compliance with international data protection standards
• Ease of use and interface
• Accessibility from different platforms
• Offline capabilities
• Collaboration features like messaging and Q&A
• Information findability

4. Contact multiple data room providers

Contact the sales team of some data room providers to discuss your requirements and get a quote. At the same time, you can get an idea about the expected service with how knowledgeable and helpful the sales representatives are.

Are they able to answer your questions comprehensively? Do they understand your company’s requirements and the VDR solution can help you with them? How responsive are they?

By the end of discussion, you’ll be presented with a package that caters to your business requirements while also optimizing costs.

Compare the packages you receive from different providers and show them to your team so you can decide which of them is the most cost effective.

5. Sign up for free trials or demos if available

If the providers you’ve contacted offer free trials or demos, consider signing up for them.

This will give you and your team a chance to gain hands-on experience with the online data room software to see how it works in practice. It’ll also help you decide whether it’s easy to use for your team or not.

Final thoughts

Alright, by now, you should be able to choose the most suitable electronic data room provider for your business.

The process is pretty simple, and it can be summed up in the following points:

• Define your needs
• Discuss them with your team
• Compare different providers and shortlist some of them
• Contact the shortlisted provides
• Use free trials and demos
• Get quotes
• Compare the quotes you receive