I was chosen to head up a small cap deal, and we are in the beginning of the execution phase. I've done some research but it takes a lot of time to call all these different sites to get quotes, and I've got ridiculous amounts of work to do. Some are superior to others, but those are usually very pricey. I'd like to find a very professional site, but also good value.
Any of you monkeys know of sites that aren't crazy expensive but still offer quality service? Had any personal experience to vouch? Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks guise
Full Disclosure: Searched several pages of past threads before starting this thread
Dropbox or FilesAnywhere
Intralinks or merrill datasite are both good, and will usually give you a free trial if you've never used them before
Data room sales reps are on another level, they'll bug you quite a bit if they know you're looking. Proceed with caution, lol. Maybe even get a burner phone and a throwaway e-mail.
Intralinks and Merrill are awful suggestions. Very expensive. Some providers of comparable quality, but cheaper price include: Firmex, Deal Interactive, Ansarada (they'll deal), and Sharevault. Bowne/RR Donnelly would be slightly more expensive than those providers, but cheaper than Intra & Merrill. Depending on your needs, OneHub is a great solution. Much cheaper than anything I mentioned above. It's basically WatchDox with additional features commonly needed in deals (customizable disclaimer pages, etc.).
Whatever you do, pit the offers against each other. You'll be amazed how much they can move down in price from the initial offer, haha.
Appreciate the advice. I've already fallen victim to their schemes. The last place I was at used intralinks and the invoices were ridiculous. No way I'm using them. I'll check out the others tomorrow.
The sales boys at those places have a pretty big budget to spent, you should make them take you out, have a good time, then use DebtDomain.
Your complaint about invoices is spot on. It’s an unfortunate fact that many vendors rely on complex invoices, to keep the signing prices low by hiding costs. Watch for contracts that detail complex calculations to count pages uploaded, calculate documents according to size and charge extra for storage fees, etc. etc.
In the interest of full disclosure, I work for Firmex, so I’m admittedly bias but I do hear a lot about what goes on in the market. My advice – take a minute and look at the contract fine print. If the sales rep is straight forward and the terms are simple, you’ll avoid the schemers.
Favorite VDR/Dataroom? (Originally Posted: 06/10/2015)
Fellow monkeys? What is your favorite VDR to use in terms of ease of use, security,etc.
I've had experience with the big names (Merrill, Ansarada, Firmex, Intralinks etc.), just wanted to get your thoughts on which you thought was best and maybe any horror stories.
+1 for Merrill. Only one I've used but can attest that they're good. TBH I feel like all the VDRs are probly the same... One of the associates told me that a couple years back they even hosted cool events for analysts so they can get picked over the other,
Anything besides RRDonnelly should be fine. Merrill and Intralinks are both good, with Intralinks being my personal preference (due mostly to experience)
Seems like MD's are most used to of Intralinks and Merrill. Any others?
MDs don't give a fuck. They aren't uploading or downloading docs.
I prefer whichever one treats me to the most dinners and events. The top ones are really all the same, minus a few nuances.
I hate IntraLinks; it feels slow as hell. However, they have good customer service.
They all suck and are overpriced for what they do, but if I have to choose, I go w intralinks
If you took the best of Intralinks and Merrill I think you'd be golden. Intralinks is easier to use IMO but Merrill has better customer service/help. Never tried Ansarada though I've heard good things.
Hello - If you are interested in learning more about the value Ansarada can add, please let me know and I am happy to discuss. We aren't just a standard VDR anymore, but much more of a platform for the entire Event process (Pre and post).
i actually really like intralinks
I think they all suck, the tech isn't that complicated and really should be a lot better in this age. Merrill and Intralinks are the least worst, Ansarada are slightly behind. Ultimately depends on who you can get the most drinks / events out of.
Whichever ones I'm not using on deals at the moment.
My company used to use the standard ones until we recently switched to HighQ's VDR. Frickin brilliant. It even lets you download all the questions in an excel spreadsheet, fill it up and then upload the answers. Aside from being fast, secure and simple, it also looked really good. We ended dup winning some business because our clients liked the dataroom. Bizarre.
You joined WSO just to post this? Ya, that doesn't seem suspicious or anything...
Merrill customer service is great, and the reps take you out for dinner / drinks. what more do I need
Agreed. Merrill > Intralinks when it comes to this, even if its platform is not quite as good. I've had a couple of situations when I was an associate and I was in a time crunch, just forwarded a folder structure and 100MBs worth of files and the Project Mgmt team put it up for me.
Intralinks has taken me out too, but Merrill is more frequent.
Uh oh, here comes the spam.
Data Room Recommendations? ASAP. (Originally Posted: 03/04/2012)
Hey All,
We're shopping for a new data room. Any recommendations on good ones? Need rec's by Tue, March 6 if possible. Key features desired:
Merrill is obviously a top choice -- have liked them in past, but all recommendations welcome. Not a big fan of RR Donnelly (IMO). But tell me otherwise.
Thanks much!
Merrill is my favorite, best interface. Intralinks is a decent second.
Merrill and Intralinks are the two major providers. I've used a lot of dataroom providers and few are as effective as these two. You can also look into Bowne if you want more options.
Intralinks is all I use
Big fan of Merrill. PM me and I can give you my contact there.
Intralkinks is what we use mainly. I can tell you not to use Leonard, Street & Deinard....that was a bad experience.
Only have experience with Merrill. Looks like that's what just about everyone else is using, too...
Thanks all. Will check out Intralinks. How's their pricing relative to Merrill?
Just go ahead and email everything to me.
What do you look for when choosing a virtual data room provider? (Originally Posted: 01/31/2013)
Full disclosure: I work for a data room provider, however, I'm not looking to find new clients or tell anyone which one it is. I've been at my current position working in client services/support for a little over 6 months now, and not coming from a finance background (at all.. seriously, I majored in english, this is like a foreign language to me) I'm wondering what it is that you REALLY look for when choosing a data room.
Does it really come down to pre-existing relationships? Is it driven mostly on cost? Are there certain points that I can hit on or things that I can do in my training/support of your project that will really make things easier on you? Anything else you think I should know? Thanks in advance!!!
To be perfectly honest, I look for data room providers that throw open bars. Ideally, the infrastructure of the data room should be user friendly and security shouldn't really be a selling point because if your security is shit, you won't have a business. There are nuance differences between sites like Merrill, Intralinks, and others, but basically the easier and more straightforward the interface the better.
Realistically though, I don't give a shit about that. If you are regularly throwing some open bars our way, I will keep coming back to that provider over another one...
That's what I've gathered so far, we're pretty good at treating our clients/potential clients right if I do say so myself!! Thanks for the honesty! :)
Whoever hooks it up the best (also want to be sure the product is good -- Intralinks/Merril are really the only good ones)
I have a question for you - what do you believe is the long term competitive advantage for data room providers? They are very expensive, and is the somewhat better interface and access rights functionality really that valuable versus using dropbox or something similar? Really a data room is just a cloud storage solution.
On a related note, have data room prices come down over the years?
Sorry for the lack of response-- was out of the office on Friday. Personally, I think that the advantage for data room providers is that we can provide a much more secure platform than something like Dropbox or Google Docs can provide. Specifically, being able to have different levels of access for different bidders, cut people out of transactions quickly and set expiration dates on documents are three of the advantages I can think of that would put my company in front of a "cheaper" or "easier" solution.
As far as pricing goes, I'm not the best person for that discussion, although I do know that our pricing is incredibly flexible based on the size and scope of the deal.
Only ever used Intralinks
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