Compare / A full data room
When you need a full data room, and when you do not.
Dedicated virtual data rooms exist because some transactions genuinely need them. Docsroom does a narrower job for a much wider set of people. This page is about telling those two situations apart, including the ones where we are the wrong answer.
- UploadCorporateComplete
- UploadFinancial3 files sent
- UploadContracts5 overdue
Where we are not the answer
Controls a dedicated room has and we do not
These are real requirements, and if you have them you should pay for a product built around them rather than make ours stretch.
Every page has to carry the reader’s name
Dynamic watermarking, so a leaked page says who leaked it. On a contested deal this is not a nicety. Docsroom does not do it.
Documents must be readable but not takeable
A viewer that will not download, print or copy. Docsroom shares files as files: read only, logged, but a bidder who can read a document can keep it.
Redaction has to happen inside the room
Blacking out a salary or a name before a bidder sees it. Redact before you upload, or use a product that does it for you.
And three more
Situations that name another tool
If one of these is you, use what your process already says. None of it is worth an argument.
Somebody must be reachable at three in the morning
A live desk through a completion weekend, in the buyer’s time zone. We answer our own email 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but there is no live desk.
The deal is very large, or regulated in a way that names a tool
If your adviser’s process or your regulator specifies a platform, use that platform.
You need a formal index numbering scheme you control
Docsroom numbers sections and requests as 1.1, 2.3 and so on, but the scheme is ours rather than yours.
The pictures are illustrations. The names are made up.
Where we are
Use Docsroom when
Most of the rooms that get opened are not a nine-figure auction. They are a sale of a business somebody has run for thirty years, a refinancing, or a bundle going to the other side’s solicitor. The reason a small deal is painful is rarely that the tooling lacked watermarking. It is that the seller could not tell you what was still missing.
- The room opens in an afternoon, not after procurement
- One price, not a price per page or per megabyte
- The seller’s side is a list: you see what is outstanding
- A party for each bidder, and they never see one another
- Terms of access accepted before anything opens
- Every download recorded against the party that took it
- Questions arrive as work, with an owner and a date
- The tool you already use for everyday requests
An illustration. The names are made up.
Side by side
What each one is actually for
Nothing here is a criticism of a dedicated data room: they are built for a harder problem than ours.
| What is being compared | A dedicated data room | Docsroom |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | One transaction at a time, at scale | Every request, deals included |
| Watermarking | Yes. Usually per reader | No |
| View without download | Yes | No. Read only and logged, but downloadable |
| Redaction in the room | Yes. Usually | No. Redact before uploading |
| Blind parties, one per bidder | Yes | Yes |
| Questions kept to their party | Yes | Yes |
| Terms accepted before access | Yes | Yes |
| Downloads recorded by party | Yes | Yes |
| Chasing the seller’s missing items | No. Not usually the point | Yes. It is the point |
| The rest of your year | No. The tool closes with the room | Yes. Onboarding, enrolments, property sales |
| Support | Yes. Often around the clock | Yes. 24/7, from the people who make it |
The honest summary
If you are running a competitive auction where a leaked page would cost real money, buy the product that watermarks every page and will not let a document be downloaded. That is not us, and we would rather say so now than at completion.
If you are selling a company for a few million pounds, or handing a bundle to the other side, or refinancing, the thing that actually goes wrong is that nobody can say what is still outstanding and the answers end up in four inboxes. That is the thing Docsroom was built for, and it costs about what one hour of the work you are avoiding costs.
Open a room and see whether it is enough.
Free for 14 days, no card. If it is not enough, we will tell you.