Top Virtual Data Room Providers in Singapore

How to Choose the Best Virtual Data Room Provider

To ensure that your M&A due diligence and other mission-critical tasks will be performed flawlessly, you need to pick up the most suitable data room providers for your business. It can be a challenging task, especially if you didn’t work with a secure data room previously.

Here are some pro tips and guidelines for making an informed decision:

• The best data room software not only provides file storage – it should offer a number of useful tools for you and your employees to perform tasks efficiently. Therefore, pay attention to the range of functions included and make sure users will be supplied with every necessary feature.
• Find out whether the servers used by a provider are located close to users – this way, you’ll enjoy a higher data processing speed.
• Is client support service available on a 24/7 basis? Can you contact them via email, phone, tickets, and live chat? Having around-the-clock access to customer support is crucial to have your room up and running.
• Top data room providers always put security on a pedestal. Check out whether such security options as virus scanning, encryption, firewalls, fetch view, and role-based access restrictions are included.
• The access settings play an essential role in establishing the safety of your business documents. Make sure that role-based access restrictions are available, as well as other protective measures. Ideally, there should be two-step authentication and other identity verification instruments. This way, you will sleep soundly knowing that your business materials are in safe hands.
• Find out which OS is supported by the data room. If your employees are going to use the platform from different devices (say, iPhone, Android mobile phones, tablets, and Windows PC), you need to make sure that the data room software is compatible with all of them.
• Make sure that the preferable online data room supports all the file formats you use. While some projects are tailored for working with Microsoft Office and PDF only, advanced providers allow you to upload images, videos, and presentations.

What about the price of service? In fact, it shouldn’t be the most important part of your virtual data room comparison. Top-rated data room solutions always come for a high price, but the convenience and safety make up for it. There’s one thing to take into consideration: if you want to provide access to a few users (say, up to 20-30 people), choose a per-month per-user model. Otherwise, paying some $100-300 per month wouldn’t be too much, if you want the secure virtual data room to be exploited by hundreds of people.

Don’t forget to read virtual data room reviews – it will give you a closer look at the strong and weak sides of each provider. Ideally, you need to find feedbacks on independent platforms rather than companies’ official websites (Capterra and Technology hub are highly recommended). Don’t hesitate to contact the company’s customer support directly and find out whether their assistants are friendly and competent.

Best Virtual Data Room Software 2023

The most common data rooms use cases

With the best data room software, you can overcome every single challenge your business faces during audits and transactions. A virtual data room ensures secure and efficient data storage and distribution during various business transactions:

1. Buy-side and sell-side M&A. Mergers and acquisitions involve the processing of a large volume of confidential documents. That’s why both an acquiring and a selling company need a virtual data room. It lets them store and share data securely and complete the due diligence process quickly and confidently.
2. Fundraising. Startups and businesses that want to raise funds use a VDR to give potential investors easy and secure access to important documents and financial information. It enables faster decision-making and decreases fundraising time.
3. Document management. Virtual data rooms allow users to store and manage all company documents within one platform. Document management is secure and straightforward due to numerous features like drag-n-drop, bulk upload, automatic index numbering, and search filters.
4. Risk management. Using virtual data rooms, companies can store confidential data and establish strict user access rights and permissions, significantly reducing the risk of data leakage or unauthorized access.
5. Real estate transactions. Buyers, real estate specialists, sellers, property managers, investors, and advisors can access and manage real estate documents remotely and securely from anywhere. This helps to complete projects faster and more efficiently.
6. Initial public offering (IPO). Going public implies lots of paperwork and requires transparency and security. Using a virtual data room, companies can give investors and financial institutions secure access to necessary documents so that they can review them anywhere and anytime and make investment decisions faster.
7. Due diligence and audits. Suppose, your company needs to perform document audit for due diligence. That means you have to find hundreds of documents (financial and technical reports, information about employees, contracts, and agreements, etc) and, probably, send them via mail to the companies checking your business. That takes boatloads of time, money, and efforts.
   But order data room software, upload all these files in digital formats and share them. That will take much less time, and thanks to the tracking function, you can make sure that the third parties have actually seen your files.
   That goes without mentioning convenience for your partners and companies performing audits. You want your business to look professional and reliable – this is what the data room software allows for.
8. Collaboration. Using such VDR service for audits and due diligence not only means that you can store and share your files. It can appear to be a perfect ecosystem for collaboration. Advanced data rooms, such as iDeals, SecureDocs and Ansarada, provide the whole gamut of tools and features for co-working. Your employees will be able to edit files and have them synchronized in real time. That eliminates the risk of mistakes and boosts the efficiency of the entire team.

Data room pricing comparison

Virtual data room providers have different approaches to their pricing policies. Let’s have a look at the most common pricing models:

• Monthly flat rate pricing. This pricing model is the most convenient for long-term projects that require much storage volume. Users typically get a set amount of data storage, unlimited users, and advanced functionality. Monthly flat rate pricing is common among the best virtual data rooms.

• Yearly plans. Data rooms also offer yearly subscriptions. This option is perfect for companies using data rooms on a regular basis. Moreover, it’s also the most beneficial pricing model, as the majority of data room providers offer up to 20-30% discounts over monthly subscriptions.

• Plans based on file storage capacity. Some data room providers charge according to the number of GBs that a project needs. The option suits those companies that upload limited volumes of documentation and thus don’t need much document storage capacity. However, exceeding storage limits may incur additional fees.

• Per-user pricing. This model charges a customer for each data room subscriber. Note that the price may be different for administrators, regular, and guest users. If the number of individuals involved in a deal is limited, a per-user pricing approach may work best for this type of project.
   
• Per-page plans. Some providers charge according to the number of files stored. Per-page pricing is a good option for small and medium projects that need to store a limited number of documents.

Secure Virtual Data Room Services

When in search of a suitable provider, you should keep in mind that security is always the primary concern. Why? Keeping your data away from malicious users and rivals is vital. What if business

documents get in wrong hands? You can’t allow having your confidential data compromised. This is why using a secure virtual data room is imperative, no matter what your business specializes in.

First and foremost, you should pay attention to the following data room services:

1. 256-bit encryption. This option means that all data stored in the cloud will be encrypted. Third parties who are not granted access to files will NOT be able to hack it.
2. Advanced access setting. It’s not enough just to allow or disallow viewing the document. With a decent M&A data room, you have granular control over your files. That means you will be able to define who and when can preview, edit, download, and print the documents. You can assign certain groups and roles for users to specify the level of access.
3. Virus scanning is crucial. Malware and rootkits can compromise or damage your data. Do not let it happen. With inbuilt antivirus software, you eliminate security breaches and leave hackers no chance.
4. Finally, you have to make sure that people accessing files are who they supposed to be. Such features as 2-step authentication and facial recognition will help you with that.

With a trustworthy data room, due diligence process becomes way more secure and trouble-free.