If you’re googling this, you’re probably in the middle of a raise, a sale, or a partnership where people keep asking:

“Can you send over a data room link?”

You live in Notion already. You don’t want to pay thousands a year for a heavy virtual data room. But you do want a clean, professional experience on your own domain, with proper security and some idea of who’s actually reading your docs.

This guide walks you through, step by step:

How to create a structured Notion data room
How to plug that Notion data room into Peony
How to put everything behind a custom domain on Peony for better security, branding, and analytics

By the end, you'll have one link you're proud to send to investors or buyers.

1. Design Your Data Room Structure in Notion

Start in Notion. You want one “front door” page that acts as the table of contents.

You can either create this from scratch or start with a pre-made data room template from the Notion Marketplace (e.g. “Data Room”, “Startup Data Room 2025”, “The Ultimate Data Room”). These templates already include sections for product, market, financials, and legal, and they’re easy to adapt.

If you’re building manually, a simple structure looks like this:

Overview – who you are, what you do, what you’re raising / selling
Team – key people, ownership snapshot
Product & Tech – product overview, architecture summary, screenshots
Market & Competition – market sizing, competitors, positioning
Traction & Metrics – revenue, growth, retention, pipeline
Financials – P&L summary, forecast overview (not necessarily the raw model)
Legal & Governance – incorporation, key agreements, cap table summary
Security & Compliance – policies, certifications, high-level security posture
FAQ & Changelog – common questions and “what changed this week”

Use headings, toggles, and sub-pages to keep it skimmable. The test: an investor should be able to land on this page and find anything within 10 seconds.

2. Populate Your Notion Data Room

Once you’ve got the skeleton, start filling it in.

The official Peony guide suggests organizing by use case: fundraising, M&A, or client portals, each with slightly different document sets.

For fundraising, you’ll typically include:

Pitch deck and one-page summary
Historical financials and projections
Product docs and roadmap
Customer and revenue breakdowns
Market research and competitive landscape
Capitalization summary and key legal docs

You don't have to upload every raw file into Notion. Remember: Notion is going to be your narrative layer; we'll offload the sensitive files into Peony in a minute for secure data room management.

3. Publish the Notion Data Room (Internally, for Now)

Before bringing Peony into the picture, make sure your Notion page is shareable:

Open your data room homepage in Notion.
Click Share (top right).
Toggle “Share to web” / “Publish” so the page can be accessed by a link.
Turn off any options that allow edit or duplicate as template for visitors.
Decide whether it should be indexed by search engines (for actual deals, that’s almost always no).

At this point you have a functioning Notion data room URL. It won't be the final link you share publicly, but Peony needs this to connect for secure data room hosting.

4. Connect Your Notion Data Room to Peony

Now we wrap the Notion content in a proper data room.

From the Peony guide: you can directly connect a Notion page (and its subpages) into Peony so that everything is served through Peony's secure interface.

The flow:

Create a Peony account
- Go to peony.ink and sign up.
- Peony offers a free plan with core data room features, which is usually enough to start.
Add your Notion data room into Peony
- In the Peony dashboard, create a new Data Room.
- Choose the option to connect Notion (rather than uploading files).
- Authorize Peony's access to your Notion workspace via OAuth.
- Select the page that is your data room homepage.

Peony will include that page and its subpages inside the data room. Only the pages you explicitly choose (and their children) are exposed; your other Notion content stays private.

The beautiful part: updates you make in Notion automatically flow through to the Peony link. You don't need to re-upload or resend docs.

5. Configure Security & Access Controls in Peony

Now you’re out of “Notion-only” territory and into real data room behavior.

From your Notion-connected data room in Peony, create a share link and configure:

Identity & gating
- Require email to view (so you know exactly who's inside).
- Optionally gate behind an NDA or checkbox acceptance.
Security settings
- Add a password for extra protection.
- Set an expiry date if you want time-limited access.
- Allow or block downloads for attached files.
- Enable dynamic watermarking so each viewer sees their identity on sensitive content.
Notifications & analytics
- Turn on view notifications, so you know when an investor opens the room.
- Use Peony's analytics later to see which sections were actually read, how long people spent, and who came back.

At this stage, your Notion data room is no longer "just a shared Notion page". It's behind Peony's access controls, leak protection, and audit logs.

6. Set Up a Custom Domain in Peony (Instead of Paying for Notion’s)

Notion now offers native custom domains through Notion Sites, but this requires a paid plan plus a separate custom domain add-on, typically around $10/month per domain.

Since you're already using Peony as the secure wrapper, it's simpler (and usually cheaper) to put the custom domain on Peony, not on Notion.

Peony supports:

Custom branded domains (e.g. dataroom.yourcompany.com)
Branded portals with your logo, colors, and cover images

To set this up:

In your Peony dashboard, open the share link settings for your Notion data room.
Go to Custom Domain and type the subdomain you want to use (e.g. investors.yourcompany.com).
Peony will show you DNS records (usually a CNAME).
Log into your DNS provider (Cloudflare, GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc.) and add those records.
Wait for DNS to propagate and verify the setup in Peony.

Now your secure, Notion-powered data room lives at:

https://dataroom.yourcompany.com

But the security, logging, and revocation all run through Peony.

7. Share, Track, and Iterate

Once your custom domain is live:

Share that Peony link with investors, buyers, or partners.
If you've set a password, send it in a separate channel (or call).
Check Peony's analytics to see:
- Who actually opened the room
- Which sections they spent time on
- When they came back for a second look

When you update anything in Notion (new metrics, refreshed deck, added FAQ), the Peony data room reflects it automatically—no new links, no version chaos.

When the round or deal is over, you can simply:

Disable the Peony link or adjust permissions.
Keep the Notion space for your own records, or archive it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a paid Notion plan for this?

No. Peony can work with pages from any Notion plan; you just need them shareable so Peony can connect.

Why not just use Notion's own custom domain?

You can—but then you still lack watermarking, granular analytics, and revocable links. Setting the custom domain on Peony gives you both branding and security, while still letting you edit content in Notion.

Can I mix Notion content and uploaded files in the same data room?

Yes. You can have your Notion data room as the "index" plus extra PDFs, spreadsheets, or ZIPs uploaded directly into Peony for tighter control.

Create Your Data Room

How to Create a Notion Data Room with Custom Domain in 2025: Complete Step-by-Step Guide