Peony has four core objects: workspace, data room, link, and viewer. They nest cleanly — a workspace contains data rooms, a data room contains links, each link is used by one or more viewers.

Workspace

Your Peony account. The top-level container for everything: data rooms, team, billing, branding, custom domain.

Most customers have one workspace per company. A founder has one for the startup. An M&A firm has one for the firm, with multiple data rooms inside.

Lives at the workspace level:

Plan and billing (Free, Pro, Business, Enterprise)
Team members (admins — see Admins vs Viewers)
Workspace-wide branding defaults
Custom domain (Business tier)
Invoices and payment method

Peony creates your workspace automatically on signup.

Data Room

A container for a specific deal or project. One workspace holds many rooms.

A data room has:

Files and folders
Links — one or more URLs pointing at this room
Viewers — counterparties who opened any link for this room
Analytics — per-viewer, per-page, per-session tracking
Settings — branding, NDA template, default link protections, Q&A config

A founder might have "Series A Fundraise," "Board Materials Q1 2026," and "Acquisition Offer from Acme." An M&A advisor might have one room per deal — "Project Falcon Sell-Side," "Project Acorn Diligence."

Rename freely. The URL is not affected.

Link

A shareable URL pointing at a data room, with its own permissions. A single room can have many links, each with different:

Expiry dates
NDA gates
Watermark settings
Screenshot protection
Download permissions
Password protection

The reason links exist as a separate layer from the data room is so you can share the same files with different counterparties under different rules. One link for Sequoia, another for a16z, both pointing at the same room, but with per-link analytics and per-link protections.

Best practice: one link per investor. See Share a Data Room Link.

Viewer

A counterparty — investor, buyer, lender, lawyer, client.

No Peony account required. They just open the link.
Free and unlimited on every plan, including the free tier.
Never count toward team seats. Only admins do.
Tracked per link. Same person on two links = two viewer rows.
Invited explicitly or via shared URL. Explicit invites trigger an email; shared URLs can be opened by anyone with the link under whatever gate you set.

Peony tracks viewers by email (captured at the verification gate) and session fingerprint.

How They Relate

Workspace (you, your team, your billing)
 └── Data Room 1 ("Series A Fundraise")
      ├── Link A ("Sequoia") → Viewers: alice@sequoia.com, bob@sequoia.com
      ├── Link B ("a16z")    → Viewers: carol@a16z.com
      └── Link C ("Internal — no gate") → Viewers: dave@yourcompany.com
 └── Data Room 2 ("Board Materials Q1 2026")
      └── Link D ("Board") → Viewers: all board members

One workspace, two rooms, four links, several viewers. Nothing here affects billing — billing depends only on admin count on the workspace.

Why This Matters for Billing

Workspace = your company account. Your plan attaches here.
Data rooms, links, viewers = unlimited on any plan.
Admins on your workspace = paid seats.

Share a link with 500 viewers: bill stays the same. Add one colleague as an admin: bill goes up by $20 (Pro) or $40 (Business) per month. See Admins vs Viewers.

Common Mistakes

New room per investor. You re-upload files into multiple rooms. Instead: one room per deal, one link per investor.
"Pro limits viewers to 3." No. Pro includes 3 admin seats. Viewers are unlimited.
Workspaces as per-deal. Most customers need only one workspace. Use data rooms for per-deal separation.

Workspaces, Data Rooms, Links, and Viewers