Workspaces, Data Rooms, Links, and Visitors
The four core objects in Peony and how they relate. Learn the vocabulary once — save hours of billing and analytics confusion later.
Last updated September 27, 2026
Peony has four core objects: workspace, data room, link, and visitor. They nest cleanly — a workspace contains data rooms, a data room contains links, each link is used by one or more visitors.
The app labels the people who open your links Visitors — that's the term you'll see in the link wizard, the onboarding flow, and the Visitors analytics panel. A few older analytics chart titles still read "viewers"; it's the same object.
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, Business, Data Room, Deal Team, Enterprise)
- Team members (admins — see Admins vs Viewers)
- Workspace-wide branding defaults
- Custom domain (Data Room tier)
- Invoices and payment method
Peony creates your workspace automatically on signup.
Rename your workspace. The workspace (company) name is editable on every plan, including Free. Click the workspace name or logo at the top of the left sidebar, choose Edit workspace branding, change the Company name field, and Save. This is the name that appears in your sidebar and in the "shared with you" line on invitation emails. See Custom Branding.
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
- Visitors — counterparties who opened any link for this room
- Analytics — per-visitor, 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
Your link is a subdomain of your workspace with a long random hash — that's normal. The random hash keeps the URL hard to guess.
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.
Visitor
A counterparty — investor, buyer, lender, lawyer, client. This is the object the app calls a Visitor (you'll see it in the link wizard and the Visitors analytics panel).
- No Peony account required. They just open the link.
- Free and unlimited on every plan, including the free tier. There is no visitor limit on any tier.
- Never count toward team seats. Only admins do.
- Tracked per link. Same person on two links = two visitor 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 visitors by email (captured at the verification gate) and session fingerprint.
How They Relate
- Workspace: you, your team, your billing
- Data room: "Series A Fundraise"
- Link: "Sequoia"
- Visitors:
alice@sequoia.com,bob@sequoia.com
Each level can hold several of the next. The same workspace might also have a "Board Materials Q1 2026" room with a "Board" link for all board members, and the "Series A Fundraise" room might have an "a16z" link and an "Internal — no gate" link alongside "Sequoia", each with its own visitors. Nothing here affects billing — billing depends only on admin count on the workspace.
Two Settings Menus
Peony has two places called Settings, and controls are split across them. When an answer says "Settings", check which one it means.
| Menu | Where to find it | What lives there |
|---|---|---|
| Workspace settings | The account menu at the bottom-left of the app home screen | Billing, admins (Invite admins), custom domain, the workspace-wide theme default, and Brand Card Settings |
| A data room's Settings tab | Inside an open room, in its sidebar | Room-level toggles: Index documents Data Room+, Visitor Q&A Data Room+, Show cover image and Show logo (neither display toggle is plan-gated), and New file notifications Deal Team+ |
The room-level Show cover image / Show logo toggles are separate from the per-link Appearance cover-image control. Your workspace logo and company name are edited from Edit workspace branding, opened by clicking the workspace name at the top of the left sidebar.
Why This Matters for Billing
- Workspace = your company account. Your plan attaches here.
- Links and visitors = unlimited on any plan. Share a link with 500 visitors and your bill stays the same. Data room limits depend on the plan — see Plans and Pricing.
- Admins on your workspace = paid seats. Add one colleague as an admin and your bill goes up by one seat. 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.
- "The plan limits visitors to 3." No. Visitors are unlimited on every plan. The Free plan's cap is on admins (1, the owner), not visitors. Upgrade to invite more admins.
- Workspaces as per-deal. Most customers need only one workspace. Use data rooms for per-deal separation.
Common Questions
Can I separate two audiences — say an Investors room and a Brands room — so one team only sees one of them?
Yes. Keep them as two data rooms and control access with teams. The founding-team admin registers first, then invites the other admins from the workspace Settings — the menu at the bottom-left of the home screen, not a data room's Settings tab — and chooses Invite admins. Create a separate team for each group (for example "Founding team" and "Branding team") from the left of the main app. Put the founding-team admin in both teams so they keep full access to every data room, and restrict the second team, via its team settings and members, to its own workspace only. See Invite Your Team.
My share link is a subdomain with a long random string. Is that normal?
Yes. Every link is a subdomain of your workspace, and the random hash keeps the URL hard to guess. It's working as intended.
How do I change my workspace or company name — the one shown in the sidebar and in "shared with you" invite emails?
Click the workspace name or logo at the top of the left sidebar, choose Edit workspace branding, edit the Company name field, and Save. This is available on every plan, including Free. (Customizing the full text of the invitation email — beyond the company name — is a Deal Team feature.)