M&A data room — live in 5 minutes
Last updated: October 2026.
See which bidders are doing real diligence on your CIM, keep every bidder blind to the others, and trace any leaked page to the person who opened it: one secure Peony data room per mandate, with an NDA-gated link for each bidder.
No credit card · 7-day Data Room trial that never auto-charges · bidders view free, no account · 24/7 support
- Price
- $936/deal (Data Room $52/admin/mo) vs Datasite $50,000+/deal
- Setup
- Under 5 minutes self-serve
- AI Q&A
- Included on Business
- E-Signatures
- Included on Business+
- Deal size
- $1M – $500M sweet spot
- Updated
- October 2026
Trusted by 250+ M&A advisors, including Jefferies and Bank of America
8,000+ customers in 60+ countries · $44.7B in client assets
Peony staff can't open your documents, your documents aren't used to train AI, and Peony has had no data breach since launch.
State of M&A Data Rooms (Q3 2026 edition, 733 M&A transactions from $1M to $500M): a sub-$50M room averages 1,206 files and 79 Q&A questions. The same report puts Peony's median time from sign-up to first uploaded document at 4 min 19 s. Read the research
What is Peony, and is it built for M&A deal management?
Yes. Peony is a virtual data room for sell-side and buy-side M&A from $1M to $500M, including small-business and lower-mid-market sales. Each bidder gets its own NDA-gated link and its own private question team, every page carries the viewer's identity, and page-level analytics show which pages each bidder read. Data Room, Peony's most popular plan, is $52 per admin per month billed yearly ($75 monthly), with unlimited rooms and storage, and every bidder you invite is free.
For the folder structure and diligence checklist a sell-side room needs, see the M&A data room guide.
- Launch to every bidder at once. Each bidder gets its own visitor group, NDA-gated link and private question team. You pay per admin, not per viewer, so inviting 40 bidders costs the same as inviting 4.
- See who is doing real diligence. Page-level analytics show which bidders read the CIM, the model and the customer schedules, for how long, and who came back for a second session.
- Carry a big room and keep it current. Data Room has unlimited storage and no per-file size cap, so an energy, industrial or infrastructure sale carrying environmental reports, engineering drawings and scanned contracts never hits a per-GB overage (Energy is the #2 sector by room count in State of M&A Data Rooms, Q3 2026 edition). Upload new version swaps in the revised model in place, keeping its link and every earlier version, and Index documents numbers every file so both sides can cite "4.2".
Peony at a glance
- Built for
- Sell-side and buy-side M&A from $1M to $500M, including small-business and lower-mid-market sales, run by boutique advisors, investment bankers and corporate development teams.
- Typical plan
- Data Room, $52 per admin per month billed yearly ($75 monthly): an NDA gate with a signed NDA and audit record, dynamic watermarks, a visitor group and private question team per bidder, granular folder and file permissions, Index documents, a custom domain, and unlimited rooms, documents and storage.
- Pricing
- Business $30, Data Room $52 and Deal Team $64 (minimum 4 admins) per admin per month billed yearly ($44, $75 and $89 monthly); Enterprise is custom. Free ($0) covers 50 documents and 500 MB as tracked single-file links; data rooms start on Business.
- Bidders
- Bidders are unlimited and free on every plan and don't need a Peony account. You pay per admin, not per viewer.
- Rooms and storage
- Unlimited data rooms, documents and storage on Data Room and above, and no per-file size cap on any plan. Business includes 3 data rooms per admin, 1,000 documents per admin and 100 GB of storage, with no per-file size cap.
- Deal management
- Peony runs the document and diligence side of deal management: one room per mandate, NDA-gated bidder links, bidder analytics, in-room Q&A and e-signatures. On Deal Team, API access (enabled on request) pushes room analytics and signed agreements into your CRM.
- Buy-side
- Peony also runs the buy side: give the target's team Upload access to one request folder so its documents land in your room, then share the QoE, financing and IC materials with lenders, co-investors and counsel, each in its own group with its own folder permissions and page-level analytics (Data Room plan).
- File management
- Upload new version keeps a file's place and link and keeps every earlier version; AI room generation drafts the folder structure, and Index documents numbers every file (Data Room plan).
- Live models
- Peony renders .html files live with JavaScript running, so a Claude or ChatGPT artifact (a model, dashboard or calculator) stays interactive for the viewer, behind your NDA gate, permissions and analytics.
- Enterprise
- Deal Team ($64 per admin per month billed yearly, minimum 4 admins) adds OAuth SSO, API access, room archive download, advanced redaction, Advanced Q&A routing, a standard DPA and priority support. Enterprise (custom pricing) adds SAML SSO, BYOK, self-hosted or white-label deployment, and custom data residency including EU-region hosting.
- Security
- AES-256 at rest, TLS 1.2+ in transit. Peony staff can't open your documents, your documents aren't used to train AI, and Peony has had no data breach since launch. Peony's incident-response policy commits to telling affected customers within 72 hours of confirming an incident that affects customer data. SOC 2 Type II-ready and ISO 27001-ready, with both audits underway. Compliance and certifications
- Setup
- Median 4 min 19 s from sign-up to first uploaded document (State of M&A Data Rooms, Q3 2026 edition).
- Trial
- 7-day Data Room trial you start yourself: no credit card, and it never auto-charges. Rooms, files, links, analytics and NDA settings carry over when you upgrade. AI features switch on after you upgrade.
- Support
- 24/7 support, handled directly by the Peony team across Europe, US and Asia hours, with no outsourced tier. Everyone you speak to on Peony support has M&A experience at elite boutiques or bulge-bracket banks, VC experience, or has raised $1M+ themselves.
- Customers
- 8,000+ customers in 60+ countries, with $44.7B in client assets.
How do you know which M&A bidders are doing real diligence?
Peony ranks every prospective buyer by page-level time-on-document, sections studied, return visits and downloads — so your deal team focuses follow-ups on bidders genuinely working the CIM, not browsing.
Page-level analytics for every document. See exactly which sections of your CIM each prospective buyer is spending time on. Prioritize follow-ups with the bidders who are genuinely engaged — and give your deal team or banking syndicate the data they need.
Bidder engagement scoring
Rank prospective buyers by time spent, pages viewed, and documents downloaded. Focus your deal team's energy where it counts.
Page-by-page insights
Go beyond file-level views. See which pages of your financial model or management presentation each counterparty studied most.
Activity logs
Track who accessed the data room, when they logged in, what device they used, and which documents they viewed — with full export support for compliance and Q&A log management.
How does Peony keep parallel bidders separated in a competitive auction?
Peony gives every bidder in a competitive auction its own visitor group, folder permissions, access link, watermark and private question team, so six bidders can work the same room without any of them learning the others exist (Data Room plan). A competitive sell-side only works if every bidder team believes it is the only one in the room.
One room. Six bidders. Zero cross-visibility. Groups and invitees never see each other's questions, folders, or activity — nothing in the room reveals who else is looking. Your team manages one process instead of six email threads.
Bidder-blind visitor groups
Set up each bidder as its own group under Permissions — strategics see the CIM, financial sponsors see the commercial appendices, and no group ever learns another exists. Per-viewer watermarks mean a leaked page still traces to one person in one group.
Phase-gated disclosure
Run disclosure the way the process runs: teaser and CIM at first contact, financial model after the IOI, legal and HR folders in confirmatory. Unlock deeper folders per bidder group as they advance — and revoke a drop-out's access in one click.
Q&A your team controls
Bidders ask questions inside the room; each group's thread is private (Data Room plan). Answer once and broadcast to every group when a question is process-wide — without revealing who asked. On Deal Team, every question routes to an expert to draft and an approver to sign off before anything goes out.
How does Peony protect M&A documents from leaks?
Peony secures every CIM, financial model, and legal exhibit with dynamic watermarks, NDA gating, screenshot protection, and 2FA on AES-256 encryption — so any leak traces back to a specific viewer.
Control who sees what — down to the page. From CIMs and financial models to board resolutions and legal opinions — every document is secured with dynamic watermarks, NDA gates, 2FA, and screenshot protection. Separate buy-side and sell-side access with granular permissions for multi-bidder processes.
Dynamic watermarks
Mark every document with the viewer's email, timestamp, and IP address. Deter leaks and trace any unauthorized distribution of CIMs or financial models back to the source.
Granular access controls
Separate buy-side and sell-side access with folder-level controls. Stage document release from Phase 1 diligence (CIM and financials only) to Phase 2 (full legal, HR, and operations access). Grant view-only, download, or print rights per bidder or group.
NDA-gated access
Require all counterparties to sign a non-disclosure agreement before viewing any deal material. Collect legally binding e-signatures without leaving Peony.
Two-factor authentication
Add an extra identity verification layer for the most sensitive phases of due diligence. Ensure only verified participants get access.
Audit trails that hold up after closing
Every view, download, print, and login is logged with timestamps — a complete who-saw-what-when record of your disclosure. When a losing bidder disputes the process or an R&W insurer asks what was shared and when, export the room's full history as your evidence file.
Instant access revocation
When a bidder drops out or deal terms change, revoke document access with one click. No waiting for IT or support tickets.
How does an M&A sale run in a Peony data room, from teaser to close?
An M&A data room is the controlled space where a sell-side advisor releases deal documents to bidders in stages (NDA first, then the CIM, then deeper diligence as bidders advance) and keeps a record of who saw what. In Peony, a sale runs in four stages.
- Prepare the room. One room per mandate, named by code name. Describe the deal and Peony drafts the folder tree; upload the CIM and the financial, customer, people, legal, tax and operations folders, with no storage cap or per-file size limit; Index documents numbers every file so bidders can cite "4.2" (Data Room plan). Turn on Hide new content by default and every file you add stays hidden from every bidder link until you release it, group by group.
- Launch to bidders. Each bidder gets its own visitor group and link. The link requires your NDA before the first page, and dynamic watermarks stamp every page with the viewer's identity. Bidders open everything in a browser, free, with no Peony account.
- Run the diligence rounds. Open deeper folders to each group as it moves from IOI to LOI. Bidders ask inside the room, and each bidder's question team stays private; a process-wide answer can be published to every team without revealing who asked (Visitor Q&A, Data Room plan). Page-level analytics show time on every page of every document, and each bidder's return visits. When the model or a schedule changes, Upload new version replaces it in place, with the same link and every earlier version kept.
- Close and keep the record. Switch off each dropped bidder's group, so their link stops opening, and keep the winning buyer's group open for confirmatory work. Export analytics to CSV for the deal file; on Deal Team, download the full room archive for the closing binder.
How does Peony's AI accelerate M&A due diligence?
Peony drafts your room's folder structure from a one-line description of the deal, numbers every file with Index documents, and lets Smart Q&A draft cited answers to buyer questions from your documents — collapsing 200+ question response time from days to hours.
Auto-index documents. Answer due diligence questions 24/7. Describe the deal in one line and Peony's AI drafts the folder structure; Index documents then numbers every file (1.1, 1.2...) so both sides can say "open 2.3". Buyers submit questions through Smart Q&A — AI drafts cited answers from your documents, your team reviews before publishing. Full control, zero back-and-forth email chains.
Auto-index documents
Index documents numbers every folder and file (1, 1.1, 1.2...) across hundreds of deal files, so bidders and your team can say "open 4.2" instead of hunting for a file name (Data Room plan).
Smart Q&A
Buyers ask questions in natural language and get instant, cited answers from the data room documents. Reduce management calls and speed up diligence.
5-minute setup
Describe the deal and AI room generation drafts the folder tree; drag in your files, set permissions per bidder group and send each bidder its link. Your data room is ready before the call ends.
Syndication-ready sharing
Distribute CIMs and teasers to multiple bidders simultaneously with individualized access links. Track engagement across every party in the syndication.
Live models from Claude and ChatGPT
Peony renders .html files live with JavaScript running, so a Claude or ChatGPT artifact (a model, dashboard or calculator) stays interactive for the viewer, behind your NDA gate, permissions and analytics.
Revised model, same link
Upload new version replaces a file in place: it keeps its position in the room and its link, and every earlier version stays one click away in the version menu. Every bidder who opens the file from then on sees the latest version.
"Peony is a standout for data rooms and gated file sharing — it gave us the control and visibility needed to close the deal with a great viewer experience."
Michael Hui
Managing Director at Piton Partners
Kevan Fight
GreenTech Global Group Advisory · M&A advisor, 35+ years of data room experience
"We selected Peony after a serious review focused on the requirements of a disciplined M&A process: multiple buyer groups, tiered permissions, NDA controls, engagement analytics, document security, and responsive transaction support. Peony provides the core functionality, professionalism, and security buyers, investors, advisers, and counsel expect, while remaining simpler and more cost-effective than many legacy VDR platforms. I would be comfortable recommending Peony for M&A mandates (buy- and sell-side) and capital market transactions in the middle market."
Akash Ghavalkar
Co-founder & COO, Third Space
"We'd been searching for a solution like Peony for ages, and it has completely transformed our workflows. What used to take hours every week is now effortless — Peony saves us so much time that we were finally able to move away from Dropbox Sign. It's been a total game changer!"
What does an M&A data room cost on Peony vs legacy VDRs?
On Peony, M&A rooms run on the Data Room plan at $52 per admin per month billed yearly ($75 monthly), with unlimited rooms and unlimited free bidders.
Legacy VDRs charge $25,000–$50,000+ per deal and take days to provision. A typical 9-month sell-side with 2 admins costs $936 on Peony — not $50,000. Enterprise security, granular multi-bidder permissions, structured Q&A workflows, customizable AI knowledge base, and action-level analytics — all included.
What legacy VDRs charge for one M&A deal
Per-page pricing & add-on fees
$50,000+
per deal
Intralinks
AI document chat, per-MB fees
$50,000+
per deal
Per-GB storage pricing
$25,000+
per project
Sterling
Multilingual deal support
$10,000+
per deal
Mid-market M&A data rooms
$5,000+
per project
Document DRM & watermarking
$500/mo
Same 9-month deal
$25,000–$50,000+
Per-page fees, storage caps, and setup charges
What Peony includes — on every deal
Peony
All-in-one data room
$52/admin
per month
Typical 9-month deal
$936 total
2 admins × $52/mo × 9 months. No per-page or per-deal fees.
Peony vs legacy virtual data rooms
Feature-by-feature comparison for M&A data rooms. Peony delivers enterprise-grade security and AI at a fraction of legacy VDR pricing — with no per-page, per-deal, or storage-based fees.
| Feature | Peony | Datasite | Intralinks | Ideals | Sterling | Firmex | Digify |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $936/deal (typical) | $50,000+/deal | $50,000+/deal | $25,000+/project | $10,000+/deal | $5,000+/project | $500/mo |
| Per-page fees | None | Yes | Yes | None | — | None | None |
| Storage-based fees | None | — | Per-MB | Per-GB | — | — | None |
| Setup time | Under 5 minutes | Days | Days | 30+ minutes | Hours | 20+ minutes | 15+ minutes |
| AI document chat | Included (Business) | Add-on | Included | Not included | Not included | Not included | Not included |
| Structured Q&A workflows | Included (Data Room) | Basic | Basic | Not included | Not included | Not included | Not included |
| Unlimited storage | Unlimited | Limited | Per-MB fees | Per-GB fees | Limited | Limited | Limited |
| Unlimited viewers (free) | Included, free | Per-user fees | Per-user fees | Add-on | — | Included | Per-user fees |
| Built-in e-signatures | Included | Not included | Not included | Not included | Not included | Not included | Not included |
| Screenshot protection | Included (Screenshield) | Add-on | Not included | Add-on | — | Not included | Included |
| AI room generation (folder structure) | Included | Add-on | Not included | Not included | Not included | Not included | Not included |
| Automatic NDA | Included | Not included | Not included | Add-on | Not included | Not included | Not included |
| Dynamic watermarks | Included | Add-on | Not included | Included | Not included | Included | Included |
| Custom domain & branding | Included | Add-on | Add-on | Add-on | Not included | Add-on | Add-on |
| Ease of use (public rating) | 9.4/10 | 7.5/10 | 7.2/10 | 8.7/10 | 7.4/10 | 8.5/10 | 6.9/10 |
| Average user satisfaction | 9.7/10 | 7.5/10 | 7.2/10 | 8.9/10 | 7.3/10 | 8.8/10 | 7.5/10 |
| Platform uptime | 99.96% measured | 99.9% SLA | — | 99.95% SLA | — | 99.9% SLA | — |
Competitor pricing checked against vendor pages, May 2026.
AI auto-markup
Upload an agreement and let AI automatically detect and place signature, date, and input fields. Reduce contract prep from hours to minutes.
Attorney-approved templates
Start with vetted templates for NDAs, engagement letters, and standard deal documents. Ensure compliance from the first page.
Legally binding audit trails
Every signature event is logged with timestamp, IP address, and signer identity. Export court-admissible records at any time.
Go deeper: the M&A data room folder structure and checklist, the 10 best M&A data rooms ranked, and the virtual deal room guide. For first-party numbers, the State of M&A Data Rooms report covers 733 transactions from $1M to $500M; every plan and price is on the Peony pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
What is Peony, and is it a good fit for M&A advisors, sell-side and buy-side deal teams?
Yes. Peony is a virtual data room that M&A advisors and deal teams use to give each bidder an NDA-gated link, see which pages each bidder reads and run diligence Q&A in the room. Peony is trusted by 250+ M&A advisors. Data Room, the most popular plan, is $52 per admin per month billed yearly ($75 monthly), with unlimited rooms and storage; inviting bidders is free and unlimited.
What is an M&A data room and how do sell-side advisors use it during a competitive auction?
An M&A data room is a secure online workspace where sell-side advisors release the CIM, financial model and legal exhibits to bidders in stages, controlling who sees what and recording every view. Sell-side advisors, investment bankers, and legal counsel centralize CIMs, financial models, management presentations, and legal exhibits there for prospective buyers during a competitive auction. Sell-side teams use it to control who sees what at each stage of the process — distributing teasers broadly, then granting deeper access as bidders advance through indicative and binding offer rounds. Peony provides a purpose-built M&A data room with multi-bidder CIM distribution, page-level engagement analytics, AI-powered Q&A for due diligence, and bank-grade security — all deployable in under 5 minutes.
How does Peony handle multi-bidder CIM distribution?
Peony lets sell-side advisors distribute Confidential Information Memorandums to multiple bidders simultaneously with individualized access links per party. Granular folder-level permissions ensure each bidder sees only the documents relevant to their track. Dynamic watermarks and NDA gating prevent unauthorized sharing. Unlike legacy VDRs that bill per page, per GB of storage or per project, Peony's Data Room plan ($52/admin/month billed yearly) includes unlimited data rooms, dynamic watermarks, NDA gating, and granular folder-level permissions.
How do investment bankers track which bidders are doing real due diligence?
Peony provides page-by-page analytics showing exactly which sections of your CIM, financial models, and management presentations each prospective buyer studied and for how long. Bidder engagement scoring ranks buyers by time spent, pages viewed, and documents downloaded — so sell-side advisors and bankers focus energy on the bidders who are genuinely engaged rather than just browsing.
Can AI speed up the due diligence Q&A process for M&A deal teams managing 200+ buyer questions?
Yes. Peony's AI document Q&A lets bidders ask the data room questions in plain language and get instant answers cited to your deal files, so far fewer questions reach your deal team. That matters most when a sell-side advisor is fielding hundreds of diligence questions across multiple bidder workstreams: bidders answer the routine questions themselves from your uploaded deal files. AI document Q&A is available from the Business plan ($30/admin/month billed yearly). For multi-bidder sell-side processes, the Data Room plan ($52/admin/month) adds unlimited data rooms plus a structured Q&A workflow where buyer questions are submitted, AI drafts responses from your documents, and your team reviews before publishing — keeping the sell-side in control while cutting response time from days to hours. Larger deal teams that need the Advanced Q&A module and redaction step up to Deal Team ($64/admin/month).
How does Peony protect CIMs and financial models from leaking during a sell-side M&A process?
Peony gates the CIM behind your NDA, stamps each viewer's email and IP on every page with dynamic watermarks, and blocks screenshots and downloads, so any leak traces back to one viewer. Peony secures deal documents with AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.3 in transit on SOC 2 Type II-ready and ISO 27001-ready infrastructure, with both audits underway. Peony is GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA compliant. Screenshot protection prevents unauthorized captures of CIMs and financial models, dynamic watermarks trace any leak back to the specific viewer, and Advanced Redaction (on the Deal Team plan) permanently blacks out sensitive figures or proprietary terms before sharing with bidders. NDA gating ensures no bidder accesses documents without a signed NDA, and two-factor authentication adds another layer. Complete audit trails log every view, download, and print with timestamps — so if a CIM surfaces where it should not, your team can trace exactly who leaked it.
Can Peony staff see the CIM and other documents in our data room?
No. Peony staff can't open, move or edit the documents in your room. Your documents aren't used to train AI: Peony's LLM providers work under data-handling agreements that prohibit training on customer content. Viewers read documents in the browser; files never leave Peony unless you allow downloads on a link.
How much does an M&A data room cost for a mid-market sell-side advisory mandate?
On Peony, a typical 9-month sell-side mandate with 2 admins costs $936 total on the Data Room plan ($52 per admin per month), about 98% less than a $50,000+ Datasite mandate. For a mid-market sell-side mandate running 6 to 9 months, legacy VDRs such as Datasite and Ideals charge $25,000 to $50,000+ per data room, billed per page, per GB of storage or per project. Peony offers Free ($0), Business ($30/admin/month — up to 3 data rooms per admin, AI document Q&A, NDA gating), Data Room ($52/admin/month — unlimited data rooms, unlimited storage and dynamic watermarks), and Deal Team ($64/admin/month — Advanced Q&A, Advanced Redaction, SSO, and API) with no per-page fees, no per-viewer limits, and no per-deal surcharges. AI document Q&A and NDA gating are included from the Business plan and dynamic watermarks from Data Room — features that legacy providers charge extra for on top of their base fee. Prices are per admin per month billed yearly; monthly billing costs more.
Can M&A advisors collect NDA signatures and LOIs directly inside the data room?
Yes. Peony includes e-signatures from Business ($30/admin/month billed yearly); on Data Room ($52), the NDA gate is a signed e-signature NDA with an audit record, so advisors collect NDAs and LOIs without a separate DocuSign subscription. AI auto-markup detects and places signature, date, and input fields automatically, reducing contract prep from hours to minutes. Every signature event is logged with timestamp, IP address, and signer identity for legally binding audit trails. NDA gating ships in two modes: Simple NDA (timestamped acknowledge-only acceptance) on the Business plan, and Advanced NDA on the Data Room plan, where both your sell-side team and the bidder can additionally view and download the signed PDF with a full audit trail after execution — typically what bidder counsel expects for the buy-side evidentiary file. Switch per data room from the dashboard.
How quickly can a deal team set up a data room for a new mandate?
A Peony data room can be live in minutes: the median Peony customer goes from sign-up to first uploaded document in 4 min 19 s (State of M&A Data Rooms, Q3 2026 edition). Five steps: 1. Create the data room, one per mandate, named by code name; on the Data Room plan, describe the deal in one line and AI room generation drafts the folder tree. 2. Upload the CIM and the financial, customer, people, legal, tax and operations folders; Index documents numbers every file so bidders can cite "4.2". 3. Gate every link behind your NDA (a signed NDA with an audit record on Data Room). 4. Create one visitor group and link per bidder, turn on dynamic watermarks, email verification and screenshot protection, and switch off downloads. 5. Invite your deal team as admins and open Visitor Q&A, with a private question team for each bidder. Your data room is live before the kickoff call ends. While legacy VDRs like Firmex require days of IT provisioning, Peony requires no IT tickets or technical setup.
What support does Peony offer M&A deal teams during live transactions?
Peony support runs 24/7 through in-app chat, handled directly by the Peony team across Europe, US and Asia hours, with no outsourced tier. Everyone you speak to on Peony support has M&A experience at elite boutiques or bulge-bracket banks, VC experience, or has raised $1M+ themselves. That matters because bidder access issues at 11 PM before a deadline cannot wait until morning. Email is answered within 24 hours on Data Room and within 12 hours on Deal Team; mark a deal blocker urgent and it is typically answered within a few hours. Deal Team adds priority support and a dedicated account manager. Enterprise support is available to teams who book a demo with our deal infrastructure team. Every plan includes in-app help, documentation, and email support. For mid-market M&A where counterparty experience matters, Peony ensures your deal team and external parties never hit a dead end.
Is Peony suitable for $1M–$500M M&A transactions?
Yes. Peony is purpose-built for $1M–$500M M&A, delivering enterprise-grade security, AI-powered Q&A, page-level analytics and built-in e-signatures from $30/admin/month billed yearly instead of the $25,000–$50,000+ per-deal fees charged by legacy VDRs like Datasite and Ideals. There are no per-deal surcharges, no per-page fees, and no viewer caps. The Data Room plan ($52/admin/month) includes unlimited data rooms, AI document classification, dynamic watermarks, NDA-gated access, and granular multi-bidder permissions — making it the right-sized data room for boutique advisors and deal teams running $1M–$500M transactions. Larger or regulated processes scale onto the Deal Team plan ($64/admin/month) and Enterprise, which add advanced redaction, an advanced Q&A module, API access, and SSO — so the same platform fits a $5M asset sale and a $400M carve-out.
I'm a boutique M&A advisor running 4-6 concurrent sell-side mandates for different clients — can I keep each client's diligence room completely isolated, with its own clickthrough NDA, bidder list, and audit trail?
Yes. On Peony's Data Room plan ($52/admin/month billed yearly), your firm runs unlimited isolated data rooms on one subscription, each mandate with its own NDA template, bidder list, folder structure and audit trail. A bidder added to Client A's room never sees that Client B's room exists. Keep a template room with your standard sell-side folder tree and duplicate it for each new mandate: files and folders copy over, while groups, links and analytics start clean. Upload a different NDA per client (governing-law, carve-outs, defined terms drafted by that client's counsel) and Peony gates the entire room behind it via click-to-accept (/features/nda) — every acceptance logged with email, IP, timestamp, and the specific NDA version. Visitor groups (/features/visitor-groups) let your team stage bidder access within each room — strategics see the CIM, financial sponsors see the additional commercial appendices. Dynamic watermarks (/features/watermarks) stamp every page with the viewer's identity per room, so a leaked CIM traces back to the specific bidder on the specific mandate. Your 4-6 concurrent mandates run on the same flat $52/admin/month — no per-deal, per-bidder, or per-page surcharges. Datasite typically charges $50,000+ per mandate; Ideals charges enterprise pricing per project. A boutique firm pays $624/year per admin and stops budgeting per-deal entirely.
How does Peony's UX compare to Ideals or Datasite for a first-time bidder who has never used a data room before?
On Peony, a first-time bidder clicks your branded link, accepts your clickthrough NDA on one screen and is reading the CIM seconds later, with no account, password or app to set up. That bidder experience is the deal-velocity differentiator boutique advisors actually feel: no account creation, no password set, no MFA enrollment flow, no IT ticket on their side, and no Peony branding anywhere in the experience. The room loads at files.youradvisory.com under your custom domain (/features/custom-domain, Data Room plan at $52/admin/month billed yearly) with your logo and welcome message — not at a generic legacy-VDR subdomain. On Ideals, first-time bidders typically navigate a multi-step account-creation flow, set a password, accept platform terms, and complete onboarding before reaching documents. On Datasite, the same pattern, plus enterprise SSO friction depending on the buyer's IT setup. For a $50M-$200M mid-market sell-side process with 8-15 bidders, that onboarding tax compounds — every hour of bidder friction is an hour your CIM is not being read. Peony's median customer hits first uploaded document in 4 minutes 19 seconds, and platform uptime since launch is 99.96% — so your deal team and your bidders are not the ones whose tooling stalls a Friday 5 PM IOI deadline. The UX advantage is not aesthetic; it is measurable bidder-engagement time recovered.
Can bidders see each other in a virtual data room during a competitive M&A process?
No. When each bidder has its own group in Peony, it gets its own folder permissions, link and private question team, so nothing in the room shows that other bidders exist. Keeping bidders invisible to each other is the core requirement of a competitive process. In Peony, each bidder is set up as its own visitor group (/features/visitor-groups) with its own folder permissions, its own access links, and its own private Q&A channel. Groups and invitees never see each other's questions, folders, or activity, and nothing in the room reveals that other bidders exist — a strategic acquirer and a financial sponsor can work the same room simultaneously without either learning the other is looking. Per-viewer dynamic watermarks mean any leaked page still traces back to one named individual in one group. This bidder-blind separation is included on Peony's Data Room plan ($52/admin/month billed yearly); legacy VDRs like Datasite offer equivalent buyer-group separation only inside $50,000+ per-deal engagements.
How do sell-side teams manage Q&A with multiple buyers during due diligence?
In Peony, bidders ask questions inside the room through Visitor Q&A, each bidder's questions stay private to its own question team, and your team answers from one Q&A workspace (Data Room plan, $52/admin/month billed yearly). The mechanics that matter are privacy per bidder and control over what goes out: one bidder never sees another bidder's questions or your answers to them. Questions land in your team's Q&A workspace, where an admin drafts and publishes each answer back to the asking group — or, when a question is relevant to the whole process, broadcasts the answer to every bidder group at once without revealing which bidder asked. On the Deal Team plan ($64/admin/month, minimum 4 admins), the Advanced Q&A workflow adds expert-and-approver routing: each question is assigned to a subject-matter expert to draft (with AI proposing a cited first draft from the room's documents) and an approver — typically the banker or CFO — signs off before anything reaches the bidder. Nothing leaves your side unapproved. This replaces the shared-inbox chaos most mid-market processes still run Q&A on, and it keeps a complete per-question record attached to the deal.
How do you stage document disclosure across the phases of an M&A sale process?
In Peony, you build the full room once and open deeper folders to each bidder group as it advances: teaser and CIM first, the model after the IOI, legal and HR in confirmatory diligence. Staged disclosure means opening deeper information as bidders earn it: teaser and CIM at first contact, the financial model and commercial appendices after an indicative offer, and full legal, HR, and operations folders only in confirmatory diligence. In Peony this is folder-level permissioning per visitor group, so each bidder group sees only the rounds it has reached. Phase changes take effect immediately, and when a bidder drops out, one click revokes their access entirely while every other group continues undisturbed. Because permissions are per group rather than per room, you never maintain duplicate rooms per phase or per bidder. Granular folder-level permissions and visitor groups are included on Peony's Data Room plan ($52/admin/month billed yearly) with no per-page or per-bidder fees.
What audit trail do you need for an M&A sale process, and why does it matter after closing?
An M&A sale process needs a who-saw-what-when record per named viewer, because it becomes your evidence file if the process is challenged; Peony's audit trail (Data Room plan) records every view, download and NDA acceptance. A defensible record covers every document view, download, and print logged per named individual with timestamps, plus NDA acceptance records tying each bidder to the specific NDA version they accepted with email, IP, and timestamp. This record matters most after the deal: if a losing bidder disputes the fairness of the process, if a buyer alleges information was withheld, or if a reps-and-warranties insurer asks exactly what was disclosed and when, the audit trail is your evidence file. Peony logs all of this automatically in each data room's audit trail (Data Room plan, $52/admin/month billed yearly) and exports it on demand, and its built-in NDA gating records every acceptance with the executed version attached. Legacy VDRs treat audit exports as an admin feature; for sell-side counsel it is the disclosure record that survives the deal.
Can I try Peony before I pay?
Yes. Peony's Data Room plan has a 7-day free trial you start yourself, with no credit card, and it never converts to paid on its own. Rooms, files, links, analytics and NDA settings carry over when you upgrade. AI features, such as AI document Q&A and AI room generation, switch on once you're on a paid plan.
Ready to run your next deal on Peony?
Join boutique M&A advisors, deal teams, and investment bankers who have switched from legacy VDRs to Peony. Set up your first deal room in under 5 minutes.
- You pay per admin, not per bidder: invite every bidder and outside advisor as a viewer, free and with no Peony account.
- Unlimited rooms and storage on Data Room: five concurrent mandates cost the same as one.
- Live in minutes: median 4 min 19 s from sign-up to first uploaded document, with 24/7 support from the Peony team.
No credit card · 7-day Data Room trial that never auto-charges · bidders view free, no account