Question 1

What is Peony, and is it a good fit for manufacturers and industrial deal teams?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Peony is a virtual data room that manufacturers and industrial deal teams use to share CAD, BOMs and contracts under NDA, see which buyers open each file and hold large engineering files in one room. Data Room, the most popular plan, is $52 per admin per month billed yearly ($75 monthly), with unlimited rooms and storage; inviting buyers is free and unlimited.

Question 2

Can I try Peony before I pay?

Accepted Answer

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. Book a demo to see them first.

Question 3

What is the best data room for manufacturing M&A and industrial deals?

Accepted Answer

Peony's Data Room plan is built for manufacturing sales and roll-ups: unlimited storage with no file-size cap, signed NDAs, per-bidder watermarks, page analytics and free buyer access, at $52 per admin per month billed yearly. 8,000+ customers in 60+ countries use Peony, with $44.7B in client assets. A manufacturing room carries CAD drawings and models, BOMs with supplier pricing, supplier and customer contracts, quality records (ISO 9001, AS9100, FAI and PPAP), capacity plans, factory walkthrough video and the IP file, and on Data Room ($75 if billed monthly) none of it is capped by size or billed by the gigabyte. Each bidder gets its own group with folder-level permissions, so pricing schedules and customer contracts open only to the short list, and Visitor Q&A keeps each bidder's questions in its own question team. Buyers, their engineers and their lenders view free in the browser, with no account, and an operating model built in Claude or ChatGPT runs live as HTML. Peony support runs 24/7. Peony has had no data breach since launch. What a buyer's engineer checks in the room is in our industrial data room guide.

Question 4

How do I stop CAD files from spreading when I share them with suppliers or buyers?

Accepted Answer

Share CAD drawings from a Peony data room on View permission with downloads off, so suppliers and buyers read them in the browser under their own watermark and no copy leaves unless you grant Download. Give each supplier, bidder or engineering consultant its own group: per-folder and per-file permissions (No access, View, Download, Upload) on the Data Room plan ($52 per admin per month billed yearly) decide who sees which drawing set, and each supplier's or bidder's own Upload folder collects its quote or mark-ups without opening the rest of the room. PDF drawing sets and AutoCAD DXF files open in the browser; native models (SOLIDWORKS, Inventor, CATIA, NX, STEP) go in as ZIP or RAR archives, and Download on that folder goes only to the parties who need the source files. Dynamic watermarks print the viewer's email, IP and time on every page, and a downloaded PDF keeps its watermark, so a drawing that turns up elsewhere traces back to one person. Screenshot protection blocks desktop captures from Business; Screenshield extends it to phones and tablets on Data Room. Expiry and one-switch revocation end access when a quote round or a deal closes, and page analytics show who opened which drawing and for how long. See the CAD data room.

Question 5

Which data rooms can handle large CAD, BIM and factory video files?

Accepted Answer

Peony's Data Room plan handles them with unlimited storage and no per-file size cap, so multi-GB CAD archives, BIM models and 4K factory walkthroughs upload without splitting, at $52 per admin per month billed yearly. Business includes 3 data rooms per admin, 1,000 documents per admin and 100 GB of storage, with no per-file size cap. Peony charges no storage, page or per-GB fees on paid plans, and drag-and-drop folder upload keeps a drawing tree's nested structure. Video (MP4, MOV and other formats) uploads on Business and above and streams in the browser with the player's download control removed; on Data Room the viewer's watermark plays over it. Native CAD and BIM files (SOLIDWORKS, CATIA, NX, STEP, Revit, IFC) upload inside ZIP or RAR archives. See the large-file data room, video data room and BIM data room pages.

Question 6

Can buyers open CAD files in a data room without CAD software?

Accepted Answer

Yes, for drawings: Peony opens PDF drawing sets and AutoCAD DXF files in the browser with no CAD software, and native SOLIDWORKS, Inventor, CATIA, NX or STEP models travel as ZIP or RAR archives. Most teams export the drawing package to PDF for review: the PDF opens in Peony's own viewer with the viewer's watermark on every page (Data Room), and page analytics show which sheets each buyer studied. DXF files preview in the document viewer, generally up to 25 MB, and images of parts and assemblies (PNG, JPG, TIFF) open one by one. Put the native models in an archive in their own folder and give Download on that folder only to the buyer's engineers once they reach confirmatory diligence. The full list is in supported file formats.

Question 7

What documents go in a manufacturing due diligence data room?

Accepted Answer

A Peony manufacturing due diligence room holds eight document groups: corporate and financial, customers and contracts, suppliers and the BOM, operations and plants, engineering and IP, quality and certifications, environmental, health and safety, and people. In detail: five years of P&L and balance sheets, AR/AP aging and the working capital schedule; top-10 customer concentration, customer contracts and long-term agreements; the BOM with supplier names, pricing tiers and lead times, supply agreements, freight and tariff history; machine inventory with capacity utilization, tooling ownership and mold inventory, deeds or leases for each plant; CAD drawings and models, patents, trademarks and test data; ISO 9001 and AS9100 certifications, FAI reports, PPAP packages and supplier corrective actions; RCRA and air permits and product liability history; and the employee handbook and key-person list. On Peony's Data Room plan, storage and file size are unlimited, so the CAD archive and factory video sit beside the QoE report, and Index documents numbers every file so a buyer can ask about "5.2" by number. The certification, capex and tariff checks buyers price are in our manufacturing due diligence guide.

Question 8

How do I set up a manufacturing data room in Peony?

Accepted Answer

In Peony, create a room, drag in the deal folders and give each buyer a group with an NDA, watermark and folder permissions; the median from sign-up to first upload is 4 min 19 s. 1. Create a data room and have AI room generation draft the folders from a one-line description such as "manufacturing acquisition diligence" (Data Room plan, once you've upgraded), or duplicate a past deal's room to reuse its folder tree. 2. Drag in the drawing and contract folders: folder upload keeps its nested structure, native CAD goes in as ZIP or RAR archives, and Index documents numbers every file. 3. Create a group for each bidder, supplier or auditor, with a signed NDA, a dynamic watermark and downloads off (Data Room plan, or the 7-day Data Room trial). 4. Set each group's folder permissions, keeping supplier pricing, customer contracts and native CAD at No access until the short list. 5. Send each group its link and watch page analytics to see who is working the drawings. The median comes from Peony's State of M&A Data Rooms report (Q3 2026 edition).

Question 9

How do I share supplier and customer contracts without exposing pricing to the wrong bidder?

Accepted Answer

Give each bidder its own Peony group and keep supplier pricing and customer contracts in folders set to No access until it reaches the short list (Data Room, $52 per admin per month billed yearly). Each group has its own link, folder and file permissions and Q&A question team, so a strategic never sees which customers a PE bidder asked about. Advanced redaction on Deal Team ($64, minimum 4 admins) saves a new PDF with a customer name, unit price or rebate term removed, so an early-round bidder sees the economics without the identity. Dynamic watermarks put each reader's email and IP on every page of an MSA or price schedule, and downloads stay off unless you grant them. When a bidder drops out, switching its group off ends its access without touching anyone else.

Question 10

I run a 25-person robotics startup raising a $25M Series A from Lux Capital — what do I put in my hardware data room beyond the deck?

Accepted Answer

Add CAD assemblies, a factory walkthrough video, the BOM with supplier lead times, test data, certification status and patents to the deck, model and cap table; Peony holds all of it in one NDA-gated room. For a 25-person robotics company at the Series A stage, your data room needs the deck, financial model, cap table, and IP filings — but it also needs the things hardware investors actually diligence: CAD assemblies for your core mechanical system, a 5–10 minute factory walkthrough video, BOM with supplier lead times, prototype test data, regulatory clearance status (FCC, CE, UL where relevant), and your patent portfolio with examiner office actions. Peony is the data room that handles all of these in one place — drag-and-drop a 2 GB SOLIDWORKS assembly (as a ZIP archive) or a 4K factory walkthrough and it processes server-side without melting your laptop. Page-level analytics tell you which investor watched the full demo video versus skipped to the financial model. Index documents on the Data Room plan ($52/admin/month billed yearly) numbers your BOMs, drawings, test reports, and IP filings into a navigable index automatically. Compared to DocSend (10 GB max storage on the highest plan, no CAD preview, no video DRM), or Datasite (designed for $500M+ deals, $25K+ per transaction), Peony is the price-and-capability sweet spot for hardware teams between seed and Series B.

Question 11

I lead corp dev at a $400M industrial holding company doing a roll-up of four PCB assembly shops — how do I run four parallel data rooms without a $30K per-deal VDR bill?

Accepted Answer

Put each target in its own Peony data room on the Data Room plan ($52 per admin per month billed yearly), which has unlimited rooms, so four parallel acquisitions cost the same as one. For a $400M industrial holding company running parallel acquisitions, each PCB shop needs its own data room with separate permission models — sellers should never see each other's documents, your diligence team should see all four side by side, and your lender should see the consolidated package. Peony Data Room ($52/admin/month) gives you unlimited data rooms on a single subscription, so running four parallel acquisitions costs the same as running one. Each room gets independent NDA gates, watermarks stamped with the specific bidder's identity, screenshot protection on quality manuals and AS9100 audits, and a separate audit log for ISO 9001 traceability. Compared to Datasite (typically $20–40K per deal for mid-market industrial M&A) or Intralinks (similar enterprise pricing), Peony cuts your VDR spend by over 95% on a four-shop roll-up while keeping every bidder isolated. The room dashboard on the Data Room plan shows live engagement in each of the four rooms: the most active viewers, the top files and every download.

Question 12

I'm preparing an $800M aerospace tier-1 supplier divestiture with ITAR-controlled drawings — does Peony handle export-controlled documents and audit trails for compliance review?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Peony provides the secure-distribution layer for ITAR/EAR-controlled drawings: restricted folders, watermarks, screenshot blocking and per-viewer audit trails, while you keep the licensing and classification decisions. For an $800M aerospace divestiture with ITAR/EAR-controlled drawings, the workflow needs three things: (1) restricted-access folders gated behind specific NDAs and access lists, (2) full audit trails showing every viewer, IP address, timestamp, and download for export-control review, (3) screenshot blocking and dynamic watermarks on every sensitive drawing so leaks can be traced. Peony Data Room ($52/admin/month) provides all three. Folder-level permissions let you isolate ITAR-controlled drawings from non-controlled corporate documents and grant access only to bidders whose export-compliance teams have completed your jurisdictional review. Watermarks stamp viewer identity plus timestamp on every page; screenshot protection blocks (and logs) capture attempts. Exportable audit logs satisfy DDTC and BIS recordkeeping expectations. Note: Peony provides the secure-distribution layer; you remain responsible for the underlying ITAR/EAR licensing decisions and export-classification work — same as you would with Datasite, Intralinks, or any VDR. For aerospace deals with classified content above CUI, defense primes typically use government-accredited environments instead, which is outside any commercial VDR's scope. Pure defense workflows are covered separately on the Peony defense data room page.

Question 13

We're a 50-person EV battery hardware company raising a $40M Series B — investors want cell test data, thermal abuse tests, and patent details. How do we share without leaking IP?

Accepted Answer

Share cell data and patents in a Peony room with an NDA gate, downloads off, screenshot protection and per-investor watermarks, so every page an investor sees traces back to them. For a 50-person EV battery Series B, your IP is the entire business — cell chemistry data, calendar life curves, thermal abuse and nail penetration test results, manufacturing process know-how, and the patent portfolio behind it. Sharing this on Google Drive or Dropbox is unacceptable; sharing it on a legacy VDR ($15K+ per deal) burns runway. Peony Business ($30/admin/month) gives you screenshot protection on every cell test report and abuse test video, an NDA gate that every investor must accept before any document is visible, and link expiry so test data shared with a strategic for partnership review can be revoked when the conversation ends. The Data Room plan ($52/admin/month) adds a signed NDA with an audit record and dynamic watermarks tracing every page back to the specific investor. Visitor Q&A on the Data Room plan lets investors submit dozens of diligence questions inside the room; your team answers each one, using AI document Q&A to find the cited page, and publishes only what it approves — keeping you in full control of what gets disclosed.

Question 14

I run quality at a contract manufacturer being audited by a tier-1 OEM — they want every ISO 9001, AS9100, and ITAR document for the past three years. How do I share without giving them access to other customers' files?

Accepted Answer

Give the auditing OEM its own Peony group that sees only its customer folder and your quality-system documents; folder permissions on Data Room ($52 per admin per month billed yearly) hide every other customer's files. For a contract manufacturer facing a tier-1 OEM audit, the trap is exactly the one you described: you have to share three years of quality docs (ISO 9001 procedures, AS9100 records, ITAR compliance evidence, FAI reports, PPAP packages, supplier corrective actions) without exposing other customers' work or proprietary processes. Peony Data Room ($52/admin/month) solves this with folder-level permissions — create one folder per customer, grant the auditing OEM access only to their folder plus your shared quality system documents, and audit-log every view they perform. Screenshot protection prevents auditors from capturing internal process details to compare against your other customers' specs. Dynamic watermarks on FAI and PPAP packages tag every page with the auditor's identity. When the audit closes, link expiry and access revocation pull permission instantly. Page-level analytics also show you what they actually scrutinized — useful for your post-audit debrief.

Question 15

Our consumer hardware DTC brand is selling to a strategic for ~$150M — what should the M&A data room contain that's different from a SaaS sale?

Accepted Answer

Beyond financials and cohorts, add the BOM and supplier pricing, factory video, tooling and mold records, freight and tariff history, marketplace account health, IP, liability and compliance files; Peony holds all of it. For a $150M consumer hardware DTC sale, the M&A data room looks materially different from a SaaS sale because the strategic is buying real-world supply chain, manufacturing, and brand IP — not just code and ARR. Beyond the standard package (financials, cap table, customer cohorts, churn, returns), you need: full BOM with supplier names and pricing tiers, factory walkthrough videos for each contract manufacturer, tooling ownership records, mold inventory, freight and tariff history, marketplace seller account health (Amazon, Shopify, retailer EDI feeds), IP filings (utility patents, design patents, trademarks, trade dress), product liability claim history, FCC/CE/Prop 65 compliance files, and customer review sentiment data. Peony handles all of this — including 5–20 GB factory video, 1–3 GB CAD assemblies, BOM spreadsheets, and patent PDFs — in one secure data room, with no per-file size cap on any plan. Index documents numbers the entire library, and AI-powered Q&A, switched on for the strategic's group, lets its diligence team ask natural-language questions like 'what's our gross margin trend by SKU since 2023' and get sourced answers with exact page references.

Question 16

I'm 70 years old, my family CNC machining shop has 80 employees and ~$25M in revenue, and I'm selling to a lower-middle-market PE firm. What does a data room for an industrial family business sale look like — and how much does it cost?

Accepted Answer

A CNC shop's sale room holds five years of financials, customer concentration, machine inventory, certifications, environmental and property records and customer contracts; on Peony Business the whole sale costs a few hundred dollars. For an 80-person CNC family business selling to LMM PE for $25M revenue, the data room needs to satisfy a buyer doing operational diligence on a real, physical business. That means: financials (5 years P&L, balance sheets, AR/AP aging, working capital schedule), customer concentration analysis (top 10 customers, multi-year revenue history), employee handbook and key-person identification, machine inventory with capacity utilization, ISO/AS9100 certifications, environmental compliance (RCRA, air permits), real estate (deed or lease), and customer contracts. Peony Business at $30 per admin per month billed yearly ($44 monthly) — one or two admins is plenty for your seller-side team — covers the full process from teaser through closing for about $220–$440 across the typical 5-month deal cycle on monthly billing, or $360 a year per admin billed yearly. Compared to Datasite (commonly $15–25K for an LMM industrial deal), that's a ~98% reduction. Setup takes under 5 minutes; your CFO or M&A advisor can drag-and-drop the entire deal package, gate it behind an NDA, and start sending personalized links to PE firms the same afternoon.

Question 17

We're a $2B auto OEM divesting a non-core supplier division — drawings, BOMs, supply contracts, capacity plans. How do we run a multi-bidder process without leak risk?

Accepted Answer

Give each bidder its own Peony group and link, with per-bidder watermarks, screenshot protection and folder permissions by stage, and cut a dropped bidder off in one click. For a $2B auto OEM divestiture with multiple strategic and PE bidders chasing the same supplier division, leak risk is structural — every bidder hires consultants, the consultants leak, and a single screenshot of a customer roster or pricing tier ends up at a competitor. Peony Data Room ($52/admin/month) gives you per-bidder personalized links, watermarks stamped with the specific bidder's identity and timestamp, screenshot protection that blocks and logs capture attempts on every drawing, BOM, and supply contract, and folder-level permissions so each bidder sees only what they're entitled to at their stage of the process. When you advance one bidder to confirmatory diligence, a single click expands their access; when you eliminate another, link expiry pulls everything instantly. Page-level analytics show you which bidder is actually engaging with the financial model versus skimming — useful for prioritizing follow-up calls. Compared to Datasite (purpose-built for this exact scenario but at $30–50K for a $2B divestiture), Peony delivers the same security layer at a fraction of the cost.

Question 18

I'm a 12-person industrial IoT startup at the seed stage — investors want to walk our factory floor and see the device on real production lines. How do I do that remotely?

Accepted Answer

Upload 4K factory walkthroughs and on-site install footage to a Peony data room, where investors stream them in the browser with a per-viewer watermark and you see who watched. For a 12-person industrial IoT seed round, remote factory walkthroughs are the highest-conviction artifact in your data room — investors who watch a 3-minute video of your sensor running on a customer's production line convert at multiples of investors who only see the deck. Peony lets you upload 4K factory walkthrough videos, on-site customer install footage, and dashboard screen recordings with no per-file size limit on any plan, and unlimited storage on the Data Room plan ($52/admin/month). Page-level analytics tell you which investors watched the full video — that's your real diligence-to-term-sheet leading indicator. Watermarks tag every video with the viewer's identity, and screenshot protection blocks frame captures of customer factories. Compared to YouTube unlisted (no security, no analytics, no NDA) or DocSend (10 GB cap, weak video handling), Peony is the data room actually built for hardware demo content.

Question 19

How much does a manufacturing data room cost for a $50M industrial acquisition?

Accepted Answer

On Peony, a $50M industrial acquisition runs on Data Room at $52 per admin per month billed yearly ($75 monthly), with unlimited rooms and storage, and bidders join free. For a $50M industrial acquisition data room, Peony Data Room is $52 per admin per month with unlimited data rooms, unlimited storage, AI-powered Q&A, screenshot protection, dynamic watermarks, NDA gates, full audit trails, and page-level analytics. Mid-market industrial M&A deals typically take 4–6 months from teaser to close, so total cost is roughly $300–$450 per admin across the entire deal on monthly billing — or $624 for a full year billed yearly if you keep it open through post-close integration. Datasite, Intralinks, Merrill, and Ideals commonly price the same scope at $15–35K per deal for $50M industrial transactions, depending on data volume and number of bidders. Peony has parity on the security and audit features that mid-market PE and corporate dev teams actually require (SOC 2 Type II-ready and ISO 27001-ready, GDPR, dynamic watermarks, screenshot blocking, NDA gates, granular permissions, exportable audit logs), so the cost gap is not a feature gap. The free plan exists for testing; the Business plan ($30/admin/month) covers smaller teams that need up to 3 data rooms per admin with AI document Q&A, screenshot protection, and NDA gates; but for a $50M acquisition with multiple bidders, Data Room is the anchor tier because that's where unlimited data rooms, granular permissions, and the structured Q&A workflow live. The per-provider math is in our virtual data room cost guide.

Manufacturing files	Formats	What buyers see
Supplier and customer contracts, quality manuals, FAI and PPAP packages, patent filings	PDF, Word	In the browser, with the viewer's watermark on every page (Data Room); a downloaded PDF keeps its watermark.
BOMs, capacity plans, cost and operating models	Excel (.xlsx, .xls), CSV	Every sheet in the browser, showing values without formulas; the viewer's watermark sits over the grid (Data Room).
Drawing sets, shop drawings and part photos	PDF, AutoCAD DXF, TIFF, PNG, JPG	PDF drawing sets in Peony's own viewer; DXF in the document viewer; images one by one.
Native 3D CAD and BIM models (SOLIDWORKS, Inventor, CATIA, NX, STEP, Revit, IFC)	ZIP or RAR archive	Upload with no per-file size cap on any plan; the archive listing shows in the viewer, and you give Download on that folder only to the engineers who need the source files.
Factory walkthroughs, line footage and test video	MP4, MOV and other video (upload on Business and above)	Streams in place with the download control removed; the watermark plays over the video on Data Room.
Cost, capacity or tariff models built in Claude or ChatGPT	HTML (.html, .htm)	Runs live with JavaScript, so buyers change inputs and outputs recalculate, behind your NDA gate, permissions and analytics.

Platform	Pricing model	Cost over 5 months
Peony Data Room	$52/admin/month billed yearly ($75 monthly), unlimited rooms, unlimited storage	~$375 (1 admin) – $750 (2 admins) on monthly billing; $624 a year per admin billed yearly
Datasite	Per-deal, per-page, per-GB tiers	~$15–35K per deal
Intralinks	Per-deal enterprise license	~$15–30K per deal
Ideals	Per-page, per-user, per-deal	~$10–25K per deal
Merrill	Per-deal enterprise	~$15–30K per deal

The manufacturing data room for CAD, contracts and industrial M&A

What is Peony's manufacturing data room, and who is it for?

Peony at a glance

Which manufacturing and industrial teams use a data room, and for which deals?

Plant and division sales

PE roll-ups and add-ons

Aerospace suppliers

Automotive and EV suppliers

Contract manufacturers and audits

Supplier quoting and onboarding

Hardware and robotics raises

How does Peony handle CAD, BOM, factory video, and ITAR drawings in one data room?

Drag-and-drop a 3 GB SOLIDWORKS assembly. Or a 20 GB factory walkthrough

Watermarks, screenshot blocking, NDA gates — on every drawing

See which buyers, investors and auditors opened each drawing

Chat with your BOMs, supply contracts, and patent portfolio

CAD drawings in the browser

4K factory video DRM

Unlimited storage on Data Room

Screenshot protection

Dynamic watermarks

NDA-gated access

Ask questions across BOMs and contracts

Auto-indexing for hardware deal libraries

Bidder Q&A on autopilot

Version control

Redaction

Branded rooms

Which manufacturing files can buyers open in Peony?

How does a manufacturing sale run in a Peony data room, from teaser to close?

Build the room

Gate it with the NDA

Open the first round to every signed bidder

Release confirmatory diligence to the short list

Negotiate, close and cut access

How do audit trails support ISO 9001, AS9100, and ITAR compliance?

Page-by-page tracking

Compliance-ready logs

Granular access control

Who supports a manufacturing deal team on Peony?

Can competing bidders or suppliers see each other in a Peony room?

Is Peony secure enough for CAD files and engineering IP?

What does a manufacturing data room cost on Peony?

Close hardware deals without burning runway on a legacy VDR

How much does a manufacturing data room cost vs Datasite or Intralinks?

Where else do manufacturing teams use Peony?

CAD Data Room

BIM Data Room

Video Data Room

Large-File Data Room

Startups

Private Equity

M&A

Which Peony guide covers your manufacturing deal?

Manufacturing data room FAQ