The private equity data room for diligence, exits and fund raises

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

Peony is a virtual data room that private equity deal teams and independent sponsors use for buy-side diligence, portfolio-company exits, add-ons and LP fundraising, with one permissioned group per counterparty and page-level analytics. Data Room, Peony's most popular plan, is $52 per admin per month billed yearly with unlimited rooms and storage, and bidders, lenders and LPs never pay.

A private equity data room is the permissioned online workspace a fund uses to share confidential deal and fund documents (the CIM, QoE report, model, PPM and DDQ) with targets, lenders, bidders and LPs under NDA. For a ranked comparison of providers, see best data rooms for private equity; for an advisor-run sell-side process, see M&A data rooms.

• Buy-side diligence and add-ons: the target's management uploads into your request folders, and lenders, the QoE provider and counsel each get their own group, NDA and folder permissions.
• Exits: one room per process, a group, link and private question team per bidder, and one switch to cut off a bidder that drops out.
• Fundraising and LPs: a tracked link per LP into the fund room, page-by-page reading of the PPM, track record and DDQ, and signed NDAs and subscription documents in the same workspace.

How do multi-fund PE firms protect deal data between teams?

Peony keeps each fund's deals in separate rooms, restricts each fund's admin team to its own rooms, and gives every counterparty its own permissioned group, so each fund's deal team sees only its own deals. In practice that is one room per deal, a team per fund or strategy restricted to its own rooms, a group per counterparty with folder-level permissions, and Hide new content by default so a new upload stays hidden until you grant it. Dynamic watermarks and a per-person audit trail cover every room on the Data Room plan ($52 per admin per month billed yearly).

1. 1

   One room per deal

   Rooms are unlimited on Data Room, so every platform deal, add-on and fund raise gets its own room, its own NDA and its own audit trail.

2. 2

   A team per fund or strategy

   Invite each fund's admins to the workspace, create a team for each fund, and restrict it to that fund's rooms in team settings. Partners and the CFO sit in every team, so they keep access to all of them.

3. 3

   A group per counterparty

   Inside a room, each lender, bidder, advisor or LP gets its own group with No access, View, Download or Upload set per folder and per file. No access removes an item from the group's view, file name included, and groups never carry across rooms.

4. 4

   New files stay hidden

   Turn on Hide new content by default in the room's settings, and every new upload stays invisible to outside groups until you grant it.

5. 5

   A record of who saw what

   Dynamic watermarks put each viewer's email, IP and timestamp on every page, and the audit trail lists every file each person opened and downloaded.

How private equity teams run their rooms in Peony

Five situations PE teams bring to Peony, each with the setup that handles it and the plan it needs.

What is the best data room for a continuation vehicle or GP-led secondary?

Peony fits continuation vehicles and GP-led secondaries: rolling LPs, selling LPs, secondary buyers, the LPAC and counsel each get their own permission group in one room, and every LP views free. ILPA guidance recommends that all existing LPs receive data room access with parity of information to new investors and the LPAC, and a minimum 30-day election window. Peony gives the GP the evidence: page-level analytics show which LPs opened the election form, fairness opinion and term sheet and for how long, and the per-visitor audit trail keeps a timestamped record of every file each person viewed or downloaded. No access hides a folder, file names included, from any group that should not see it, so the LPAC's conflict materials never reach secondary buyers. Data Room is $52 per admin per month billed yearly, with unlimited rooms and storage, and LPs, the LPAC, secondary buyers and counsel view free with no Peony account.

Peony runs a continuation vehicle from one room: the LPAC, secondary buyers, rolling and selling LPs and counsel each get their own group, folder permissions and NDA, and every view is logged per person. LP elections, secondary buyer diligence, and ILPA-compliant disclosure run side by side — the operational complexity that legacy VDRs were never designed for. That workload is growing: GP-led secondary volume reached $115 billion in 2025, up 53% year over year, with continuation vehicles making up the majority of GP-led deals, and by 2025 nearly 80% of the top 100 sponsors by AUM had completed a CV (Jefferies, 2025 Global Secondary Market Review, February 10, 2026).

In a GP-led secondary the GP sits on both sides of the transaction, so what each party was shown, and when, matters. ILPA says its continuation-fund guidance (2023, with new draft CV materials whose public comment period closed on August 5, 2026) "addresses the concerns LPs cite most often, from unrealistic decision timelines and incomplete disclosures to the absence of a true status quo option" (ILPA, checked October 2026). Peony keeps the record of what each group received; the folder template and stakeholder access matrix are in how to structure a continuation vehicle data room.

(Groups, folder permissions, the signed NDA, dynamic watermarks and the audit trail: Data Room, $52/admin/mo billed yearly. Every LP, the LPAC and secondary buyers view free.)

How does Peony's pricing compare with per-deal VDRs for private equity?

Peony charges per admin with unlimited rooms on Data Room, so a fund's tenth deal costs nothing extra, while per-page and per-project VDRs quote every deal separately.

Peony prices from Peony's plans and pricing docs; the pricing models and buyer-reported figures for named providers are in our virtual data room cost guide. Side-by-side pages: Peony vs Datasite, Intralinks, iDeals and Firmex.

Where do these figures come from?

1. ILPA, Continuation Funds guidance page: the 2023 guidance (Continuation Funds: Considerations for Limited Partners and General Partners) and the new draft CV materials, whose public comment period closed on August 5, 2026
2. Jefferies Private Capital Advisory, 2025 Global Secondary Market Review: Another Record-Breaking Year (February 10, 2026): GP-led secondary volume of $115 billion in 2025, up 53% year over year and 48% of a $240 billion secondary market; continuation vehicles the majority of GP-led transactions; nearly 80% of the top 100 sponsors by AUM have completed a CV
3. Peony, State of M&A Data Rooms (Q3 2026 edition, 733 M&A transactions from $1M to $500M, Q3 2025 to Q3 2026): median 4 min 19 s from sign-up to first uploaded document, blended time-to-close about 7.9 months
4. Peony docs, Plans and Pricing
5. Peony docs, Compliance and Certifications

Sources checked October 16, 2026.