This hands-on review post explores the features of the iDeals Virtual Data Room. See why iDeals VDR might be the best data room solution for you:
Virtual Data Rooms are basically secure online repositories that store documents that can be accessed by multiple people simultaneously.
Virtual Data Rooms have found a significant user base in businesses that are working on special projects, mergers, and indulge in joint ventures with shared projects. As such, VDR’s are especially important to facilitate financial transactions, fundraising, and IPO’s.
One such VDR that we will be focusing on now in this tutorial is the new and revered iDeals Virtual Data Rooms.
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iDeals Virtual Data Room
iDeals offers its users a relatively sophisticated data room solution that allows them to store and share documents in more than 25 different file formats.
Armed with compelling security protocols, the solution helps users protect their information from unwarranted online attacks and ensures that the privacy of communication is maintained. The tool goes to great lengths to protect its user information.
From the ‘Fence View’ feature that protects from hackers having illicit access to your device camera to a two-step verification process that only allows access to intended parties, the tool checks all the right boxes of being a potent player in the virtual data room market.
Perhaps iDeals’ biggest strength is in its comprehensive and user-friendly interface. The tool is very simple to use, and data rooms can be deployed here in less than 15 minutes. The process of uploading documents is also very easy on the platform.
There is a drag and drop feature that makes uploading infinitely better, and once the documents do get uploaded, they are automatically numbered, watermarked, and converted to PDF for extra convenience.
In this tutorial, we will dive deep into these features and hit the point home on why iDeals Virtual Data Room might be the best data room solution yet.
Benefits of iDeals VDR
iDeals VDR comes jam-packed with a plethora of features, and with that, it rewards the users with plenty of benefits.
Some of its most prominent benefits include:
- Impeccable Security
- Hassle-free uploads
- Convenient Upload and Organization of Files
- Provides Valuable Insights and Reports
- Enables collaboration on documents with multiple parties.
- Close deals briskly
- Competent Customer Support
The regions that are going to see more growth will be the United States of America and Canada, closely followed by Europe and Latin America.
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FAQ’s On iDeals Virtual Data Room
Q #1) What are the documents that should be included in a data room?
Answer: The documents are enlisted below:
- Corporate Documents
- Financial and tax documents
- Intellectual Property documents
- Sales and Marketing documents
- Property and Assets documents
Q #2) Can Dropbox be considered a Data Room?
Answer: The entire crux of a data room pertains to providing a secure repository to share sensitive information between multiple parties. Dropbox lacks the required security protocols to host such documents and thus cannot qualify as a data room.
Q #3) What are DealRooms?
Answer: DealRooms is yet another name given to virtual data rooms, wherein such rooms are used to enter into important business deals between multiple parties remotely. These deals can pertain to closing a merger or partnership deal, executing the acquisition of a real estate property, etc.
Feature Breakdown
As a sophisticated virtual data room, the tool offers a plethora of spellbinding features in a bid to satiate varying preferences. However, did it succeed? Let’s find it out from our thorough breakdown of iDeals as shown below.
#1) Document Management
Being a tool that provides a safe repository to store and share documents, iDeals has to offer an uncompromisingly great document management feature. Well, it does so with panache.
The tool offers a simple drag and drop system to conveniently upload your documents into the system. There is absolutely no limit to the number of documents that you can upload into the data room. The process is instant and hassle-free, with users getting a chance to upload their documents in one go or in bulk.
You also don’t have to waste time preparing documents before uploading. The data room supports over 25+ different formats. The uploaded files are automatically converted to PDF for online viewing. These documents are also automatically indexed and are appropriately numbered in an organized manner.
The tool also employs OCR i.e. Optical Character Recognition, thereby allowing you to find the file that you’re looking for by typing in the file name in the search bar. Overall, this tool allows convenient upload, organization, and sharing of documents online for multiple parties in the data room.
#2) Security
Security is an uncompromising part of a data room’s appeal. As such, no tool that deploys data rooms can be complacent with its security protocols. Fortunately, iDeals Virtual Data room aces these tests.
The tool deploys the ‘Fence View’ feature, which restricts hackers from having unsolicited access to your documents via your device’s camera. Users will be able to see the central part of the document as the rest of the file is covered with a sliding barred screen.
The remote shred feature can help you decide who gets access to the file and who does not. You can deny document access rights even after the document is downloaded. You can also imprint your documents with dynamic watermarks that appear on top of any document whether printed or viewed online.
You can implement up to 8 levels of document permissions to ensure that your files are accessed only by those who intend to see them. These permissions include fence view, view, download encrypted PDF, print, download PDF, download original, and upload.
The tool also provides users with the opportunity to use its secure spreadsheet viewer. The spreadsheet allows for secure analysis of online spreadsheets, secure downloads, spreadsheet encryption, watermark settings, and much more.
#3) Comprehensive Interface
iDeals nails it when it comes to ease of use. It does away with all the complexities of using a data room by allowing users to view their documents in their natural format. There is no need to install plugins for Java to access your documents.
The tool also facilitates a single sign-in method, thereby doing away with keeping multiple user names and passwords to access separate files and documents. The interface is also appropriately streamlined for an optimal viewing experience on mobile devices.
The tool also allows you to access data rooms in multiple languages i.e. English, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, French, Dutch, etc.
The tool also saves a great deal of time by allowing users to go from one document to another with the scroll-through feature. Hence, there is no need to navigate onto multiple pages to open and view documents. The tool also allows you to access data from virtually any device, whether it is Windows, Android, or Apple iOS.
#4) User Management
A VDR can be rendered futile if it does not have a competent user management system. Fortunately, that is not the case with iDeals. The tool allows a single or bulk user invitation, which indeed allows you to invite users one by one or in one single swoop in accordance with your preference.
You also get to configure all your user’s access to data rooms, Q&A sections, etc., while determining how often they receive notifications for new documents.
You also get to set various levels of user permissions to ensure that audit records are easily traceable, and the data room’s integrity is maintained. The tool also goes one step further by ensuring that you manage all your users efficiently by allowing you to divide them into groups.
You already get four predefined roles to divide your users in. They are Full Administrators, Collaboration Users, Individual Users, and Restricted Administrators. All of them get their own predefined sets of privileges.
Users get to choose between two view permissions for excel files. You can set view access to excel with formulas option to enable formula viewing in each excel document or go with the excel without formulas option.
#5) Reports
iDeals allows you to maintain internal compliance by getting you access to audit trails that have the capacity to keep records of all actions in the data room. You get to choose from PDF or other print-friendly report formats to use in presentations.
With the above feature, you also get to track each and every user’s actions, including their search history. Every document view, prints, and downloads can be tracked on iDeals. Not only that, but you also get to check how long a document is viewed by the user.
The reports can also be color-coded, thereby allowing you to affirm what is going on with your data room in a single glance. With a display that has ‘Colorful Heat Map’ on, you get to keep tabs on which group is active and which sections of the data room they are most engaged with. This is especially useful in making fruitful decisions in your business.
You can also get an overall snapshot of your group’s activity. Keep tabs on the number of people invited, the documents that were accessed, and the number of Q&A questions posted.
#6) Q&A
You can make a list of the most frequently asked questions and keep it ready for the users to access whenever they need it. Make this in advance and riddle it with all the key information pertaining to your deal.
You can also engage in live discussions which is basically a secure live forum with access granted to every user pertaining to your deal. As such, they get access to a variety of threads and responses. Users have the privilege to ask their own questions and launch into their own discussion here.
Administrators also get to assign experts specific to the subject matter of the question being raised. So while posting a question the user chooses the area of expertise, and it will be answered by the expert themselves, thereby saving a lot of time in due diligence.
In terms of securing these forums, you also get to control the level of access to confidential discussions by granting granular access to threads and attachments. You have the ability to grant several types of access rights for Q&A to each user.
The status of the question can be updated manually or automatically, thus you get to track the status of the questions and help the administrators to utilize their time in a much more efficient manner. The tool provides full Q&A reports that can be maintained for legal purposes in the future.
At the end of each session, the content of these FAQs can be downloaded and kept for future training and reference purposes. This indeed makes your team and business operations more competent.
#7) Speed
The tool is powered by multiple geographically located remote data centers that ensure agile data transfer speeds that can scale up to 200 Mbps. You can experience data upload and download speeds that are 10 times faster than your average data room.
The tool guarantees and lives by its promise of delivering a near-perfect 99.95% uptime. The infrastructure of this tool is so strong and complex that we could hardly experience any shutdown or lagging issues. Needless to say, the tool requires no maintenance.
#8) Customizable
Last but not least, the tool is highly customizable. You can easily customize the look and feel of the data room by applying your own company logo. You also get to configure how watermarks are used in these data rooms. You can control where your users will see them.
The tool also gives you the power to translate the data room content into over 90 languages. You also get to customize the header and footer of the document being viewed, printed, and downloaded. Choose your own pattern of design and color to make your data room comply with your brand image and user base.
#9) Pricing
iDeals comes in three packages, with the Pro plan being the one with the most basic features. Business and Enterprise plans have additional features. All plans require you to contact the iDeals service team in order to get a quote on the basis of your requirement.
The Pro plan is beneficial for small and mid-size projects. It comes with chat, phone, and email support but lacks advanced branding options. For larger projects, you will have to go with either a business or an enterprise plan. Users get a 30-day free trial to use the tool as a test drive before dishing any money out.
The table below precisely breaks down all the three plans and exhibits what you get with each of them.
Plan | Pro | Business | Enterprise |
---|---|---|---|
Number of Projects | 1 project | Unlimited | Tailored solution |
Number of Administrators | 5 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Guest Users | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Storage | 10 GB | 250 GB | Tailored solution |
Customer Support | 24/7 Multi-Lingual Chat, Phone & Email support | Everything in Pro plus Extended Premier Support | Everything in Business plus Dedicated Project Team |
Customization | Standard | Advanced | Advanced |
Price | Contact Sales for Quote. | Contact Sales for Quote. | Contact Sales for Quote. |
Pros And Cons
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Robust Security | Can be expensive |
Offers Insights and Reports | Interface can be daunting for some users |
Impeccable User Management | |
24/7 customer support | |
Easily Customizable | |
Control and manipulate access of users |
iDeals Vs SecureDocs Vs Onehub
iDeals fare phenomenally well against other file-sharing dataroom platforms in the market. In fact, it edges out other tools in many ways to become one of the best virtual data room providers in existence.
Given below is a comparative analysis of iDeals with other prominent data rooms such as SecureDocs and Onehub.
Name | iDeals Virtual Data Room | SecureDocs | Onehub |
---|---|---|---|
Starting Price | Contact sales to get quote | $250/month | $15/ month per user |
Best for | Virtual data room for investment bankers, top managers and big enterprises | Sharing and storing of sensitive information for companies operating in a variety of industries | File sharing for small and medium enterprises |
User Interface | Comprehensive, and easy to manage | Easy to use and intuitive | Easy to use |
Platform | Cloud, Windows, Apple, iOS, Android | Cloud | Cloud, Windows, Apple, iOS, Android |
Customer Support | 24/7 Live Support | 24/7 Live Support | 24/7 Live Support |
Training | In-person training available | No in-person training | No in-person training |
Features | • Access Permissions • Audit Trail • Collaboration • Data Security • User Management • Document Indexing • Secure File Viewer | • Access Permissions • Audit Trail • Data Security • User Management • Document Indexing • Secure File Viewer | • Access Permissions • Audit Trail • Collaboration • Data Security • User Management • Document Indexing • Secure File Viewer |
Why Choose iDeals Virtual Data Rooms
There are a plethora of reasons as to why iDeals surpasses every competition it has with other data rooms of its caliber. However, if we really hit the point home about this sophisticated yet comprehensive data storing and sharing platform then we believe that it will come down to the following three factors.
#1) Saves Time And Money
Physical data rooms can be both extremely time-consuming as well as a costly affair. iDeals provides a virtual platform that brings together partners and clientele in one place where everyone who is important has access to crucial documents pertaining to their meeting.
There is no infrastructure cost that comes with physical data rooms while getting online and getting access to documents becomes much more convenient and faster.
#2) Strong Security
iDeals security is one to be raved about and set as a benchmark for other platforms. It provides a security feature that helps users protect data from illicit screenshots and camera attacks.
Users can very conveniently control who can get access to data and who couldn’t. Plus, the two-step authentication feature is the one that becomes cherry at the top.
#3) Full Audit
Not everyone in the data room can be trusted with the sensitive information contained in it. As such, iDeals provides a platform that offers a full audit trail that shows the activity of everyone in the room.
You get to keep tabs on who is viewing, printing, or downloading the documents. You also get to track the viewing time of each document by each user.
Conclusion
Virtual Data Rooms are yet another foray into the business world, seeking the incessant benefits of the digital world. By allowing you to have your own virtual data room, iDeals does away with all the problems that were typical of physical data rooms.
Visit iDeals Website For a Quick Demo >>
iDeals aces every other data room known to the business world when it comes to security and user management. Adding to that, a competent customer support system and an appealing customizable feature of iDeals can very well be declared as one of the best data rooms available in the market today.
It can be expensive for some to use. However, in our honest opinion, it matches its cost with the quality of service it offers. Finally, your sensitive information – which matters a lot – is safe and your deals are closed efficiently.
Ratings: 4.5/5