Ask a banker which data room they used on their first deal and the answer is often one of these two. Intralinks started in 1996 and Datasite in 1999, both in the United States, and between them they shaped what a sell-side room looks like. Today they remain the incumbents for large bank-led processes. The question is rarely whether either is capable; it is which one fits the institution’s habits and the deal’s requirements.
Security posture
Level at 9.6. Each holds SOC 2 and ISO 27001, supports single sign-on, redacts inside the platform, watermarks documents per viewer, enforces two-factor login, applies document rights control and keeps a complete audit trail. A compliance team comparing the two will find the same answers on almost every line of its questionnaire.
Deal workflow
Datasite 9.5, Intralinks 9.4. Both run structured Q&A with expert routing, granular bidder permissions, bulk upload and activity reporting for the sell-side team. Datasite’s lead comes from coverage: ten of our twelve checklist features against eight for Intralinks. The two extras are AI features and a native mobile app. Neither lists e-signature or a public API.
On a busy auction, AI search and indexing can shorten the time analysts spend locating documents for buyer questions. Whether that matters depends on room size; on a room with a few hundred files, it is a convenience, on one with tens of thousands it is a real time saving.
Everyday usability
Datasite 7.8, Intralinks 7.5. Neither is the easiest room on the market, and both assume admins who have been onboarded. Datasite’s mobile app helps deal staff who monitor bidder activity between meetings. For a first-time reviewer, both interfaces take a little orientation.
For outside reviewers, both platforms work in a browser with two-factor login, and both show a watermark on every page. The bigger usability question is on the sell side: how quickly an associate can build the index, set permission groups for a new bidder late in the process, and pull a report on who has been active. Both handle those tasks, but each has its own logic, and teams that know one platform well are noticeably faster in it than in the other.
Pricing
Both quote per project, and neither lists a free trial. Datasite scores 8.3 on pricing clarity and Intralinks 7.8, a modest difference that reflects how predictable each bill tends to be over a long process rather than a headline price.
Because both rely on quotes, the comparison happens in the proposals. Give each vendor the same assumptions on term, guests and data volume, and ask specifically about charges if the deal runs past its planned close. The pricing guide explains how project quotes are usually structured.
Service and support
Level at 9.3, among the higher service scores on our roster. Both serve large bank-led processes; confirm out-of-hours coverage and the languages supported in writing if your bidders span several time zones.
Why institutions stay with what they have
Switching costs are real at this level. A bank or law firm that has run hundreds of deals on one platform has templates, trained staff, approved security reviews and negotiated rates. Moving to a slightly higher-scoring vendor can mean redoing all of that. This is why the two incumbents often coexist inside the same organization, with different teams preferring different rooms.
For a seller whose bank has already chosen, the useful move is to understand what that choice includes. Ask the bank which features are switched on at its contracted tier, whether AI features are available on Datasite for your deal, and how mobile access is handled for your team.
When the deal size changes the answer
On a mid-sized sale with a few hundred documents and a handful of bidders, the differences between these two are small and the incumbent your advisers know best is usually the right answer. On a very large process with tens of thousands of documents, the gap in feature coverage becomes more visible: AI features can save analyst time on a large index, and a mobile app helps a deal team that is constantly traveling. That is where Datasite’s lead in our scores is most likely to show up in practice.
Whichever you choose, prepare the folder structure before the room opens, agree the Q&A approval process with the bank in advance, and set a date for the archive and closing export so the room does not run on, and bill on, longer than it needs to.
Deal scenarios where the choice actually moves
A global carve-out with tens of thousands of documents, employee data from several countries and a dozen bidder groups is the case where Datasite’s extra coverage shows. AI features help analysts index and search the volume, and a native mobile app lets a traveling deal lead approve releases between meetings. Both platforms redact natively, which matters with that much personal data.
A mid-market sponsor exit with a few hundred files and five bidders narrows the gap almost to nothing. Both rooms have the Q&A, permission groups and reporting the process needs, and the right pick is usually whichever platform the sponsor’s bank runs every week.
A regulated financial institution selling a loan book often has procurement rules that favor an already approved vendor. If Intralinks has passed that institution’s security review and sits on its approved list, the cost of re-approving Datasite can outweigh a 0.3 point difference in our scores.
Security: what compliance should still check
With identical certificates and identical in-room controls on our checklist, the questionnaire will not separate them. The useful checks are about configuration and retention. Ask each vendor to show single sign-on working with your own identity provider, not a demo tenant. Confirm that redaction removes the underlying text from the copy guests see, rather than covering it with a box. Ask what each watermark shows (user name, email, timestamp) and whether it can be adjusted per folder. Ask where the data is hosted and whether a region can be chosen, how long audit logs are kept after the room closes, and in what format the closing archive is delivered.
Contract questions for two quote-based vendors
Because neither publishes a price, the structure of the quote matters as much as the total. Ask each how the fee is measured (data volume, pages, users or a flat project fee), what minimum term applies, how a month beyond the planned close is charged, and what the closing archive costs. For Datasite, confirm whether AI features and the mobile app are included at the quoted tier. For Intralinks, check whether an existing master agreement already fixes rates, since that often settles the commercial question before the product comparison starts.
Switching between the two
Moving an institution from one incumbent to the other is a project, not a purchase. Index templates, permission conventions and approved security reviews all need rebuilding. A sensible route is to run one new mandate on the challenger while existing deals finish on the incumbent, then decide on evidence: setup time, bidder questions handled per day and the quality of the closing archive.
Which one for which team
| Situation | Better fit |
|---|---|
| New mandate, no existing vendor | Datasite |
| AI-assisted search in a very large room | Datasite |
| Deal team monitors activity on phones | Datasite |
| Existing Intralinks master agreement | Intralinks |
| Compliance has already approved Intralinks | Intralinks |
If you are open to options beyond the two incumbents, compare them with a modern room in Ellty vs Datasite and Ellty vs Intralinks.