Intralinks helped invent the category. It opened for business in 1996, it is American, and generations of bankers learned virtual due diligence inside it. Ellty is a 2020 platform that takes the same transaction toolkit for granted and spends its effort on speed, interface and built-in intelligence. Putting them side by side shows how far expectations of a deal room have moved, and where the older approach still earns its place.
Security posture
Intralinks 9.6, Ellty 9.4. On certificates, Intralinks holds SOC 2 and ISO 27001; Ellty lists SOC 2 (infrastructure). On identity, Intralinks supports single sign-on and Ellty does not. Inside the room the two behave much alike: every page watermarked with the reader’s identity, rights control that can stop printing and saving, compulsory two-factor login and a complete activity log.
Intralinks also redacts inside the platform, a real help on carve-outs where thousands of employee records change hands. Ellty users redact before upload. For most mid-market and corporate processes this is a workflow choice rather than a security gap, but on a regulated bank deal it can decide the vendor.
Deal workflow
Nearly a draw: Ellty 9.5, Intralinks 9.4. Both run structured Q&A with routing to subject experts, permission groups per bidder, bulk upload and bidder reporting. Coverage is identical at eight of twelve checklist items, but the mix differs. Intralinks has redaction and SSO; Ellty has AI features and e-signature. Neither lists a public API or a native mobile app.
The practical effect: on Ellty a deal team can summarize and search room content with AI tools and collect signatures without exporting files. On Intralinks those steps happen in other systems, which is familiar to large institutions that already license them.
Everyday usability
This is the decisive criterion for many teams. Ellty scores 9.8 and Intralinks 7.5. Intralinks, founded in 1996, has accumulated a broad set of features and settings, offers no free trial and is typically introduced through a demo and vendor onboarding. Ellty is built for self-serve setup from a free trial, so a team can index and share a room without waiting for onboarding. For counterparties, a cleaner viewer means fewer “where is the lease schedule?” emails, which is a hidden cost on any process.
Pricing
Ellty lists a flat rate starting at $149 a month and lets you try it free for 14 days. Over twelve months that is roughly $1,788 at the entry rate. Intralinks prices on request and does not list a free trial. Its pricing clarity score of 7.8 against Ellty’s 9.7 reflects how much harder it is to forecast the bill, not a verdict on whether the final quote is fair.
If you request an Intralinks quote, specify term, user numbers and expected data volume, and ask how overruns are charged. Then set that figure against the flat monthly cost in the pricing guide calculator.
Service and support
Intralinks 9.3, Ellty 9.2: effectively level. Intralinks has the global footprint of a long-standing enterprise vendor. Ellty earns nearly the same service mark, and a self-serve product needs less hand-holding to begin with. Ask both to confirm their out-of-hours support terms in writing.
What changes for the people inside the room
The scores describe the platforms; the people using them notice something else. For the seller’s deal lead, the main difference is control. Ellty lets the lead build the index, set permissions and open the Q&A without waiting on a vendor project manager. Intralinks typically involves its own onboarding, which some institutions prefer because it puts a second pair of eyes on the setup.
For buyers and their advisers, the difference is the first ten minutes. A clean viewer and fast search mean an analyst can start reading straight away. In a heavier interface, the first session often goes on learning the layout. Multiply that by a dozen bidder teams and the hours add up.
For compliance and IT, Intralinks is the easier approval: ISO 27001 and single sign-on map neatly onto most enterprise checklists. Ellty will need a short conversation covering SOC 2 (infrastructure), two-factor login and data hosting.
Running a fair evaluation
Ask Intralinks for a demo using your own sample folder rather than a vendor sample, and request a quote that names the term, users and storage it assumes. Open an Ellty trial in parallel and load the same folder. Compare how long each takes to reach a room you would be comfortable showing a buyer, how each handles a question that needs legal sign-off before release, and what each shows in the activity report the morning after. That exercise usually tells you more than any feature list.
Deal scenarios side by side
A private equity firm buying an add-on for a portfolio company runs a quick, focused process with one seller and a small diligence team. Ellty’s self-serve setup means the room can be live the day the letter of intent is signed, AI features help the deal team summarize contracts, and the purchase agreement can be signed in the same workspace.
A bank selling a regulated subsidiary is the opposite profile. The institution’s procurement rules favor ISO 27001 and single sign-on, personal data needs masking inside the platform, and an existing master agreement may already set the price. Intralinks answers each of those points, and Ellty would face a harder approval.
A venture-backed company selling to a strategic acquirer sits closer to Ellty. The buyer’s team will include people who have never used a deal room, the seller wants a known monthly cost, and redaction can be handled before upload because the volume of personal data is modest.
Security: what to verify on each side
Ellty’s gaps are plain: no ISO 27001 listed, no single sign-on and no in-room redaction. What it does list is SOC 2 (infrastructure), two-factor login, viewer watermarks, document rights control and a full audit trail. Ask for the SOC 2 documentation under NDA and confirm the entity, scope and period it covers. If your policy requires SSO, agree in advance whether enforced two-factor login is an acceptable compensating control.
For Intralinks, the certificates and SSO answer most questionnaires directly. The questions worth asking are operational: where the data is hosted, how redaction is applied to guest copies, how long audit logs are kept after closing, and what the closing archive contains.
Contract questions before signing
Ask Intralinks how the quote is measured (data, pages or users), the minimum term, the monthly charge if closing slips and the archive fee. Ask Ellty what the $149 entry rate includes, how the bill changes with more storage or users, and how long read-only access lasts after the room closes. Put both answers into the same twelve-month model before comparing.
Switching from Intralinks
Teams moving from Intralinks rarely move live deals. Run the next new process on Ellty, rebuild index templates once, keep closing archives from earlier deals in their original format, and brief internal reviewers on the new viewer before the first bidder logs in.
Which one for which team
| Situation | Better fit |
|---|---|
| Regulated financial institution with an SSO mandate | Intralinks |
| Corporate acquirer running its own process | Ellty |
| Carve-out with heavy personal data | Intralinks |
| Fundraise or sale where AI review would save analyst hours | Ellty |
| Counterparties unfamiliar with deal rooms | Ellty |
| Existing enterprise agreement already in place | Intralinks |
For an independent choice, the scores favor Ellty. Where an institution’s procurement rules or an existing contract point to Intralinks, it remains a dependable, well-protected room.