How it plays out on a deal
A mid-market diligence set can run to thousands of files, and they almost always arrive in waves. Uploading one file at a time is not realistic, so bulk upload is closer to a basic requirement than a feature. The differences lie in how the room behaves around it.
Useful details include resuming an interrupted upload, keeping the original folder tree, flagging duplicates, applying permissions during the upload rather than after it, and not notifying bidders until the batch is ready. A room that announces every file to every user as it lands can leak a document before it is checked.
What to check in a review or demo
- 1Whether a dragged folder keeps its subfolders and file names exactly.
- 2Whether notifications can be held until the administrator publishes the batch.
- 3Whether there are size or file count limits per upload, and what happens when a large upload drops.
Bulk upload: where the reviewed providers stand
From the twelve-item feature checklist in our reviews: a provider counts only if the feature ships natively. Read the review for how it works and on which plan.
Yes (17)
ElltyBulk upload9.2/10
iDealsBulk upload9.1/10
DatasiteBulk upload8.9/10
AnsaradaBulk upload8.6/10
IntralinksBulk upload8.6/10
FirmexBulk upload8.5/10
DroomsBulk upload8.3/10
SmartRoomBulk upload8.2/10
BoxBulk upload8.1/10
Citrix ShareFileBulk upload8.0/10
DealRoomBulk upload8.0/10
CapLinkedBulk upload7.7/10
SecureDocsBulk upload7.7/10
ShareVaultBulk upload7.7/10
OnehubBulk upload7.5/10
Venue by DFINBulk upload7.2/10
DigifyBulk upload6.9/10
No (1)
DocSendBulk upload6.6/10
17 of 18 reviewed providers qualify. Each chip shows the provider's overall review score.
Read alongside
- Draft modeA setting that keeps newly uploaded documents invisible to outside users until an administrator publishes them, sometimes called staging or unpublished status.
- Folder hierarchyThe nested folder layout of a data room, usually organized by workstream such as corporate, financial, legal, commercial, HR, IT and tax.
- Change alertsEmail or in-app notices that tell users when documents are added or updated in folders they can see, or when a question they follow is answered.
- Optical character recognition (OCR)Software that reads the text inside scanned documents and images, so a data room can search them like ordinary text files.