How we reviewed Ellty
This review is desk research, scored with the same method we apply to every provider. We read Ellty’s product documentation, its published pricing and its security materials, then marked each of the twelve items on our feature checklist as native or not native. The facts we track for every vendor were checked at the same time: certifications, deployment model, headquarters and founding year. Ellty was founded in 2020, is based in Australia and runs as a cloud service.
The scores below are editorial judgements on our six criteria, not lab measurements. Because Ellty offers a 14-day free trial, the most useful thing you can do after reading is repeat the core checks yourself: build a folder index, stage a batch of files with bulk upload, create separate permission groups for two bidders, sign in as an outside party to see what each group can reach, route a question through Q&A, and confirm that watermarks, print and download blocks and the audit trail behave as your process needs.
Scores from our review; price and trial from the provider at our last check.
Deal workflow: the part a buyer actually touches
Ellty scored 9.5 for deal workflow, level with iDeals and Datasite. The structure is what you would expect from a room built for transactions rather than general storage. Permissions are set per group and can go down to individual documents, so bidder A never sees bidder B’s folders or questions. The Q&A module keeps each question tied to a document and a party, lets the seller assign it to the right person, and stops answers leaking between buyers.
Two things set the workflow apart on paper. The first is that e-signature lives inside the room, so an NDA or a side letter can be signed where the documents already sit instead of in a separate tool. The second is the AI layer. Ellty includes AI features in the workspace itself, which means a deal team can use them on room content without exporting files to an outside service. For a seller’s counsel, keeping that work inside the access-controlled environment is usually the deciding argument.
Bulk upload is native, which matters most in the first days of a process when the index is still moving and folder trees arrive from several advisers at once. Load a deep tree during the trial to confirm the structure carries over the way you expect.
Security and compliance
The security score is 9.4. The controls that matter during diligence are all present: 2FA that every invited party can be forced to use, watermarks that stamp the viewer’s identity on each page, document rights control that can block printing or downloading after a file is opened, and an audit trail that records views, downloads and permission changes.
On paper, Ellty lists SOC 2 (infrastructure) as its certification. ISO 27001 is not on its list. A SOC 2 report and an ISO 27001 certificate cover overlapping ground, but some procurement questionnaires, particularly in Europe and Asia, ask for the ISO certificate by name. If yours does, raise it before the room is opened. The ISO/IEC 27001 page explains what that certificate covers.
Before you upload personal data
There is no redaction tool inside Ellty. Employment contracts, customer lists and medical or financial records should be cleaned before upload, either in your document tool or by your legal team.
Usability for admins and invited reviewers
This is where Ellty separates itself. Its usability score of 9.8 is the highest we have given any provider. The score rests on product facts rather than impressions: setup is self-serve, so a room can be opened without waiting for a vendor onboarding call; the feature set is concentrated in one workspace, so signing and AI tools do not send users to a second product; and a free trial means the people who will administer the room can judge the interface before anyone signs. Permission groups that can be read back at a glance and a folder index that looks the same to admins and reviewers are what prevent the classic “I cannot find the file you mentioned” call in week one, and both are worth confirming in the trial.
There is no native mobile app. Reviewers reach the room through a phone browser, which covers a partner reading a document between meetings, but heavy review on mobile is not its focus.
Pricing in practice
Ellty is one of the few transaction-grade rooms with a published price. The starting rate is $149/mo, and 14 days of free trial let you try the whole setup before a card is charged. The table below multiplies the entry price by typical room lifetimes so you can see the order of magnitude.
| Room open for | Indicative cost at $149/mo | What to confirm |
|---|---|---|
| 3 months | about $447 | Storage and user limits on your plan |
| 6 months | about $894 | Whether the room can be paused or archived |
| 12 months | about $1,788 | Export and archive terms when the deal closes |
These totals are indicative and use the entry price only; confirm the current plan details with the provider. The value score of 9.7 reflects that predictability rather than a claim that Ellty is the lowest price on the market. For how this compares with quote-based rooms, see the pricing guide.
Support and onboarding
Service quality came out at 9.2. Because setup is self-serve, most teams will not need a formal onboarding session, but help is there when permission logic gets complicated or a deadline is close. Ask about support hours in your time zone if your process runs across several regions.
Where it falls short
The gaps are specific and worth stating plainly. SSO is absent, so a bank or a large corporate that routes every external application through its identity provider will need an exception. There is no public API, which only matters if you want to push documents in automatically from another system. Redaction and a native mobile app are also absent, and the certification is SOC 2 (infrastructure) rather than ISO 27001. Feature coverage on our checklist is 8 of 12, a reflection of those missing items rather than of weakness in the core deal tools.
Who gets the most out of Ellty
The profile that fits best is a deal team that needs every standard diligence control and wants the room working quickly: a corporate development group running an acquisition, an adviser launching a sale process, or a company opening investor diligence for a growth round. In each case the value comes from having a full room that outside parties can use immediately, with AI tools and signing in the same place. The profile that fits less well is an organization whose IT or procurement rules are fixed around SSO, an API or ISO 27001.
The bottom line
Ellty delivers the full diligence toolkit we expect from a top-tier virtual data room and pairs it with a more modern experience: AI tools in the room, in-room signing, the highest usability score in our ranking and a price you can see upfront. If SSO, an API or an ISO certificate are hard requirements, check those first. If they are not, it belongs at the top of a transaction shortlist.
