Similarly to Intralinks Merrill prefers to collaborate with large enterprises and financial institutions. The company claims to be the “global leader” and assists lots of customers worldwide: their VDRs are mainly utilized for the execution of complex and cumbersome deals. Therefore, there is no wonder that prices for services are pretty high.
The VDR complements the other services of Merrill that provides consulting, content management, and financial services. Along with DataSite, customers may enjoy such platforms as Bridge, Connect, and DPA. Their main task is to ensure smooth and productive internal and external interaction and teamwork. Considering the variety of options offered Merrill may successfully take a burden of information management of any enterprise. It means that the client can confidently delegate these tasks to Merrill and concentrate on more acute nuances of the company’s performance. Anyway, the VDR offered by Merrill abides by all the industry standards and provides customers with all the required options – secure file sharing, convenient storage, integration with software, intuitive navigation, multiple communication tools, etc. Nevertheless, it seems to be more logical to exploit the VDR by Merrill in a case when other products of the company are being utilized too: the client would experience all the advantages if the services are used in a complex.
Features Checklist:
Company Info
| (STR) Established | 1967 |
| (STR) Locations | United States, Canada, CHINA, HONG KONG, INDONESIA, JAPAN, MALAYSIA, PHILIPPINES, SINGAPORE, SOUTH KOREA, THAILAND, UNITED KINGDOM, FRANCE, GERMANY, IRELAND, ITALY, RUSSIA, SPAIN, SWEDEN, TURKEY, BRAZIL, CHILE, MEXICO, PERU, SOUTH AFRICA, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES |
| (STR) Employees | 3800 |
| (STR) Clients | no data |
Trial & Pricing
| Free Demo | yes |
| (STR) Free Trial | no |
| (STR) Price | Negotiable/waiting for respond |
Deployment Options
| Cloud (Web-Based) | yes |
| On-Premise (Installed) | yes |
| Multiple Datacenter Locations | yes |
Support & Services
| Business Hours Support | yes |
| 24/7 Email Support | yes |
| 24/7 Phone & Email Support | yes |
| Online Help Center | no |
| Live Trainings | no |
| Dedicated Project Manager | yes |
| Data Room Archive on DVD or USB Drive | yes |
| Translation Services | yes |
| (STR) Support Languages | Arabic, Chinese, German, Dutch, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish. |
Customization
| Branded User Interface | yes |
| Custom Domain | no |
| Custom Login Page | yes |
| Custom User Invitation Letter | yes |
| Custom Agreements for Accessing Data Room | no |
| Active Directory Integration | no |
| Single Sign-On Integration | no |
| Customer-Managed Encryption Keys | no |
| Integrations Through APIs | no |
| Custom Workflows and Features | no |
Activity Tracking & Reporting
| Tracking of All User Activity | yes |
| Real-Time Audit Trail | yes |
| Graphic Reports | yes |
| Exporting Reports to Excel | yes |
| Tracking of Document Viewing Time | yes |
| Scheduled Reports (Sending to Email) | no |
Collaboration Features
| Basic Questions & Answers Module | yes |
| Advanced Questions & Answers Module | no |
| Secure User Messaging | no |
| New Document Email Notifications | yes |
| Files & Folders Notes | no |
Search, OCR & Filters
| Search by Name | yes |
| Search by Content (Full Text Search) | yes |
| OCR (Optical Character Recognition) | yes |
| Filtering by Parameters | yes |
Accessibility & Ease Of Use
| No Plugins | yes |
| Scroll-Through Web-Based Document Viewer | yes |
| Web-Based Excel Spreadsheets Viewer | yes |
| iOS Application | no |
| Android Application | no |
| Mobile Device Interface | yes |
| (STR) User Interface Languages | English |
Access Security
| Two-Factor Authentications | yes |
| Mobile Device Management | no |
| Granular User Permissions | yes |
| Permission Groups | yes |
| Access Expiration | yes |
| Access Limitation by IP Address | no |
Data Hosting & Infrastructure Security
| 99.9% Uptime Guarantee | yes |
| ISO 27001 Certified | yes |
| SOC 2 Certified | no |
| SSAE 16 Certified | no |
| Data Backup | yes |
| Virus Scanning | no |
File Protection & Digital Rights Management
| Granular Document Permissions | yes |
| View-Only Access | yes |
| Prevention of Download, Print and Copy | yes |
| Remote Shredding of Documents | yes |
| Customizable Document Watermarks | yes |
| Secure Fence View | no |
| Document Access Expiry | no |
| 256-Bit SSL/TLS Encryption | yes |
| Data at Rest Encryption | yes |
Files & Folders Management
| (STR) File Formats Supported | PDF, MS Office, jpg, jpeg, jpe, gif, bmp, png, tif, tiff |
| Automatic Numerical Indexing of Files & Folders | yes |
| Drag & Drop Upload of Multiple Files and Folders | no |
| Desktop Synchronization | no |
| Archives Upload & Extraction | yes |
| Export of Data Room Index to Excel | no |
| Document Version Control | yes |
| Multilingual Documents Index | no |
Industry Solutions
| Bankruptcy | yes |
| Biotech Licensing | yes |
| Board Portals | no |
| Clinical Studies | no |
| Debt Financing | yes |
| Distressed Real Estate | yes |
| Document Repository | yes |
| Due Diligence | yes |
| Fundraising | yes |
| Hedge Funds | yes |
| IPO & Exits | yes |
| Litigation | yes |
| M&A Buy Side | yes |
| M&A Sell Side | yes |
| Post Merger | yes |
| Private Equity | yes |
| Procurement Management | yes |
| Restructuring | yes |
Reviews
Our company switched to Merrill virtual data room just recently, and we so far like this software. This provider performs better than the previous one, and we got used to Merrill quickly. It is easy to work with files in this data room, especially thanks to text recognition.
We’re using Merrill VDR for M&A as a sell-side, and it works well for us. The interface looks to me somewhat outdated, but that’s not a big deal. It is easy to understand – that’s what is important. And our partners don’t seem to have any issues with this data room.
We were using Merrill virtual data room for several years, and it fits our needs entirely. Sure, we had some inconveniences throughout our experience. But the support team is always very helpful. I believe that this provider will fix even those smallest drawbacks it has any time soon.
Merrill data room is very straightforward and pleasantly-looking, in my opinion. We are completely satisfied with all the features it offers. And over the time we’re using it – a couple of months – we’ve never experienced downtimes. However, maybe in the future, we will spot some flaws.
We find DataSite Merrill to be very simple in terms of the user experience. None of our team members or partners had any issues using this data room. However, we haven’t invited our clients to it yet. But I believe, they will find the interface intuitive, too.