What is an Ideals VDR?
Ideals is a virtual data room provider that offers customer-oriented services for secure data storage and effective communications. Dealmakers and business owners choose Ideals for the quality of customer support, ease of use, and enhanced security.
The Ideals mission statement is “Creating more prosperity in the world by accelerating high-stake business decisions,” which speaks loud about their attitude to the services they provide and customers.
Speaking about customers, Ideals is well-known and praised for its high-quality customer support. Ideals makes sure all customer queries are answered promptly, and each user has a pleasant experience using their virtual data room. This is possible with the help of such services as in-app live chat, 25-second chat response time, dedicated project managers and teams, and live expert training. What’s more, the Ideals support team speaks 13 languages, which means every customer is heard and understood.
Ideals is headquartered in Switzerland, but also has offices in New York, Hong Kong, Kyiv, São Paulo, and Melbourne.
Ideals has received many awards since its foundation in 2008. One of the latest is G2 Spring 2023 Leader for being the most intuitive and easy-to-use virtual data room.
Ideals is used primarily to conduct such complex financial transactions as mergers and acquisitions, as well as restructuring, fundraising, due diligence, clinical trials, and corporate management.
Apart from a virtual data room, Ideals also has another product — Ideals Board. This is a board portal solution for conducting board meetings, ensuring effective board governance, and preparing all the required board documents.
Primarily, Ideals is a cloud-based solution, but it’s also available as a desktop app for Windows and macOS. Additionally, there’s a mobile app for Android and iOS.
Ideals offers all new customers a 30-day free trial. Once deciding to commit to an Ideals VDR, the customer can choose between three subscription plans — Pro, Business, and Enterprise. For a personalized quote, potential customers are encouraged to contact a sales representative.
- Single project
- 5 Administrators
- Unlimited Users
- Custom terms of access / NDA
- Standard Q&A management process
- 24/7 multilingual support
- 2 hardware encrypted USB drives with data room archive
- Single projects
- Unlimited administrators
- Unlimited Users
- Extended premier service
- Advanced security settings
- Sharing files externally by link
- No billing until M&A sell-side project goes live
- Document labels
- Unlimited Projects
- Unlimited Administrators and Users
- Unlimited Preparation Period
- Dedicated project team
- Single Sign-On integration
- Multi-project Management
- Advanced Q&A management
- Login to data room from own website
Ideals has a subscription-based pricing model with three convenient subscription plans — Pro, Business, and Enterprise. For pricing details and a customized quote, potential customers should contact a sales representative.
Each subscription plan differs in the storage capacity and the number of users, admins, and projects. As a result, choosing the best-suited subscription plan depends on the project’s or company’s needs.
No matter the subscription plan of choice, all clients get:
- 30-day free trial
- Two-factor authentication
- Distinguished branding
- Detailed audit trails and reports
- Remote shred feature
- SOC 1/2/3 & ISO 27001:2013 certified data centers
However, feature sets vary depending on the subscription plan of choice. The table below details each plan’s features.
| Pro | Business | Enterprise | |
| Customer service | Standard | Premium | Premium |
| Support level | Standard 24/7: email, chat, phone | Premium 24/7: email, chat, phone | Dedicated team |
| Preparation/trial period | 30 days | 30 days | Unlimited |
| Live training with an expert | 1 hour per project | Unlimited, with shared experts | Unlimited, with a dedicated expert |
| Data room setup | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Dedicated project team | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Security | Standard | Standard | Advanced |
| Built-in redaction | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Access expiration by time | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Access expiration by IP address | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Login to data room from own website | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Fence view | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Document management | Standard | Advanced | Advanced |
| Automatic index numbering | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Full-text search | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Optical character recognition | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Document labels | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Multi-project Management | Standard | Standard | Advanced |
| Access usage reports | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Billing info | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Manage support access | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Invite Admin to any project | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Browse all linked projects | ✅ (limited columns, no search) | ✅(limited columns, no search) | ✅ |
| Browse, search, & delete users | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Export usage report & user across projects | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Define server location | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Customizable room template | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Collaboration and reporting | Standard | Advanced | Advanced |
| User activity tracking | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Detailed audit trail | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Notes and comments | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Q&A | Standard workflows | Standard workflows | Advanced workflows |
| Customization and integrations | Standard | Advanced | Advanced |
| Custom branding | Standard | Advanced | Full |
| Custom Terms of Access and NDA | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Single sign-on integration | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Customer-managed encryption keys | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Advantages
- Built-in redaction supporting 21 different file formats
- Auto-notifications about new activity in the data room plus screenshot prevention with Fence View
- In-app customer support available 24/7
- 30-second chat response time
- 9 different data hosting locations
- Multilingual interface available in 15 different languages
- Screenshot prevention with Fence View
- IP-address-based access restriction
Things To Consider
- Reporting features may be more intuitive
- API services may have a learning curve
customer service
The quality of customer care is something Ideals is proud of. And rightly so, considering the feedback real clients leave on such reliable platforms as G2 and Capterra.
So what makes Ideals’ customer care so competitive?
- In-app live chat support. Users can get prompt assistance right from within the virtual data room app.
- 24/7/265 availability. The customer support team is ready to help quickly and at any time of the day.
- Multilingual support. The customer support team speaks 13 languages.
- Fast response time. The email response time is 30 minutes, the chat response time is 30 seconds, and the phone response time is 25 seconds.
- Live training with an expert. To ensure all Ideals virtual data room users know how to use the software, the company provides live expert training.
- Dedicated project manager or team. To simplify project management for clients, Ideals offers dedicated project managers or teams that will take this responsibility.
- Preparation/trial period. Ideals offers all customers a 30-day free trial to test the virtual data room or use the time for project preparation.
- Help center with guides and FAQ section. Ideals has a detailed FAQ section and Help Center, with the most common queries and questions answered and explained.
security compliance and certification
Security compliance and certifications are a must for any product that deals with user data. Here’s what Ideals has earned:
- CCPA. This is a state statute targeting the privacy rights and consumer protection of residents of California, United States.
- GDPR. This is a regulation in EU law focusing on the protection of EU residents and organizations from data breaches anywhere in the world. It’s also considered one of the toughest privacy and security regulations in the world.
- HIPAA. This is a federal law that targets the privacy and security of healthcare information.
- SOC 1/2/3. SOC compliance ensures that a service provider securely manages clients’ data, guarantees their privacy, and protects their interests.
- ISO 27001. This is an international standard for managing data security that addresses three dimensions of information security: confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
competitive advantages
Ideals makes customers’ experience and data security a top priority and offers a number of features to make their virtual data room the top choice for users. Below is a list of Ideals’ competitive advantages that make it stand out among similar providers:
- Page-by-page reporting. This feature helps admins identify which documents were viewed and for how long.
- 8 levels of granular access permissions. Thanks to detailed access permissions, admins can manage who can access what, thus ensuring confidentiality for highly-sensitive information. Admins can specify the following access permissions for each file or folder — None, Fence View, View, Download Encrypted PDF, Print, Download PDF, Download Original, and Upload.
- In-app live chat support. All user queries are addressed right from within the virtual data room app.
- Advanced Q&A workflows. Admins can customize Q&A workflows depending on the project’s needs, as well as activate granular access to threads, live discussions, expert assignments, question status, and full Q&A reports.
- Multi-format support. Ideals converts 25+ file formats into protected versions for viewing online. However, users can upload files of any format.
- Impeccable customer service. The Ideals customer support team boasts a 25-second phone response time, 30-second chat response time, 30-minute email response time, live training with experts, a dedicated project management team, and in-app chat support 24/7. Additionally, they speak 13 languages, so more users are heard and understood.
- Secure spreadsheet viewer. This feature allows for viewing Excel files online securely.
- Windows Explorer integration. Ideals ensures the synchronization of data room content with a desktop, shared folder, FTP, or corporate storage.
use cases
The Ideals virtual data room is used for a variety of reasons where data distribution, information security, and effective collaboration matter.
It’s especially helpful during mergers and acquisitions, as Ideals virtual data room has the tools to make the pre-merger, due diligence, and post-merger stages smooth and beneficial for the sell-and buy-side.
Other than that, the list of the most common Ideals VDR use cases is much longer and given below:
- Debt financing
- Fundraising
- Bankruptcy and restructuring
- Portfolio management
- IPO and exits
- Corporate reporting
- Investor reporting
- Litigation/Arbitration
- Clinical trials
- Licensing
- Board communications
- Corporate repository
top clients
More than 1,000,000 professionals from 175,000 companies have used Ideals for sharing sensitive documents securely. Ideals’ top clients and industries include:
- Investment banking: Citi, Colliers, Performance Trust, Jefferies, Oman Investment Corporation
- Financial: Deloitte, EY, KPMG, BDO, Mazars, Baker Tilly
- IT Security: Accenture, Landsbankinn
- Manufacturing: Toyota, Product Quest
- Technology: LG, BrainCo, Millicom
- Pharmaceutical: Pieris Pharmaceuticals
- Insurance: BTA
- Energy: Petrobras, Kyocera, AGROFERT, Petrogrand, Silicon Ranch
- Legal: Eversheds Sutherland, Sorrento
- Real Estate: JLL, Harvest
- Airline: American Airlines