ShareFile offers a HIPAA-ready VDR plan with a REST API and Microsoft 365 integration, but the VDR plan requires a minimum of five users and reviewers note it can be expensive. Compare ShareFile with other virtual data rooms that may better match your budget or feature requirements.
ShareFile overview
HIPAA-ready VDR with REST API, Microsoft 365 integration and ISO 27001
A regulated-industry VDR with one of the broadest compliance stacks and deep Microsoft 365 integration.
4.1/5.0(1,474+ reviews)
•Pricing: From $385/month (5 users × $77)
ShareFile's VDR plan provides dynamic watermarking, folder Q&A, full-text search, audit trails, advanced reporting, and a REST API with webhooks and SDKs. It targets legal, real estate, and healthcare teams.
Best for
Legal services
Healthcare workflows
Real estate deals
Highlights
HIPAA with BAA
REST API and webhooks
Microsoft 365 integration
When to look elsewhere
Budget under $385/month
Small team with fewer than five users
Need an open-source option
Buyer's guideUpdated October 2026•12 min read
TL;DR: the best ShareFile alternatives for deal teams and regulated firms in 2026
Best overall alternative to ShareFile: Papermark. Unlimited data rooms from $99/month for the whole company, not $77 per user with a five-seat minimum. Unlimited visitors, custom domain and branding, viewer groups, NDA gating, dynamic watermarking, page-level analytics, Q&A and SOC 2, GDPR and HIPAA coverage.
ShareFile's VDR is a plan inside a file-sharing suite. It costs $77 per user per month with a 5-user minimum ($385/month), is built around Microsoft 365, and has belonged to Progress Software since 2024.
Best for advisor-run M&A: Firmex. Quote-based, with banker-grade Q&A and versioning.
Best flat-fee rooms: SecureDocs and CapLinked. Unlimited users from $250/month and $399/month, no seat counting.
Best for post-download control: Digify. Persistent protection and revocation from $140/month. Intralinks only when a bank or regulator requires it.
Who should look for a ShareFile alternative
ShareFile is a secure file-sharing and client-portal suite that also sells a Virtual Data Room plan. Law firms, accountants, healthcare providers and real estate firms use it because it is HIPAA-ready, integrates deeply with Microsoft 365 and Outlook, and handles e-signature in the same product. The reasons to look at ShareFile alternatives appear when the data room, rather than the portal, becomes the main job: a sale process, a fundraise, a lender package or a security review with outside counsel and bidders. This guide ranks six alternatives for that job, with ratings as shown on each vendor's profile on this site.
Why teams leave ShareFile
Per-seat pricing with a five-user floor. The VDR plan is $77 per user per month with a minimum of 5 users, so the entry price is $385 a month before anyone outside the firm is invited. Add a paralegal and an outside advisor and the invoice climbs with every seat.
Microsoft-centric by design. ShareFile's strongest integrations are Outlook, Microsoft 365 and Windows file sync. That is a feature for a firm on that stack and a cost for everyone else: founders on Google Workspace, bidders on locked-down laptops, investors who just want a link that opens.
The data room is a plan, not the product. ShareFile's roadmap is about portals, e-signature and workflow automation. Deal-specific features, such as per-bidder engagement analytics, NDA gating at the room level and a branded investor experience, are secondary and feel it.
Progress ownership and a crowded portfolio. Progress Software bought ShareFile from Cloud Software Group in 2024 and placed it next to MOVEit and a dozen other products. Customers of acquired file-sharing tools have learned to watch for price changes after a change of control.
The 6 best ShareFile alternatives for deal teams and regulated firms
1Best overall alternative to ShareFileBest overall
Papermark is the best overall alternative to ShareFile because it is a data room first, priced for the company rather than the seat. The $99/month Data Rooms plan covers unlimited rooms and unlimited visitors, so a law firm or finance team can run every matter in its own room without counting users. It adds the deal features ShareFile treats as secondary: page-level analytics per viewer group, NDA gating, dynamic watermarking, viewer groups with folder permissions, Q&A, audit log export and a custom domain, with SOC 2, GDPR and HIPAA coverage for regulated work.
Best for
Law and advisory firms running several rooms a year, fundraising, founder-led M&A, healthcare and financial services diligence
Pricing
Free $0; Pro $24/mo; Business $59/mo; Data Rooms $99/mo on annual billing with unlimited data rooms, unlimited visitors and custom branding; Data Rooms Plus $249/mo for larger teams; Enterprise on request
Ownership
Independent, founder-led
Compliance
SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA; AES-256 encryption; EU or US data residency
Rating
4.8/5
Strengths
One price for the company, unlimited rooms and visitors. No five-seat minimum, no per-user maths when an associate joins a matter for a week.
Works for recipients on any stack. Investors and bidders open a browser link on your domain; no Microsoft account, plugin or desktop sync required.
Page-level analytics per viewer group. See which bidder group opened the lease schedule, how long they spent on the financials and who has gone quiet.
NDA gating, dynamic watermarking and a custom domain. Require a click-through NDA before the room opens, stamp every page with the viewer's email and timestamp, and serve it all at deals.yourfirm.com.
Viewer groups with folder and file permissions, Q&A and audit log export. Stage folders per bidder group, run questions in a structured thread and export the per-user log for counsel.
Considerations
Papermark is a data room, not a client-portal suite. If you rely on ShareFile for e-signature, client intake portals and Outlook sync for everyday files, you will keep a file-sharing tool alongside it.
Firmex is a purpose-built mid-market M&A data room with structured Q&A, versioning and granular permissions. For a firm whose ShareFile room is being used for a multi-bidder sale, it is the natural upgrade and the name opposing counsel will recognise.
SecureDocs charges a flat fee for unlimited users and documents, which is the exact opposite of ShareFile's per-seat VDR plan. NDA gating, privacy blind and real-time audit logs cover the essentials of a small sale or licensing deal.
CapLinked is a security-forward data room with OCR search, a PDF editor with redaction, FileProtect DRM and an EZ Q&A module, plus a developer API. It covers the integration angle ShareFile customers care about without per-seat pricing.
Best for
Legal and finance teams that want Q&A, redaction and an API at a flat price
Pricing
Team plan $399/month
Ownership
Independent, Los Angeles
Compliance
SOC 2 and HIPAA attestations
Rating
3.9/5
Strengths
EZ Q&A, OCR full-text search and built-in redaction.
Developer API with Box, Dropbox and Office 365 integrations.
DRM watermarking with remote revocation.
Considerations
The lowest rating in this guide and a $399/month entry price that is barely below ShareFile's five-seat minimum.
5Best ShareFile alternative for post-download document control
Digify combines data room features with persistent protection after download: files can be revoked, expired and screen-shielded after they leave the platform. It suits firms whose main worry is a document being forwarded.
Best for
Sharing sensitive files with many outside parties, commercial real estate, small-cap fundraising
Pricing
From $140/month; data room features on higher tiers
Ownership
Independent, Singapore and US
Compliance
ISO 27001; AES-256 and RSA-2048 encryption
Rating
4.5/5
Strengths
Persistent protection after download, remote revoke and expiry.
Page-level analytics and automatic watermarks.
Considerations
Q&A and permission depth are thin for multi-party diligence, and DRM-protected files can be hard to open on locked-down recipient machines.
6ShareFile alternative for bank-run and regulator-facing transactions
SS&C Intralinks is the incumbent for the largest M&A, debt and capital markets transactions. It is a ShareFile alternative only in the sense that a regulated firm advising on a nine-figure deal may be told to use it by the bank or the regulator.
Not published; enterprise packages often from about $10,000 per deal
Ownership
SS&C Technologies, since November 2018
Compliance
SOC 2, ISO 27001; long regulator track record
Rating
3.6/5
Strengths
Accepted by every major bank and regulator.
Granular permissions, deep audit trails and dedicated deal support.
Considerations
The lowest rating on this site, a multi-day setup and per-deal pricing an order of magnitude above ShareFile's.
Migrating from ShareFile
Separate the room from the portal. Decide which ShareFile folders are deal rooms and which are everyday client files. Only the rooms move; the portal can stay or be replaced separately.
Export documents and activity reports per room. Download each room's files with their folder structure and the activity report for every closed matter. Audit history does not travel; keep it with the matter file.
Re-index to a diligence standard. ShareFile folders tend to mirror the firm's internal filing. Rebuild each room around what the counterparty expects (corporate, financial, legal, commercial, HR, IP, property) before uploading.
Map seats and folder rights to viewer groups. List every ShareFile user and their folder access, then translate them into groups: client, bidders by phase, buyer counsel, lenders. Set NDA gating and watermarks at the room level and relax per folder.
Run both for one billing cycle. Keep ShareFile live until the new rooms are confirmed, then remove seats before the renewal date; the five-user minimum means a late cancellation costs a full $385.
Tell clients and counterparties in one line. The room has moved to your domain, old links stop working on a date, the materials are unchanged. Investors and bidders see this every week.
Scenario: a boutique law firm stops paying per seat for data rooms
Marrow and Vale, an invented nine-lawyer corporate firm in Denver, used ShareFile for everything: client portals, e-signature, Outlook plug-ins and, two or three times a year, a data room for a client's sale or financing. The VDR plan cost $385 a month for the five-seat minimum, and every matter that needed a paralegal and an outside accountant in the room pushed the seat count, and the bill, higher.
The breaking point was a $30 million sale of a client's logistics business with six bidders. The partners wanted to know which bidder was actually reading the customer contracts, needed NDA acceptance logged before anyone saw the financials, and had a buyer's counsel asking questions by email because the folder Q&A did not route or export cleanly. Two bidders on Google Workspace struggled with the Microsoft-flavoured login flow. Meanwhile the firm was paying for seats that sat idle between matters.
Marrow and Vale moved its data rooms to Papermark's Data Rooms plan and kept ShareFile only for client portals. The managing partner exported each closed room with its activity report, built a standard twelve-folder diligence index, created viewer groups per bidder, turned on NDA gating and dynamic watermarking at the room level, and connected deals.marrowvale.com. The six-bidder sale ran in one room; the partners reviewed per-bidder engagement before every call, and 140 questions went through the Q&A module and out to the disclosure schedule. Data room spend fell from a seat-based bill to $99 a month for every matter the firm handles.
Common mistakes when replacing ShareFile
Replacing the portal and the room with one tool. They are different jobs. Move the rooms to a data room and decide about the portal separately.
Choosing per-seat pricing again. If the five-user minimum is why you are leaving, read the pricing model before the feature list.
Recreating internal filing as the room index. Counterparties expect a diligence structure, not your matter folders. Rebuild the index before uploading.
Forgetting the activity reports. Export them per closed matter before removing seats; they are part of the file.
Cancelling after the renewal date. ShareFile bills per seat on a cycle; remove users before it, not after.
Buying a bank-grade room for a boutique's matters. Intralinks and quote-based platforms are for mandates where someone else chooses the tool.
ShareFile alternatives at a glance
Provider, hosting, pricing model and best use for each ShareFile alternative
What is the best ShareFile alternative for a data room?
Papermark. It replaces ShareFile's $77 per user per month VDR plan and five-seat minimum with one $99 per month Data Rooms plan for unlimited rooms and unlimited visitors, and adds page-level analytics, NDA gating, viewer groups, Q&A and a custom domain with SOC 2, GDPR and HIPAA coverage.
How much does ShareFile's virtual data room cost?
ShareFile publishes the Virtual Data Room plan at $77 per user per month with a minimum of 5 users, which makes the entry price $385 per month. Every additional internal user adds another seat. Flat-fee rooms such as Papermark and SecureDocs charge the company, not the user.
Who owns ShareFile?
Progress Software. ShareFile was part of Citrix, then of Cloud Software Group, and Progress acquired it in 2024. Among the alternatives, Firmex belongs to Datasite, SecureDocs to Onit and Intralinks to SS&C Technologies; Papermark, CapLinked and Digify are independent.
Is ShareFile a real virtual data room?
Yes, on its VDR plan, which adds dynamic watermarking, folder Q&A, full-text search and audit trails to the file-sharing suite. It is weaker than dedicated rooms on bidder analytics, NDA gating and the investor-facing experience, and it is priced per seat.
Can I keep ShareFile for client portals and use another tool for data rooms?
Yes, and many firms do exactly that. Keep ShareFile for everyday client files and e-signature if those features earn their cost, and run deal rooms in a dedicated data room such as Papermark, where unlimited rooms cost $99 per month regardless of how many people join a matter.
How long does it take to migrate from ShareFile?
About a day for a firm with a handful of rooms. Export each room and its activity report, rebuild a standard diligence index, map seats to viewer groups, set gating and watermarks, connect your domain and invite the first group. Run both tools for one billing cycle, then remove the ShareFile seats before renewal.
Compare ShareFile alternatives
See how other virtual data rooms compare to ShareFile across pricing, features, and user reviews.
Secure, modern data room with page-level analytics and custom branding
Papermark is a secure, modern virtual data room for fundraising, M&A and due diligence at any deal size. Unlimited data rooms start at $99/month, with SOC 2, GDPR and HIPAA compliance, NDA gating, dynamic watermarking and granular permissions. Custom domains and full branding present a polished, on-brand experience to investors and buyers, while page-level analytics and audit logs show exactly who viewed what and for how long. A self-hosted option is available for teams that need full infrastructure control.
Modern VDR for M&A, due diligence, and complex transactions.
Dealroom is a virtual data room built around M&A pipelines and due diligence workflows. It brings files, requests, and deal tasks into one workspace so teams can track progress without jumping between tools. Users can follow activity across multiple deals and see which items are blocked or complete. It suits deal teams that want a single, structured hub to manage the entire transaction lifecycle.
Enterprise VDR for secure document management and complex deal execution.
Intralinks is an enterprise-level data room used for large, sensitive transactions. It offers strict permission controls, detailed audit trails, and strong security settings to meet the needs of banks, advisors, and global corporations. Web and mobile access make it easier for distributed teams to work on the same deal securely. It is best for organizations that place compliance and control above simplicity.
AI-assisted VDR with intelligent workflows and predictive insights.
Ansarada is a virtual data room that adds guided workflows and light AI on top of secure file sharing. Its checklists, templates, and dashboards help deal teams prepare rooms, manage Q&A, and track risk areas during due diligence. The platform highlights which tasks need attention so projects stay on schedule. It works well for organizations that want more structure and insight built into their deal process.
4.7/5.0(150 reviews)
•Pricing: Quote-based (free to set up, pay when live)
Comprehensive M&A platform with global scale and workflow automation.
Datasite is a virtual data room platform widely used for mid-market and large M&A transactions. It supports secure document sharing, buyer tracking, and deal preparation in one environment. Web and mobile apps, along with strong search and reporting, help teams review materials quickly and stay aligned. It is often chosen by advisors and corporate development teams that handle many complex deals each year.
Enterprise VDR for M&A, legal, and complex diligence workflows.
Firmex is a virtual data room built for complex M&A diligence, legal transactions, and regulated external collaboration. It provides structured Q&A workflows, granular permissions, document versioning, and a full compliance posture including SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, and HIPAA. The platform encrypts data with TLS 1.3 in transit and AWS KMS-managed keys at rest, and offers both single-project and annual subscription pricing.
Fast-setup flat-fee VDR with unlimited users and NDA gating.
SecureDocs is a straightforward virtual data room built for fast deal setup, M&A, fundraising, and IP licensing. Its flat-fee pricing model gives unlimited users and documents on every plan, making costs predictable from day one. Built-in NDA gating, one-click privacy blind, audit logs, real-time dashboards, and AES-256 encryption let teams get a deal room live in minutes without sacrificing security.
Security-forward VDR with OCR search, DRM, and PDF editing.
CapLinked is a security-forward virtual data room for M&A, fundraising, and due diligence. It combines OCR-powered full-text search, DRM watermarking, a built-in PDF editor with versioning, redaction tools, and an EZ Q&A module. The platform holds SOC 2 and HIPAA attestations and provides a developer API for custom integrations with Box, Dropbox, and Office 365.
DRM-powered VDR with post-send document control and page analytics.
Digify is a document security and analytics platform that combines virtual data rooms with persistent post-send DRM controls. Automated watermarks, access expiry, page-level analytics, and Persistent Protection After Download (PPAD) let teams track and revoke documents even after they leave the platform. ISO 27001 certified with AES-256/RSA-2048 encryption and a robust API, Digify targets M&A, fundraising, and commercial real estate workflows.
Dropbox-powered VDR with deep deal analytics and auto-indexing.
DocSend (part of Dropbox) offers secure document sharing and virtual data rooms with a strong emphasis on deal analytics. Auto-indexing, page-by-page engagement insights, built-in Q&A, NDA gating, and customizable branding support everything from founder fundraising to M&A diligence. Personal plans start at $10/user/month, while advanced data room features are available in higher tiers.
