Firmex Virtual Data Room Features

i have used Firmex multiple times in my career as a CFO and as the Administrator of the VDR. I have mostly used in in an M&A due diligence VDR model. I find the software to be intuitive and easy to use. I have had very few users come back to me and not understand how they can gain access tot he files they need, so it is first time user intuitive as well.

On con is to ensure you set up the file structure correctly in the first instance, as it will impact the flexibility you need to create multiple group access restrictions.

Thanks for the feedback on how intuitive and easy to use the platform is based on your experience. We do have the ability to drag and drop folder and documents to reorganize them if they are in the incorrect order. Our support team is 24/7 and always available for any questions you may have, I always encourage our clients to speak with our support team for any assistance needed. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions james.lehuquet@firmex.com. - James Le Huquet, Director of Sales

FirmEx is very easy to use for those who set it up to those parties from the outside who are invited to use it. Document manage is very easy and it does not take hours of training to learn how to use it. The support is great as well!

I can't think of anything that I don't like about FirmEx.

Thanks for the all around positive feedback, really great to hear and we look forward to continually working with you on your VDR needs.

Firmex is super user friendly and intuitive. The feature are easy to use and understand. The platform also updated his search engine and it's been a true game changer in locating documents.

It would be helpful to be able to assign permission to specific sub-folders. Other than that, it's a great VDR!

We appreciate the feedback on how super user friendly and intuitive the platform is, as that is one of our biggest advantages within the VDR industry. As for seeing sub-folder permissions, here is a link to our online Knowledge Base to assist https://support.firmex.com/hc/en-us/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=sub+folder+permissions, we also offer a tool called View As which allows you to see through the groups access of what folders they can and can't see. Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions to james.lehuquet@firmex.com.

I love how easy is it to set up data rooms and add users with different tiers of access. It allows me to set up permission structures and then just worry about getting the right data in the proper folder. I also like how intuitive the software is - it allows me to onboard clients quickly.

I wish they would allow sessions to last longer - I'm in Firmex all day and find that I have to log in many times. I also wish there an iPhone app.

I like the easy to use platform and upload capabilities. I felt I had strong control over the VDR as Admin.

The only thing that was missing was creating sub groups when separating buyers/investors. For example, if one buyer wants to give access to their outside advisors then that party should be able to be a sub group of the buyer.

Hi Michael, Appreciate the feedback and the interest in using us once again for your VDR needs. As for the ability to create sub-groups, we have heard this before from clients but at this time isn't possible. We are looking at ways to improve our group permissioning system. I would love to connect with you to discuss more and learn how you have done sub-groups with other VDR providers before. Feel free to reach out. James, Director of Sales james.lehuquet@firmex.com

The customer support is world class. Easy to start using once you start getting use to the functions.

The advanced controls are not as intuitive and relied on the customer support to guide our team.

Thanks for the feedback and comments about our best-in-class support team, as it is one of our biggest differentiators in the space. As for the advanced controls, I would be interested to better understand what specific controls you are referring to. We strive to have one of the easiest and most intuitive platforms in the VDR space. Feel free to email me so I can better address your feedback.

Administrative tools and controls make it super easy to manage diverse user groups. Setting up the data room from a well-organized internal file share is very easy and efficient. Interface is relatively intuitive and most users are able to navigate with ease.

The cost of storage can become significant if you are trying to create a comprehensive data room for projects which have a lot of data. Some users have difficulty navigating the data room structure. Automated invitation emails are sometimes intercepted by email filter programs and require additional coordination with end-users to bypass these.

We appreciate your feedback, and are glad you are having a positive experience. We aim to have the easiest and most intuitive platform on the market. As for cost of storage, I'd be interested in knowing how that compares to our main competitors and the size of your data room. Your feedback on automated emails is also appreciated as our product team are investigating ways to improve the Firmex user experience. Feel free to email me with any more feedback and ideas on improvements you come across.

The ease of use and organization of the data rooms made the implementation very easy for our company. In addition, the initial and follow-up support for our internal users is unparalleled in the software industry.

n/a. So far we have had no issues with the software and it has performed as expected.

Thanks for the amazing piece of feedback, we are always pleased to hear this.

Firmex is easy to use on both an admin and user perspective. The support from Firmex makes it easy to troubleshoot issues. Firmex is by the far the best VDR platform I've used (cost combined with functionality).

The process of allowing users to view certain documents within the VDR could be improved. For example, not having to setup permissions by group, but by user. Further, understanding when users are downloading information by receiving email notifications.

Hi, Thanks for the review! We hear you loud and clear. The majority of our clients prefer group-based permissions and the advantages that come with it, but we understand that certain projects require user-based permissions. Our Client Services team would be happy to customize your project to allow for user-based permissions. This will allow you to hide documents inside a folder by user, as well as setting up users instead of groups. I'd be happy to hop on a quick call at your convenience. Thanks again for choosing Firmex, Kyle Bardsley Senior Director, Customer Operations & Growth

Firmex is an all-around great virtual data room for middle-market M&A transactions. It provides M&A professionals and deal participants with an easy-to-use and secure platform to get transactions done, at a low cost.

Firmex does not have all of the premium features that you may get with higher-priced platforms.

Thanks for the feedback as we aim to be the top VDR provider for the middle-market with an easy to use and secure platform. As for the bells and whistle features that we don't have compared to some legacy high end providers, that is where the price differential comes into play. We don't bill per page as well as price gouge our clients. We offer a top tier platform that does over 20,000 data rooms a year which is the most in the industry.

I like that it is user friendly and cost effective relative to alternatives. Also excellent customer service.

Creating folders once the main folder structure is set can be difficult.

Michael, we appreciate your review and feedback. Within the platform you can create new folders by using the drop down arrow that is located either at the index level or folder level. This will allow you to create a new folder immediately within the desired folder structure area. Here is a link to support this. We also have an excel template that can be customized to your due diligence folder structure. The excel template can be uploaded into the data room directly which will automatically create an entire index folder structure for you. Andrew who is your rep at Firmex would be more then happy to connect and show you how this can be done within Firmex. James - Director of M&A Coverage https://support.firmex.com/hc/en-us/articles/205148527-Upload-folders-documents

Once you figure out how to use its easy but I had to take the time out to figure out. Uploading and downloading is very easy, this function is easy to figure out. But we have to make sure the "Upload, all at once" button has to be clicked. Customer service is excellent.

Its easy to use once you used it. But its not easy to figure out how to use. If I want to create a new folder, it should be easy to find and to use it. Its not clear what "Add Directory" is. I had to go to the help section to obtain a clear answer. It looks like a folder once I "ADD Directory". And the folder color is grey and stays grey. To me, grey is not being used or not functioning. Color should be change to a folder color or some other color. I had ppl email me that they had access and no longer have access. I have to send another invite, so there is some disconnect there. And it happened with ppl that used Firmex many times before. Is not clear how to add or delete ppl when you are adding them to the Firmex.

Thanks for the feedback, like any platform using for the first time there is somewhat of a learning curve which is why we have best in industry support. Our team can help you navigate and are available 24/7/365 for any user assistance or troubleshooting. For the additional folders, sub folders and users, the drop down arrow once selected by a user, folder or sub folder will give you all the options needed to make changes.

Ease of use and control and great customer service

The annoying data limits - it feels petty to charge after so little space has been used

Thanks for the feedback on the ease of the use of the platform as we aim to be the most efficient VDR tool on the market. As for data limits, we offer a fixed pricing model for storage compared to the archaic per page model a few of our competitors are still billing on. There are reports in the product to let you know of your data limits, as well as notifications sent so there are no surprises should you go over those limits.

Pricing per month and per gig — allows us to use Firmex no matter the size of the deal.

The permissions for me has been my least favorite feature. I have 40 groups for one of my deals right now because each employee needs specific access to 1-2 folders. I wish there were an easier way to set permissions. For granular permissions for subfolders, maybe clicking a check box instead of a drop down menu would be helpful.

Hi Andrew, Thanks for the positive feedback and outlining one of our competitive advantages in our pricing model versus legacy providers pricing model. In terms of the permissions, we can activate user level permissions for you, which should help the issue you described. Your feedback is noted and we are always investigating ways to better improve the granular folder and sub-folder level permissions. It would be great to connect with you on ways we can improve this feature based on your VDR experience. James, Director of Sales

Firmex is easy to use and is a safe and secure space for confidential information to be stored and shared.

the search function when adding users to the vdr can be iffy at times. I find it won't always find the person(s) I'm looking for even though they are in the data base.

Thanks for the feedback. I would be interested to better understand your issue with searching for users that are already in the system, whether this is to add them to another project within your subscription or to see what they have accessed within a report, as we have multiple different user search capabilities depending on the outcome you are trying to achieve. Feel free to reach out to me at james.lehuquet@firmex.com.

Very easy to use with every feature that is required for our business unit and clients.

Difficult to find reporting and total usage.

Thanks for the feedback on the user experience and how easy the platform is to use, it is something we are always aiming for. Our reports are located in the reporting tab if you have the appropriate user access. There are analytics on document activity, user activity, as well as advanced reports for admin users. I would be interested to better understand what you mean by total usage, feel free to email me if you'd like help.

It is easy to use and a great tool for my company to help share documents. The customer service is excellent if there is ever a problem. The 24/7 customer service is a great security blanket to have knowing that a solution to any problem is available any time of day.

Renaming and organizing documents once they are already in the data room can be a time consuming task at times.

Thanks for the feedback on how easy and intuitive the platform is based on your user experience. As for renaming we have the ability to do this where other providers do not, therefore you have to delete the content and rename locally before reuploading. We have the ability to bulk move documents within a folder into another folder, as well as copy/move from data room to data room.

The Q&A function is unparalled, it just makes it easier.

Help search is limited, would be nice to have a chat function.

We appreciate the positive feedback on our Q&A module, great to hear that it is being utilized for your deal. As for support help, we offer 24/7/365 support assistance. We also have an online Knowledge Base that can be found here https://support.firmex.com/hc/en-us, it has tutorial videos and step by step instructions. We are looking into a chat service for our support team as well.

The most important feature I like about Firmex is how easy it is to use either from the administrator side or the user side. I have never had anyone ask questions on how to use it because it's so straight forward.

I would enjoy seeing some type of integration with Imanage so if documents change internally they would automatically update.

We appreciate the feedback on how easy the platform is to us from an admin or general user aspect. In terms of integration, we offer API's to clients in order to integrate with other platforms. In the legal space I understand Imanage is a popular tool and it is something we are always actively looking into, to improve our competitive advantage within the deal space.

It allows tiered access, easy uploading, good customer support

Interface could look more up to date, the software is expensive

Thanks for the feedback on the ability to easily upload documents and the good experience you had with our support team. We are currently going through a platform software upgrade to give Firmex a more modern, up to date look. In terms of price, we aim to offer a top tier product at a mid-market price. Feel free to reach out if you'd like to discuss further.

Ease of use, the reporting features that allow you to monitor progress and those that have accessed the data-room. Confidentiality is paramount in our sector and being able to restrict companies and individuals on the data they can see is very useful.

The only area that I think needs improving on (and I'm not sure how this can be done), when inviting people into data-rooms, on quite a few occasions the invite will end up in junk folders and not picked up.

Thanks for the feedback on the reports and being able to monitor progress of your deal. Since security and confidentiality is important it is the main reason why we created the View As feature to see what your guest users can/can't see based on their permission settings. In terms of user invites going to spam/junk, it's an issue within the VDR industry based on how the invitations are sent and individuals spam filter settings being high. Again appreciate the feedback and look forward to continually working with you.

Firmex VDR is easy to use. It offers the ability to toggle quickly between projects, has an intuitive folder structure, and allows for easy uploading and viewing of documents.

Having an embedded version control option would be valuable, with an easy way to distinguish between drafts and final versions of documents.

Hi Ian, Thanks for the review! With regard to Firmex having an embedded version control option, you'll be glad to know that we have one. Here's a quick summary of our versioning and document status options: Firmex's versioning feature is built-in to our system. You can choose to upload a new document, or a new version of a document. You and your team can always access the version history, while...

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The software is easy to use and inexpensive relative to comparable solutions. Monitoring and Q&A functions come in handy when working with multiple groups on a project.

The software lacks a good viewer and is sometimes complicated to use with regard to the automatic numbering function. Moreover, it should support more languages.

The ease of use, ability to create the data room and the Q&A function built into the tool to manage all of the questions and answers related to the deal itself. Very dynamic and it allows you to have multiple security controls on documents.

The storage limit provided as part of the initial package. It would have been nice to get more storage space for the price paid.

Thanks for the feedback and great to hear about your experience with our best in class VDR product. As for the storage, we give you the flexibility to take information down and not be billed within a certain time frame. You always have the ability to speak with your rep about storage package to give you the most cost effective way of doing so.