Ellty

Where Ellty sits in the market

Ellty belongs to the same class of virtual data room as iDeals and Datasite: rooms built around a transaction rather than around general file sharing. The core deal toolkit is all present. Permissions can be set per group and per document, buyers ask questions through a structured Q&A module, every page carries a dynamic watermark, and document rights control lets the administrator block printing or downloading after a file has been opened. Every action lands in a full audit trail.

What separates it from older platforms is what sits on top. AI tools are built in rather than sold as an add-on, the interface is uncluttered enough that outside counsel rarely need a walkthrough, and the price is published. The company was founded in 2020 and is headquartered in Australia.

Cost in practice across currencies

Ellty lists pricing from $149/mo, and a 14-day free trial lets a deal team build the index and test permissions before committing. For a buyer outside the United States, the useful habit is to convert at today’s rate and add a margin for the length of the deal, since most rooms stay open longer than planned.

These figures are indicative; confirm the current plan details with the provider. The point is not the precise number but the fact that a CFO in Sydney, Toronto or Frankfurt can model the cost before the first call, which is unusual in a category where most vendors quote on request.

Running a cross-border process

A sell-side room for an international auction has a predictable shape: a seller team in one country, advisers in a second, and bidders spread across several time zones. Ellty handles this with permission groups per bidder, so each party sees only its own folders and its own Q&A thread. Two-factor login is available for all external users, and bulk upload means a few thousand files can be staged in an afternoon rather than over a week.

The built-in AI tools sit inside the same workspace, so a deal team can use them on room content without exporting files to a separate service, which is a point a cautious seller’s counsel will usually ask about. For context on how these steps fit together, see our mergers and acquisitions guide.

The gaps worth knowing

No platform covers everything, and the gaps here are specific. There is no single sign-on, so a bank that insists on routing every external tool through its identity provider will need an exception. There is no public API, which matters only if you plan to push documents in from another system automatically. Redaction is not built in, so sensitive personal data in employment contracts has to be blacked out before upload. There is no native mobile app, although the web room works in a mobile browser.

On certification, Ellty relies on SOC 2 Infrastructure rather than ISO 27001. Many procurement questionnaires in Europe and Asia ask for ISO 27001 by name; if yours does, raise it early. The ISO/IEC 27001 standard and a SOC 2 report cover overlapping ground, but a compliance team may still want the specific certificate.

How it compares on the shortlist

If your shortlist already includes iDeals or Datasite, the trade-off is fairly clear: those platforms add SSO and ISO 27001 at a quoted price, while Ellty adds e-signature, AI tools and a published rate. Our Ellty vs iDeals comparison goes through it line by line.