I'm Deqian, founder of Peony. If you are like me, you are also fed up with all the SEO listicles whenever you look for alternatives to anything. The problem with tech folks is that they are too focused on the tech and often forget that, at the end of the day, business is all about trust.

So, I wanted to do things differently and give you an honest review of the secure file-sharing landscape. You may walk away, finding Peony not to be the best fit, and that's totally fine. My goal here is to share my knowledge, not to sell.

I want to start by first reviewing the reasons why you might be looking for DocSend alternatives and give you my take. Of all the people we've spoken to who are looking to switch from DocSend, here are their top reasons:

1. DocSend is too expensive

2. DocSend is too clunky

3. DocSend is not powerful enough

Price

By far, cost is the number 1 reason people decide to switch from DocSend. DocSend's standard tier starts at $65/month, and data rooms cost $300/month. The elephant in the room is - when you charge this much just to send a few files, people inevitably feel ripped off.

Having said that, finding a cost-effective product in this space is actually not easy. You can skip enterprise-focused products like Intralinks entirely. You probably also don't want the other extreme and use a vibe-coded product. After all, you want your files to look slick and professional.

I've reviewed dozens and dozens of DocSend alternatives, and the only real free and reputable option is Brieflink. The gotcha is Brieflink is run by NFX. A VC I trust and respect. But there's still a degree of conflict of interest. It's also worth noting that its feature set is quite limiting, and you don't get data rooms. If all you want is to send and track single PDFs and are okay with a slightly sluggish document reader (my personal experience), Brieflink is hands down the best free option.

Among the paid options, most DocSend alternatives are either poorly maintained or have so few features I don't get why you'd pay them - and those include the ones that have cracked SEO and rank highly on Google. (I suspect some are outright lying about their usage, but I won't name & shame them. If you want, you can email me. As a rule of thumb, if you don't see their names in this article, it's probably not a good sign.)

For money-for-value, I can say quite confidently (and I think anyone who has done the research will also agree) that Peony will be the best alternative. $40/month for data rooms is just not something I've found anywhere on the internet. Mostly because we have a philosophy similar to Notion: build platforms, not features. It means we don't have to artificially hike up the price for file sharing - unlike others in this category.

Design

Now, if you are in group 2 that finds DocSend too clunky, the good news is almost every other alternative out there will have a cleaner, more user-friendly vibe compared with DocSend. So long you are not looking in the enterprise data room camp like iDeals! (And you shouldn't if you find DocSend clunky.)

The ones I feel good recommending besides Peony are Papermark and Send. Each one of them has a slightly different vibe. Peony has a more designer flavour to it. Everything feels more polished and more crisp. Papermark sticks more closely to the DocSend formula but has made it way cleaner. Familiar and refreshing. Send takes speed seriously, and I just love how simple it is.

You can't go wrong with any one of them if you are looking for something less clunky. But to help you decide: Peony if you want premium, Papermark if you want familiar, Send if you want speedy.

However, I have to note Send may have too few features for DocSend power users.

Power

This is the most interesting one, and if you are looking for more powerful file-sharing features - like more protection, more analytics, and more insights - Peony is likely not the best fit.

This is when you really want to look into the enterprise space. Products like Digify and iDeals are all great options. I'm particularly impressed by some of the DRM (digital rights management) features I've seen. It means you can let your recipients download your files and interact with them and still retain control. The downside with most of the enterprise products is that they are both expensive and often clunky.

One area I think that's promising, and I'm surprised nobody has tackled yet, is richer analytics. At the moment, almost all products out there only tell you what happened - i.e. who viewed which file at what time. Very few products go beyond it to give you contextual insights - e.g. who's the most engaged lead? Which page of the PDF is performing the best? Maybe this is something we will explore in the future.

There is, however, one area Peony does offer more power compared with DocSend: Peony probably has the best-in-class PDF reader. Every time you upload a file to DocSend, it compresses your PDFs and turns them into images. It means your files won't show in their original resolution to your reader. If you ever find your file blurry, Peony will help.

The last thing I want to note is that if you are looking for more power, looking for a DocSend alternative is probably not the best keyword. Products you find through DocSend alternative will be similar to (and most of the time actually worse than) DocSend. Try to be as specific as possible about the power you are looking for, and you will be able to find more focused products in specific verticals.

I hope you find this article helpful, and I genuinely hope you find the best product that fits your use!

If there's any other product you want me to review or if there are reasons I haven't covered, just let me know :)

Lastly, for those of you who prefer an old-school feature table, here it is!