A document platform, or a client portal - pick the problem first

The honest framing

ShareFile has been around since 2005 and is deeply embedded in accounting and professional services, particularly in the United States. It does a lot: encrypted sync and share, per-client portals, file request links, approval and feedback workflows, its own e-signature product, plugins for Outlook and other tools, and compliance packaging for regulated work.

Droplana does one thing. Each of your clients gets their own private, persistent portal for two-way document exchange. You put documents in, they put documents back, you comment on individual files, you track status, and you can sign a PDF in the browser. There is no sync client, no integration marketplace, no workflow builder.

If you are comparing them, you are usually deciding one of two things: whether you need the platform or just the portal, and whether per-seat pricing makes sense at your size.

Side-by-side

ShareFile's tiers, limits and pricing change. Verify current details at sharefile.com rather than relying on any comparison page, including this one.

The seat-pricing question

This is usually the deciding factor, and it is worth being concrete about.

ShareFile is priced per employee user, with a minimum number of users on most tiers. That model is sensible for a platform your whole team lives in: everyone gets a licence, everyone syncs, everyone signs. The cost tracks the size of your team.

Droplana is priced per business. Free covers 3 clients and 2 GB. Solo is 19 EUR per month plus tax with unlimited clients and 50 GB. Practice is 49 EUR with 250 GB and 5 seats including the owner. Studio is 99 EUR with 1 TB and 15 seats. Annual billing costs ten months. There is no per-client charge and no overage billing - when you hit your storage limit new uploads stop, existing files stay accessible.

The comparison flips depending on who does the work. If you are a three-partner firm where all three need full document tooling, per-seat pricing is honest and you should price it out properly. If you are one bookkeeper with ninety clients, per-seat pricing prices the wrong thing entirely - you are paying for the small side of your problem.

The client-side experience

This is the difference most people notice first, and it is not a small one.

A ShareFile client portal is a real account. The client is invited, they set up access, and they sign in to a workspace. For a client who works with you constantly, that is fine and arguably better - they get a proper account with proper controls.

Droplana clients have no account at all. There is nothing to create, no password to reset, no credential to lose. The client opens a link to their portal. Depending on the security level you choose, they confirm by email magic link or by signing in with a Google or Microsoft account they already have, and the browser is remembered for 90 days after that.

New Droplana accounts default to Strict, which means email verification every time a client shows up on a new device. Controlled allows one-time or email magic links only. Relaxed additionally allows permanent links, for less sensitive work. You pick the level; it is not a fixed trade.

Whether this is better depends entirely on your clients. A client who logs in weekly will not mind an account. A client you need one signed form from, once a quarter, will absolutely mind - and that is where the "I never got the invite" and "I can't remember my password" emails come from. Small accounting and legal practices tend to feel this sharply, because the least technical client sets the pace for everyone.

What ShareFile does that Droplana does not

Being blunt about this is more useful than pretending otherwise.

• Desktop and mobile sync. ShareFile has sync clients. Droplana does not. If you want files mirrored to a folder on your laptop, Droplana is the wrong tool.
• Integrations and API. ShareFile plugs into Outlook and other tools and has an API. Droplana has no public API and no integrations at all.
• Workflow automation. ShareFile can build multi-step approval and routing flows. Droplana has document checklists and per-file statuses - useful, but not a workflow engine.
• Certificate-based e-signature. ShareFile has its own signature product. Droplana marks a document as signed and records who signed it, when, and from what IP, with a public verification page anyone can check against the file hash. That is a real, auditable record, but it is not a qualified or certificate-based signature and we do not claim it is.
• Breadth of compliance packaging. ShareFile sells specific compliance tiers for regulated industries. Droplana offers EU hosting, per-client encryption at rest, and a DPA on every plan, which covers a lot of European professional services work - but it is not the same as a packaged compliance programme.

If any two of those matter to you, this comparison is already over and ShareFile is your answer.

Where Droplana is the better fit

• You are a small or mid-size practice and the platform costs more than the problem.
• Your clients are not technical, and every account you ask them to create costs you emails.
• You care where the data physically sits. Files, comments and metadata stay on Hetzner infrastructure in Germany, under opaque random identifiers, encrypted at rest with a key derived per client.
• Most of your pain is inbound. You are chasing bank statements, signed forms, ID scans and receipts, and you want a checklist the client can see and work through rather than a fourth follow-up email. Clients photograph paper documents with their phone straight into the portal - no scanner, no app.
• You want the client-facing surface to be boring and obvious, and you are happy running everything else in the tools you already have.

Accounting and bookkeeping firms, legal practices, consultants and mortgage brokers are the core of this. If that is you, the accounting practices page and the legal page go into the specific workflows. The client portal guide is the broader framework for evaluating this category.

Migrating without a big-bang cutover

If you decide to move, do not move everyone at once.

Pick two or three clients you have a good relationship with and set up their portals. Tell them plainly: this is where our documents live now, here is your link, the old system stays as it is for archive. Run both for a month. If the number of "where do I send this?" emails goes down, migrate the rest in batches over the following weeks.

The uncomfortable part of any migration is the archive, not the live work. Historic files in ShareFile can stay in ShareFile until the contract lapses - there is no rule saying five years of old returns need to move on day one.

Check our simple pricing (or start free)

Storage levels and team seats scale with your plan.
Security, per-client encryption, isolation, in-browser PDF signing, and data export are the same on every plan.
No per-client fees. Tax calculated by Creem at checkout.

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