Safelink
Jersey based, with UK hosting available and customer-held encryption keys.
- Headquarters
- Jersey, Channel Islands
- Founded
- 2010
- Segment
- Legal, litigation and transaction workspaces
- Hosting
- Data centres across five jurisdictions: the UK, the EU, Australia, the US and the Channel Islands
- Encryption
- Per-workspace customer-held encryption keys, marketed as Titan, with the company stating it does not retain the keys
- Free trial
- Free tier available
The assessment
Safelink was founded in Jersey in 2010 and moved into virtual data rooms in 2012 through work with the Jersey courts. Its data room product is Expero, with a free-forever Expero Lite tier, alongside Lexiti for litigation workspaces.
For a UK buyer the jurisdictional position is more favourable than it first appears. Jersey is a Crown Dependency rather than part of the United Kingdom, which sounds like a complication, but the ICO grants Jersey full adequacy. That makes Jersey an approved destination for UK personal data without additional safeguards, unlike the United States. And UK hosting is in any case one of five named options.
Its genuine technical differentiator is key management. Safelink offers per-workspace customer-held encryption keys, marketed as Titan, and states that it does not retain the keys itself. Very few providers at any size offer that. Set against it: no published pricing, ISO 27001 as the only certification, and a website whose contact and jurisdictions pages return errors, which is not confidence-inspiring.
Worth considering for legal and litigation work where customer-held encryption keys matter, and the Jersey base is a much smaller obstacle than it looks because of ICO adequacy. If your requirement is strictly UK-only, take the UK hosting option explicitly rather than defaulting to the Channel Islands. Ask for a registered address and current certificate, because their own site does not give you either.
Jersey is a Crown Dependency and not part of the United Kingdom. It matters less than it sounds here, because the ICO grants Jersey full adequacy, so Jersey hosting is an approved destination for UK personal data without additional safeguards.
Strengths
- UK hosting is available, as one of five named jurisdictions
- Per-workspace customer-held encryption keys, with the company stating it does not retain them, which is genuinely differentiated
- Jersey holds full ICO adequacy, so the Channel Islands option is an approved destination for UK personal data
- A free-forever entry tier
- Founded in 2010 with real depth in legal and litigation work
Limitations
- Jersey is a Crown Dependency, not the UK, so it does not satisfy a strict UK-only requirement on its face
- No published pricing
- ISO 27001 only, with no SOC 2, no ISO 27701 and no Cyber Essentials
- Their registered office address is not published, and their contact and jurisdictions pages return errors
- Their security page is vaguer about hosting than their about page, describing a network of global locations
Pricing, hosting and certification
Not published.
✗ No price published
Data centres across five jurisdictions: the UK, the EU, Australia, the US and the Channel Islands. UK hosting is therefore available, though their security page describes the estate more vaguely as a network of global locations.
- ISO/IEC 27001
Counted only where named publicly by the provider.
Typical use cases
- Legal transactions
- Litigation workspaces
- Due diligence
- Regulatory investigations
What we could not confirm
Published openly, because a gap in the evidence is information too. Anything listed here could not be verified from a primary source, so we have not scored Safelink as though it were true.
- Registered office address: their contact and jurisdictions pages return errors
- Whether the ISO 27001 certificate is current
- Any pricing figure
- Whether UK hosting is standard or an option that costs more