If you have been researching document collection software, you have probably come across both Gatheroo and FileInvite.
On the surface they solve the same problem: getting documents from clients without the chaos of email. Look closer and you find two products built for very different buyers.
This is not a hit piece. FileInvite makes good software and has done for a decade. Whether it is the right software for your practice is a separate question, and the one this page is here to answer.
What FileInvite does well
FileInvite launched in 2015 and has built a serious reputation in lending. A few things they do genuinely well:
Complex, multi-party lending. FileInvite is built for deals where borrowers, guarantors, co-borrowers, brokers and legal representatives all contribute documents to a single file. Commercial real estate, construction finance, syndicated transactions. That is hard to do well and they do it.
High-volume collection. Bulk send, scheduled send, contact lists, automatic document renaming and PDF conversion. If your team is pushing hundreds of loan packages a year and document standardisation matters, these are real advantages.
Deep integrations. Native connections into Salesforce, HubSpot and SharePoint, plus an enterprise API for loan origination and core banking systems.
Track record at scale. A long customer list and thousands of reviews. If your team needs reassurance that a tool is proven with large lenders, that counts.
What you get either way
Plenty of the comparison tables you will find online are built to make one product look thin. That is not useful when you are making a real decision, so here is the position: both products cover the fundamentals well, and you should not expect to give anything up on this list.
- A secure client portal, with no account or password for your client to create
- Structured requests built from reusable templates
- Automated reminders by email and SMS that chase clients until a request is complete
- Real-time visibility of what has been sent, opened, started and finished
- A timestamped audit trail of every request
- Encryption in transit and at rest
- Sync to Google Drive and OneDrive
- Branded portal carrying your logo
- Mobile access for clients on any device
- Electronic signatures
If the basics are all you are comparing, you will find very little to separate them. The differences that matter sit somewhere else.
Where the two genuinely differ
There are four, and they all come back to the same thing: who each product was built to sell to.
The entry price
FileInvite publishes a starting price of USD $9,900 per year, for lenders processing up to 100 commercial loans annually. Above that volume, pricing is quoted on request.
Gatheroo starts at AUD $37 per month on an annual plan.
That gap is not a discount. It is a different category of purchase. FileInvite is priced for an organisation running a lending operation with a software budget and a procurement process. Gatheroo is priced for a practice where the person choosing the tool is also the person who will use it.
Where your data lives
Gatheroo runs on AWS in Sydney. Australian data residency is a fixed property of the product, not a configuration option, and Gatheroo is operated by an Australian company subject to Australian law.
FileInvite publishes that it is deployed on AWS global infrastructure. Their security documentation does not name a region.
For most software that is a non-issue. For client intake in a regulated practice it is not, because “where is our client data held” is a question you may need to answer in writing, to a professional body, an auditor, an insurer, or a client running their own due diligence on you. You can answer it from Gatheroo’s documentation. You cannot answer it from FileInvite’s.
Information security certification
Gatheroo is built and operated under an ISO 27001:2022 certified information security management system. Certificate 1357-I-1.
FileInvite holds SOC 2 Type II and states GDPR compliance. Both are credible frameworks and neither product is insecure. They are simply different standards, assessed differently, and ISO 27001 is the one most commonly named in Australian and UK procurement, tender and professional indemnity paperwork.
Who the product is designed around
This is the difference underneath the other three.
FileInvite’s product direction is clear from their own material: high-volume borrower portals, loan servicing workflows, multi-party commercial transactions, mid-market and enterprise lending teams. Everything above follows from that.
Gatheroo is built for professional services practices collecting sensitive information from clients as part of ordinary work. Client onboarding. Identity verification. Annual reviews. A conveyancing matter. An engagement letter and the six documents that go with it. The unit of work is a client request, not a loan file, and the product is shaped accordingly.
A quick comparison
| Gatheroo | FileInvite | |
|---|---|---|
| Published starting price | From AUD $37/month | From USD $9,900/year |
| Data residency | AWS Sydney | AWS global infrastructure |
| ISO 27001:2022 certified ISMS | Yes | No (SOC 2 Type II) |
| Built for | Professional services practices | Commercial and complex lending |
| Internal team pages | Yes | No |
| PDF auto-conversion and renaming | No | Yes |
| Bulk and scheduled send | Scheduled send | Both |
| Multi-party loan file workflows | No | Yes |
Comparison correct as at 1 September 2026, based on information published by each provider. FileInvite pricing and specifications are taken from fileinvite.com. Verify current details with the provider before making a decision.
Two features worth a closer look
Internal pages. Gatheroo lets you attach internal-only content to a client request: a team checklist, a verification note, an instruction for whoever picks the matter up next. The client never sees it. It sounds small until you are running onboarding across a team and the context keeps getting lost between the person who sent the request and the person who has to act on what came back.
Field-level encryption. For genuinely sensitive text fields such as Tax File Numbers, Gatheroo applies AES-128-GCM field-level encryption, so those values are never held as plain text in the database. Uploaded files are encrypted at rest with AES-256. Full detail is published in the Gatheroo Trust Centre. This matters when you are collecting identifiers rather than just documents.
How this affects your compliance obligations
Neither product makes your business compliant. No software does that, and any vendor claiming otherwise is worth treating carefully.
What both products give you is infrastructure that supports your obligations: a documented, repeatable intake process, a timestamped record of what was requested and what arrived, controlled access, and a defined place where sensitive client information lives instead of an inbox.
With AML/CTF Tranche 2 obligations now commenced in Australia, and equivalent KYC and customer due diligence requirements long established in the UK and US, the question regulators and professional bodies ask is not whether you own the right software. It is whether you can demonstrate the process. Both products let you do that. The difference is what else you have to answer for at the same time: where the data sits, which standard the provider is certified against, and whether the cost is proportionate to the size of your practice.
So which one is right for you
Choose FileInvite if you are a lender processing significant volumes of complex, multi-party loan applications, you need document standardisation and bulk workflows, and you have a budget that starts in five figures. It is built for that and it does it well.
Choose Gatheroo if you run a professional services practice, accounting, conveyancing, legal, financial planning, mortgage broking or background checking, and you need secure, auditable client document collection with Australian data residency at a price that suits a practice rather than a lending operation.
Gatheroo is not a CRM and does not try to be. It sits alongside whatever practice management or CRM system you already run and handles one job properly: getting complete, accurate information from your clients without email.
Frequently asked questions
Is Gatheroo a direct replacement for FileInvite?
For most professional services practices, yes. The core workflow is the same: build a structured request, send a secure link, let automated reminders handle the chasing, receive complete information with a full audit trail. If you depend on bulk send across hundreds of files, automatic PDF conversion and renaming, or multi-party commercial loan file workflows, those are FileInvite strengths that Gatheroo does not currently match.
How long does it take to switch document collection platforms?
The work is rebuilding your templates, and that is usually a single afternoon rather than a project. Most practices have three to six request types they send repeatedly. Build those, send one to yourself to see the client view, then start sending. The how-to guides walk through each step. Requests already in flight on your existing platform can be left to complete there while new ones go out through Gatheroo.
Does FileInvite store data in Australia?
FileInvite’s published security documentation states the platform is deployed on AWS global infrastructure and does not specify a storage region. If Australian data residency is a requirement for your practice, ask them directly and get the answer in writing. Gatheroo hosts in AWS Sydney.
Do my clients need to create an account?
No, and this is true of both platforms. Your client receives a secure link and completes the request directly, with optional two-factor authentication by email or mobile code on Gatheroo. Requiring clients to create accounts is one of the fastest ways to kill completion rates, and neither product does it.
What does ISO 27001:2022 certification cover?
It certifies the information security management system the software is built and operated under: how risks are identified, how access is controlled, how incidents are handled, how suppliers are assessed, and how all of that is reviewed. It is an assessment of the organisation and its processes, not a scan of the code. It is independently audited and requires ongoing surveillance to maintain.
See it for yourself
The fastest way to work out whether Gatheroo fits your practice is to build one request and send it to yourself. Most practices have their first real request out the same day.
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Gatheroo is not a legal or compliance advisory service. This article is general in nature. For advice specific to your obligations, we recommend engaging a qualified compliance professional.