Comparison
Greenlit vs Google Drive for entertainment teams
Drive is where the files live. It was never meant to be where the workflow lives too, and for most entertainment teams, whatever side of the business they're on, it's ended up being both.
What Google Drive is good at
- Real-time collaborative editing on docs and sheets that genuinely works well.
- Generous storage and near-universal familiarity.
- Fine as a place to park files that don't need a workflow attached.
What Greenlit is good at
- Every file is attached to a record, a submission, a package, a rights document, not floating in a folder named "Scripts 2024 FINAL".
- Real-time collaboration, with visibility into exactly where your team is working within the app, down to the record level.
- Package sharing with real analytics instead of a Drive link that tells you nothing after you send it.
- Business affairs, coverage, and rights tracked as structured data, not folder names and file placement.
- A live feed of deal news and buyer mandates matched against what's in the folder. Drive has no idea what's inside the files it stores.
Greenlit vs Google Drive, feature by feature
← Scroll to compare →
 | Google Drive | |
|---|---|---|
| Submission intake | Automatic routing and record creation | A file dropped in a folder |
| Business affairs forms | Workflow-automated and built into your submission pipeline | Not included |
| Rights tracking | Attached to the project record | Not tracked. Drive has no concept of a project record. |
| Sharing link analytics | Know who opened it and when | Basic view history, no packaging context |
| Deal intelligence | Live feed of deals, mandates, and first-look news from 60+ trades, matched against your slate automatically | Not tracked. A folder doesn't know what's moving in the industry |
| Mandate & target matching | Buyer and talent mandates matched against your submissions and slate, with AI-suggested targets and drafted outreach | Not tracked. Matching a project to the right buyer is a manual list |
| Relationship mapping | See the path to any exec through people and projects you already know | Not tracked. Relationships live in someone's head |
| Views, grid, kanban, and timeline | Kanban, timeline, and grid are all native and included on every plan. | None of these. Drive organizes files, not records, so there's no grid, board, or timeline at all. |
| CRM & task management | Every person and company tracked with a full contact record, tasks tied to submissions and deals, and a live feed of who submitted what and when | No CRM and no tasks. Drive has files, not people, and no record of who sent what. |
| Contact & credit enrichment | Add a person or company and Greenlit automatically pulls their credits and past projects | Not tracked. Drive has no concept of a person at all. |
| Getting your data in | Upload files directly, or send the folder structure over and the team organizes it for you | N/A |
| Built for entertainment | Yes | No, it is general file storage |
Where each one fits
Choose Google Drive if
- You're fine treating a folder as the system of record and rebuilding the actual workflow by hand somewhere else.
- You don't need to know who's looking for what, a file sitting in Drive with no context is enough.
Choose Greenlit if
- You want to forward a submission and have it logged and matched against a mandate, yours, someone you know, or a buyer's, automatically.
- You want warm introductions surfaced to the people you're already trying to reach.
- You want dynamic lists, writers to watch, directors to watch, your slate, that build and stay current on their own, not a doc someone maintains by hand.
- You want a more modern way to manage your entertainment business, submissions, IP, companies, contacts and more.
Where it tends to break down
Drive answers where a file is. It has nothing to say about where a submission stands, whether a release form went out, or what the rights position is on the project the file belongs to. Teams end up rebuilding that context by hand (a spreadsheet next to the folder, a Slack thread nobody can find later) because Drive was never meant to hold it in the first place. A folder can hold the file just fine; it has no opinion on whether the project inside it has been read, responded to, or forgotten, and at any real submission volume that distinction is most of the job.
Getting your data in
Getting your data in is simple. Import directly from Google Drive, no zip download needed. Just connect and start experiencing a better way to run your entertainment business.
Common questions
Can I move my Google Drive folders into Greenlit?
Yes. You don't need to download a zip. Greenlit makes it easy to import directly from Google Drive.
Do I need to stop using Drive?
No. That said, we encourage you to explore all that Greenlit offers. Many teams find they don't need both.
Does Greenlit help me figure out who to send a project to, not just store the file?
Yes. Target Suggestions looks at a project's actual material and suggests directors, writers, showrunners, and production companies based on their track record, and can auto-draft the outreach. A Drive folder has no opinion on any of that.
Is my data secure while I move it over?
Everything you upload is encrypted in transit (TLS 1.3) and at rest (AES-256). Your workspace is scoped to your organization and every request is filtered by workspace before it returns anything, other accounts never see your submissions, scripts, or contracts. Greenlit never uses your content to train AI models, and you can request a full export or deletion of your data at any time.
See how easy it is to run your entertainment business on Greenlit
Book a demo and take a look around.
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