Not the cheapest. Not the most expensive.
Here is what the well-known e-signature companies charge, what we charge, and every question we think you should put to all of us before you decide. Including the ones we would rather you did not ask.
Prices read from each company’s published pricing on 6 September 2026
One person who sends documents, per month, paying for the year
Every one of these companies charges for the people who send. None of them charge the people who sign. So this is the number that actually decides what you pay.
| Per person, per month | eSignBook | DocuSign | Dropbox Sign | PandaDoc | SignNow |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan | $15 | $10 to $11 | $15 | $19 | $15 |
| The middle plan, the one most companies land on | $29 | $25 to $30 | about $25 | $49 | not published |
| The top plan you can buy without a sales call | $45 | $40 to $45 | $50 | by quote only | $50 |
| A cap on how many documents you may send | None, on any paid plan | About 100 per person per year on Standard and Business Pro. Five a month on Personal. | Check their current plan page | Check their current plan page | Check their current plan page |
We have written down only what we actually read on their own pricing pages, and we have left the rest blank rather than guess on a competitor’s behalf. Prices change, and no two plans include the same things. Go and check theirs. We would genuinely rather you did, because a decision you checked yourself is one you do not resent later.
Twelve questions to ask any e-signature company
A price table is the easy part and it is not what you will care about in a year. These are the questions that decide whether a signed document is worth anything when somebody argues about it. Our answers are below. Ask the same twelve of anybody else you are considering, and make them answer in writing.
Can somebody who is not your customer check a signed document, without an account?
Yes. Every finished document gets a certificate at its own web address, showing who signed, when, in what order, and a fingerprint of the exact file. Send that link to a bank, a broker, a buyer or a court. They open it, they do not sign up, and they do not have to take your word for anything.
How do you prove the words did not change after signing?
Two fingerprints, not one. We take a SHA-256 fingerprint of the exact wording before anybody signs, and a second one of the finished PDF when it completes. Both are printed on the certificate. Change one comma anywhere and the fingerprint comes out completely different, and anyone can check it themselves against the file in their hand.
Is the finished document ever rebuilt?
Never. The completed PDF is stored once and served back byte for byte for ever. It is the record. A system that regenerates the document on demand can quietly produce a different file from the one that was signed, and then the fingerprint on the certificate means nothing.
Does the person signing have to pay, sign up, or install anything?
No, no, and no. They tap a private link in their email and the document opens in whatever browser they already have. No account, no app, no password. They sign by drawing with a finger or typing their name. However many people sign, however often, they are free for ever.
What is your limit on documents sent?
There is not one on any paid plan. This is worth pushing hard on with everybody: running out of sends is the single loudest complaint in this whole market, and a cap turns the thing you bought into something you ration.
Whose name is on the signing page, the emails and the PDF?
Yours, from the first paid plan. Your logo, your color, your company name, on the page they sign on, the emails they receive and inside the finished PDF. It is not held back as a reason to move you up a tier, because it is how the product is built rather than a feature bolted onto the expensive end.
Where does a signature end up afterwards?
On that person’s record, by itself. Sent, opened, signed, declined, completed: every step lands on their timeline next to their emails, calls, purchases and support tickets, because the customer records are the same system rather than something we plug into. Nobody exports anything and nobody remembers to check a second place.
Can I get everything out, and what happens if I leave?
Yes, and a completed document is never deleted. Signed PDFs and their certificates are kept, exportable, and stay readable. Even if a person is later removed from your customer records, their signed documents remain, because a signed agreement is a record both sides are entitled to.
Who inside my company can see which documents?
Nobody, until you say so. Everything here starts closed. On the Organization plan you get departments that cannot see each other’s documents and roles that separate who may send, who may approve and who may only look. A single switch cuts a whole branch off, and everything under it goes dark at once.
What exactly is written down about every action?
Who, what, when, and a one-way hash of the address it came from — never the address itself. Sent, opened, signed, declined, reminded, voided, expired. You can export the trail. Storing a hash instead of the raw address gives you the evidence without keeping a list of people’s locations lying around.
Can I stop the finished contract living in somebody’s inbox for ever?
Yes, and that is your choice per company. The completed PDF goes out as an attachment or as a secure link, whichever you set. Attaching is convenient. Linking means a signed contract is not sitting in a mailbox, on a phone, and in three forwarded threads a year from now.
Will you tell me this makes my document legally binding?
No, and be careful with anybody who says yes. We will not sell you compliance and nobody honestly can. What makes a signed document hold up is that the right person signed, that they could read it, that nothing changed, and that you can show all three. We build the evidence. A lawyer answers for the document.
Every step we actually take, and nothing we are only planning
Everything on this page is running today. We have deliberately left out anything that is on a roadmap, because a security page that mixes the two is how buyers get misled. If it is written here, it is switched on.
The document itself
- Two SHA-256 fingerprints on every document: the wording before signing, the finished PDF after.
- The completed PDF is never rebuilt. It is stored once and served back unchanged for ever.
- Signature images are encrypted where they sit, not left as plain pictures in storage.
- Signing links are long random tokens, are not guessable, belong to one person, and can be set to expire.
- The signing page tells the browser not to pass the link on to any site the signer visits next.
- Voiding is real. Once a document is void, nobody can sign it, and the attempt is recorded.
Getting in
- A human check first, then a password, then a passkey made on the device itself.
- A passkey only works on the address it was created on, so a copied link cannot be used elsewhere.
- One-time links and challenges live in the database, not a cache, so the same link can never be spent twice by two quick clicks.
- Sessions are real rows. An old token with no session behind it is refused rather than trusted.
Who may see what
- Deny by default. A new company, department or document is visible to nobody until somebody deliberately opens it. Nothing ever leaks by being forgotten.
- A cut-off beats every allow, anywhere in the chain. Switch off a branch and everything under it goes dark immediately, with no deploy and nobody’s permission.
- Authority only flows downward. You can never see the level above you, and never the one beside you.
- If a permission is missing or unreadable, the answer is no. It fails closed, never open.
Keys and secrets
- Every stored secret is sealed with AES-GCM 256, tied to the exact row it belongs to, so a row copied out on its own cannot be opened.
- Secrets are opened at the moment of use and never cached, never written into another table, never logged, and never shown on a page or in a chat window.
- There is a kill switch. Switching one row off cuts every part of the platform off from that key on its next call.
- Every reveal of a secret is written to the audit log, naming which key, who, and when.
What is written down
- An audit trail on every action that touches a document, a permission, a key or money.
- A one-way hash of the address a request came from, never the address. The evidence without the surveillance.
- Reading a private field is itself recorded. Looking is an event, not just changing.
- The trail exports, so you can hand it to somebody who is asking questions.
Keeping things, and losing them
- A completed document is kept, never deleted. Not by us, and not by an accident in your own account.
- Deleting has a seatbelt. Anything removed goes to a holding tank you can restore from; erasing for good is a separate, deliberate act.
- Every table is copied to storage every night, with a weekly copy kept for a year and a manifest of what was taken.
- The restore has actually been run, not just written down as a procedure.
The stricter mode, when you need it
- Phone numbers hidden in lists, shown only where somebody actually needs one.
- Text messages cut back to a short notice with a link, so details never sit on a lock screen.
- Private fields opened only by people allowed to edit, and every opening recorded.
- A retention policy must be set before any bulk import, so nothing arrives with no end date.
- The finished PDF defaults to a link rather than an attachment.
Privacy law, and being able to use it at all
- The privacy box works out which law applies from the visitor’s own country and asks the right question for it.
- Optional scripts are blocked until they answer, rather than running first and asking afterwards.
- Four categories and a preference centre, and the answer is kept as a record.
- An accessibility panel on every page: bigger text, higher contrast, a dyslexia-friendly font, underlined links, a reading guide, colour-vision adjustment and read-aloud.
- The signing page is built to be used with a keyboard and read by a screen reader, with or without that panel.
Where it actually runs
- On our own infrastructure, in our own accounts. Not a reseller panel on top of somebody else’s platform.
- Your signed documents are not sitting inside a white-label of a white-label, three companies away from anyone who can answer for them.
- One company’s data can never be restored into another. Every row carries the company it belongs to and every door checks it.
And here is what we will not claim
Any vendor can write a security page. The honest part is the list of things we are not going to tell you, because the moment a supplier oversells this, you stop being able to trust the rest of what they said.
- We do not hold a SOC 2 report, and we are not going to imply that we do.
- We do not say we are HIPAA compliant. We give you a stricter mode with real, specific behaviours, which is a different sentence.
- We do not say a signature makes your agreement enforceable. That depends on your document and where you live.
- We do not claim any tool makes a website accessible. The panel helps a real person right now, and the pages are built to work without it.
- We do not promise that nothing will ever go wrong. We promise it will be written down, recoverable, and that you will be told.
If you are comparing us with somebody who answers all of the above with an unqualified yes, that is worth a second look. Ask them for the report. Ask them for the agreement. Ask them who signs it.
Tell us what you send and we will tell you straight
Including when somebody else is the better fit. A real person follows up with you directly. If you already use one of our other products, eSignBook switches on inside the account you already have.