docusign.comcontributed by Samuele Ongaro
The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying.
Electronic signature with the evidence around it: documents are sent as envelopes, signed in a tracked session, and sealed with a certificate of completion that stands up in a dispute.
Do not build this if a contract's enforceability matters to you. What you are paying for is not the signing flow — it is that the audit trail, the certificate handling and the identity checks have been through legal review in many jurisdictions, and that the company will stand behind them if a signature is challenged. That standing is the product. WHEN TO KEEP PAYING - Contracts of real value, or anything a lawyer would want to defend - Customers or regulators who ask which standard your signatures meet - Qualified electronic signatures in the EU, which require a certified trust service provider — you cannot self-certify into that category WHEN TO BUILD - Internal approvals, low-value agreements, and anything where a clear record is enough. The full shape is covered under Documenso and SignWell elsewhere in this catalogue WHAT MATTERS IF YOU DO BUILD IT - **An append-only audit trail**: created, sent, delivered, opened, each page viewed, each field completed, signed, declined, downloaded — each with a UTC timestamp, a salted address hash and a coarse user agent. Enforced by a trigger, never edited - The trail rendered as a page appended to the finished document, with the hash of what each person actually saw. A signature without that page is a picture of a name - A document-level digital signature so any later change is detectable, with a timestamp from an RFC 3161 authority so it stays verifiable after the certificate expires - Long random tokens per recipient, no accounts, and optional extra authentication with the method recorded - Backups covering the documents as well as the database, with a tested restore. Losing a signed contract is not an outage, it is a loss THE SENTENCE TO KEEP Write in your README that this proves the document has not changed since sealing and records who did what and when — and that whether it satisfies a particular law in a particular country is a question for a lawyer. Do not let that sentence be removed later. THE ONE-LINE VERSION Build it for internal paperwork. Buy it for anything you might have to defend.
What you lose
- An audit trail that holds up in a dispute: identity checks, timestamps, IP records and a certificate of completion
- Compliance with eIDAS and the ESIGN Act, evidenced rather than asserted
- Qualified and advanced electronic signatures where the law requires them
- Long-term validation, so a signature is still verifiable a decade later
- The fact that the other side already trusts the envelope when it arrives
If you would rather not build
- SignWell — paid, cheaper, similar scope for small teams
What it costs
as published on their pricing page
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly | Last read |
|---|---|---|---|
| — | $45/mo | — | — |
Their pricing page is where these came from. Seeing a different price? Tell us.
The escape hatch
open source · no votes, no paid placement
Documenso
$0Open-source document signing with fields, ordering and an audit trail.
documenso/documensofree · open source
OpenSign
$0Self-hosted e-signature with templates and a completion certificate.
OpenSignLabs/OpenSignfree · open source
Why this verdict
our own opinion · changed only by a person
18/100
Verdict no at 18: stamping a PDF is easy and the evidence chain is buildable, but the product is legal standing, not software. If a signature is ever disputed, what matters is whose certificate sealed it and whether the process meets the standard — and that is bought, not coded.
History
tracked since 9 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten
Questions about DocuSign
answered from the record above
Is DocuSign free?
No — the plan we track is $45 a month. Standard at $45 per user per month billed monthly, $35 annually, with an envelope allowance; overages are billed per envelope.
Can you replace DocuSign by building your own?
KEEP IT. The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying. Replacement score 18 out of 100, build time longer than it saves. Read what you lose before you decide.
How much does DocuSign cost?
$45 a month on Standard — $540 a year. Recorded 9 Aug 2026.
What do you lose by replacing DocuSign?
An audit trail that holds up in a dispute: identity checks, timestamps, IP records and a certificate of completion; Compliance with eIDAS and the ESIGN Act, evidenced rather than asserted; Qualified and advanced electronic signatures where the law requires them; Long-term validation, so a signature is still verifiable a decade later; The fact that the other side already trusts the envelope when it arrives. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to DocuSign?
Yes: Documenso, OpenSign. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.
Related entries
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