Five products that ship today, and one argument about what a signature is.
Every vendor below is a working product you can buy this afternoon, and each of them does something we do not. What we argue is narrower than a feature list: the industry sells the picture of a signature and prices the seat, and neither of those is what decides a dispute.
Every claim here is sourced, dated, and limited to what the vendor publishes about their own product. Prices are not repeated — they go stale within a quarter.
Honestly
What we are not going to claim
A comparison that finds no advantage anywhere else is read as marketing and discounted entirely, including the parts that were accurate. So the left-hand column of every card below is theirs.
Where the whole category is ahead of us These are mature products with years of integrations, mobile apps, template libraries, identity partnerships and support organisations behind them. If you need a signing tool that your finance team, your CRM and your HR system already connect to out of the box, that is a real reason to buy one of them and it is not a close call. What follows is where we think the difference is worth having anyway.
5 products
One at a time, with their case first
The same rows rutba.io publishes — one set of claims, one date on each, so the two sites cannot end up disagreeing about a competitor.
Rutba Sign vs Docusign
Checked 3 September 2026
The category, more or less. If you have signed something electronically you have probably signed it here, and that recognition is a real feature rather than a branding fact.
Where Docusign is better
Your counterparty already trusts the envelope. This is the advantage that is hardest to compete with and the easiest to underrate. A signer who receives a Docusign envelope opens it without thinking about it. A signer who receives ours reads the sender name twice. Recognition is not a moat we can build with engineering, and pretending it does not decide deals would be dishonest.
Identity, notarisation and qualified signatures. Government-ID verification, knowledge-based authentication, remote online notarisation through their own notary network, and qualified electronic signatures through trust service providers — all in production, all inside the product. Ours is narrower: an identity ladder of email, phone code, access code, location and signed-in identity, and a formality desk where you ask us to arrange a stamp, seal or notarisation and a person books it with a third party. Arranging is not performing. If a document has to be notarised in the tool, in a session, tonight, that is theirs.
Breadth beyond signing. An agreement repository that extracts terms from executed contracts, a workflow builder, and web forms. We carry the lifecycle itself now — effective dates, term ends, renewal notices, the manager and the renewal chain — so "they manage agreements and we only execute them" is no longer the difference between us. What is still theirs is the breadth around it: extraction, workflow and forms are three products we do not have and are not building.
It ships and we do not, on our own. Sign runs today for organizations that already hold a Rutba licence. Buying it standalone waits on card capture and pooled hosting. Docusign has no such gate.
Where we are
Verification without an account, a subscription, or trusting us. A completed package can be checked by anyone who holds it — no login, no payment, permanently, and free. The check is cryptographic: the seal over the completion manifest, an RFC 3161 timestamp obtained from a public authority, and the hash chain over the event ledger. A counterparty verifying a Docusign envelope is asking Docusign. A counterparty verifying ours is checking arithmetic.
The evidence outlives the relationship. Stop paying us and every completed envelope and its evidence stay yours, permanently, and stay verifiable. This is a commitment about what happens after we lose your business, which is the only time it matters, and it is the reason verification is free rather than a paid tier.
Priced per envelope, not per seat. Six people who each send a contract occasionally pay for six seats almost everywhere in this category. Sign has no seat count on pay-as-you-go, the subscription allowance belongs to the organization rather than to a user, and the people who sign are never charged on any tier. The envelope is charged when it is sent rather than when it completes, deliberately: charging on completion would pay us to nag your customer.
The lifecycle costs a subscription, not a negotiation. Agreement calendars, renewal notices and a renewal chain are sold in this market as contract lifecycle management — quoted rather than listed, and landing in the tens of thousands a year. Ours is a tier: envelopes plus the calendar and the manager over live agreements, for a monthly figure a small company can read off a page and pay by card. Not their depth — no term extraction, no clause library. The claim is narrower: a company with two hundred live agreements should not need a procurement cycle to get a renewal reminder.
Formalities arranged at cost, never marked up. Where a jurisdiction wants a stamp, a seal or a notary, the desk arranges it, passes the provider fee through unmarked with a flat handling charge, and shows the number before anything is committed. Arranging your own and filing the reference costs nothing. The incumbent quotes one bundled figure per notarisation, which is easier to buy and makes the margin invisible.
It signs the records you already keep. On your own instance, a quote from Rutba CRM, an offer letter from Rutba People or an engagement letter from Rutba Books goes out for signature and comes back to the record it belongs to. Nothing exports, nothing re-uploads, and the signed result is in your own Drive rather than in a vendor library you rent access to.
The verdict: If you need qualified electronic signatures, notarisation performed inside the product at volume, or a counterparty who will not proceed without a name they recognise, stay — none of those are close calls. Look at us when the thing that matters is what the record proves later, when you want the agreement lifecycle without a CLM contract, when you are tired of paying per seat for occasional senders, or when the documents being signed are already Rutba records.
Signing from the company that invented the file everyone is signing. The comparison is really about whether the PDF is the centre of your process or an output of it.
Where Adobe Acrobat Sign is better
The PDF toolchain, which we do not have. Editing, form field creation, redaction, accessibility tagging and preflight are a genuine product and we do not compete with any of it. Sign pins a document by hash on arrival and never rewrites it — a deliberate choice for evidence, and it means the document has to be right before it gets here.
Visible signature marks on the page, done properly. Placed fields, rendered marks, appearance settings and certificate-based digital signatures embedded in the PDF itself. Ours is the piece explicitly still to come: our evidence record exists before the picture does, which is the right order for a dispute and the wrong order for somebody who wants the page to look signed today.
Qualified signatures and enterprise compliance. AdES and qualified signatures through Adobe's trust partners, plus the compliance programmes large buyers audit against. Our seal is Ed25519 over a canonical manifest and our timestamp is a genuine RFC 3161 token — cryptographically sound, and not the same thing as an accredited qualified certificate.
Already in the building. If Acrobat is deployed, signing is often a licence change rather than a purchase, an integration or a new supplier to onboard. That is a real cost we cannot beat.
Where we are
The record is the product, not the rendering. Acrobat Sign's deliverable is a signed PDF with an audit report beside it. Ours is a sealed completion manifest over a hash-chained ledger, with the documents pinned by hash and never rewritten — so "has this been altered" is answered by comparing hashes rather than by trusting that the rendering pipeline did not touch anything.
Two independent clocks. Every sealed digest carries a platform countersignature and an RFC 3161 timestamp from a public authority. The second one is the point: it is a time assertion nobody at Rutba can move, obtained from a party with no interest in the agreement, and preserved as an artifact any standard tool can check.
Free public verification, permanently. A counterparty checks a completed package with no account and no payment, and can keep doing so after you have stopped being a customer. Verification is not a tier here and never will be.
No seat, and no charge to sign. Per envelope on pay-as-you-go, an organization-wide allowance on the subscription, and signers never pay. A team that sends occasionally is not buying seats for the privilege.
The verdict: If the document work happens in Acrobat and the signature is the last step of a PDF workflow, stay — the seam we would put in the middle costs more than it returns. Consider us when the signed artefact needs to prove something to a third party years later, or when the documents are generated by systems you already run rather than authored by hand.
The one developers reach for. Formerly HelloSign, and still the cleanest API in the category — which makes it the closest competitor to the half of our product that is an engine.
Where Dropbox Sign is better
The API is more mature than ours and better documented. Embedded signing, embedded templates and a stable public API with years of production use behind it. Ours is a core module with a frozen cross-tier contract and a published verify shape — younger, narrower, and not something a third-party developer can sign up for today.
There is a free tier. A handful of documents a month at no cost. Our lowest commitment is per envelope from the first one; verification is free but sending is not.
Simplicity as a deliberate product. It does one job with very little to learn, which is a real advantage over a product whose pitch involves hash chains and RFC 3161. If the requirement is "get this signed", the shortest path is a virtue.
Available standalone, today. Anyone can sign up and send this afternoon. Ours needs an existing Rutba licence until card capture and pooled hosting land.
Where we are
Evidence a third party can check independently. Dropbox Sign gives a signature certificate and an audit trail — genuinely good, and produced and vouched for by Dropbox. Ours is verifiable against a public timestamp authority and a published seal, by someone who has no relationship with us at all. When the question is adversarial, who is vouching matters more than how detailed the report is.
The identity ladder is per signer and stated on the certificate. Email, phone code, access code, location and signed-in identity, chosen per party, and the certificate of completion never claims more than was actually verified. A document that says "identity verified" when only an email was checked is worse than one that says what it did.
Priced by envelope rather than by seat. Once past a free tier, this category charges per user with a document allowance. Ours charges for the envelope that was sent, and the subscription allowance belongs to the organization. Occasional senders stop being expensive.
It signs your own records, on your own instance. For Rutba customers the documents come from the systems that generated them and the signed result lands in their own Drive — not a signing vendor's library that ends when the subscription does.
The verdict: For an embedded signing step in somebody else's product, this is the better tool today and it is not close. Consider us when the signing is your own business's agreements, when the evidence has to answer to a third party, or when the documents already live in Rutba.
Not really a signature product. A proposal and quoting product where signing is the last step — which makes it a competitor to a different part of Rutba than the obvious one.
Where PandaDoc is better
Proposal creation is a product and we do not have it. Content library, reusable blocks, pricing tables that calculate, approval routing before a document goes out. Rutba quotes come from the CRM and are a different, narrower thing. If the pain is building the document, this is the answer.
Engagement analytics. Which pages a recipient looked at and for how long, before they respond. We record dwell as evidence inside the ceremony rather than as a sales signal, and we do not surface it as pipeline intelligence.
CRM integrations that already exist. HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive are supported and maintained. Our equivalent advantage only applies if the CRM is ours.
Buyable today, by anyone. Self-serve from any tier. Ours requires an existing Rutba licence for now.
Where we are
The evidence, when the document is a contract rather than a pitch. A proposal that gets signed becomes an agreement, and at that moment the question changes from "did they read it" to "can I prove what they agreed to". Hash-pinned documents, a hash-chained ledger, a sealed manifest, two independent timestamps and free public verification are answers to the second question. Engagement analytics are not.
Quoting that comes from the record, not from a library. For a Rutba customer the quote is generated by CRM from real products, prices and discounts, is signed in place, and the acceptance lands back on the opportunity. PandaDoc has to be told what the prices are.
Per envelope, and signers never pay. A per-seat proposal tool prices every seller. Sign prices the envelope that went out.
The record survives cancellation. Completed agreements and their evidence stay yours and stay verifiable permanently. A proposal platform that holds your executed contracts is a subscription you cannot safely stop.
And the signed proposal has a life afterwards. A won proposal becomes an agreement with a term, and something has to remember when it ends. Sign carries the calendar, the renewal notice and the renewal chain on the record itself. PandaDoc closes the deal and hands the consequence to whoever remembers to put it in a diary.
The verdict: If the hard part is producing a good proposal, buy PandaDoc and do not think about us for it. If the hard part is that the signed result has to hold up, or if your quotes already come out of Rutba, the comparison is worth having.
The value option, and a serious one. It exists to answer "why am I paying so much for signatures", which is a question we also think is a good one.
Where SignNow is better
Price, which is the whole point of it. It is materially cheaper than the leaders and does not pretend to be anything else. We are also cheaper than the leaders for occasional senders, and we are not making a claim to be the cheapest option in this category for everyone.
Bulk send and routine volume. Sending the same document to many recipients is a first-class feature and a mature one. Ours exists in the subscription tier and is younger.
A workflow suite around it. airSlate adds document generation, robotic process automation and workflow beyond signing. Our equivalent breadth is the business suite, which is a much larger commitment to take on for a signature.
Anyone can buy it now. No licence prerequisite, no waiting on card capture.
Where we are
Cheap and provable are different axes. The saving here comes from being a lean signature product. Ours comes from not charging per seat, and it is paid for by the evidence being the product rather than a feature — a sealed, hash-chained record with an independent timestamp, verifiable by anyone, permanently. Compare on what the record proves, not only on the rate.
Verification that outlives the subscription. Free, public, no account, and it keeps working after you leave. A cheap subscription you cannot safely cancel because your executed agreements live in it is not as cheap as it looks.
Honest certificates. The certificate of completion states the identity rung each signer actually cleared and never more. A stronger-sounding certificate that overstates what was checked is worth less in a dispute, not more.
Signing attached to real records. For Rutba customers the document comes from the system that produced it and goes back to it. A standalone tool at any price cannot do that.
The verdict: If the requirement is high-volume routine signing at the lowest price and the evidence question never comes up, SignNow is a rational purchase and we would not argue with it. Look at us when a document is going to be argued about, or when the sender is a Rutba organization and the signature belongs on a record you already hold.
Nobody you send to is ever charged, and verification is free forever.
This is the part of the comparison that does not fit in a table, because it is a pricing decision rather than a capability.
Signing is not a seat
The people you send to need no account and are never charged, on any tier. You pay to send an envelope. A counterparty who signs one document a year never becomes a line on anybody’s invoice, which is not true across most of this category.
Verification outlives the subscription
A completed record and its evidence stay yours forever, and anyone can check a document at rutba.io with no account — including after you have stopped paying us. Holding signed contracts hostage to a subscription would be the fastest way to lose the trust this product sells.
The other half of the argument is what the record actually holds — consent before the act, every evidence rung the signer agreed to, a hash-chained ledger, a sealed manifest countersigned by Rutba and an RFC 3161 timestamp. How an agreement lives, stage by stage.
Send one and judge the record, not the marketing.
Pay as you go per envelope, or one flat subscription for the organization. No seat counts, no charge to signers, no charge to verify.
