I was looking for an e-signature solution for my own business (not a customer FileMaker integration project) and was not familiar with all the different service providers and their respective features.
Wanting to limit my commitment, because of the high likeliness I would change providers, I was looking for providers with free pricing tiers or low-cost monthly payment, willing to consider a yearly commitment if the fee could match some of the low-cost options.
As I guess I am not the only one using similar tools and I feel it could be beneficial to our community to share individual experiences, I would appreciate any feedback about what you are using (or were using) and like/don't like about it. All the same, if paper has your preference, please chime in.
Please note, the legal requirements applicable to your specific location may be different from the ones other community members may be dealing with.
I am not making any recommendations about signrequest.com since I just started using it. Also, none of this is legal advice, please consult professionals if you have such concerns.
Thanks for sharing this! (I'm looking into some of these products too.)
I've been down that rabbit hole of product search several times, and it always feels like so much work that ends up with me anticlimactically just choosing one product, then the research isn't used for anything else. Sharing it here is a great idea so others can benefit from all that work!
Thanks for listing these options... Last year I was working on a FileMaker system where PDF signing was to be integrated into it... That signrequest.com one looks good and has a nice API...
What I found was, because I needed API integration, the costs with these services when needing to send out hundreds/thousands of documents for signature quickly mounted up. For instance, we needed something like 15,000 documents a year to be signed. Costs for this with some of those services looks like the following:
SignRequest: $7,500 (PAYG) or $4,833 prepaid for the year
HelloSign: For $5,388 you only get 450 docs/month (5,400/year). For more than that, then 'Call for Enterprise pricing' which I imagine would be very high.
EverSign: $3,840/year - for 500 docs/month. For more than that, then enquire for pricing...
So quite high really... In the end I completely custom built a solution that was accepted by the client in terms of security, authenticity, etc, and is easy for the recipients that need to add their signature to use.
Basically what I built was a system that emails a unique link to each recipient that they click and are taken to a web page with a simple signature capture canvas and a couple of other form fields. This data is POSTed back to FileMaker via Data API, and a script is run on server that adds the captured signature and other data to the multi-page PDF (by way of some php classes), and then emails the signed copy to the recipient as well as storing in the database.... works great, and no recurring costs
Just curious here, what is the per document fee you find reasonable for something like this? Would you find the fee more decent if the company it was for was much larger (Coca-Cola or any other big name)
As I said, I won't be using the API anytime soon as this is only for my back office.
@skywillmott did not mention the kind(s) of documents his client was processing, but his comment seems to imply the overall fee for this volume is larger than what they were ok with budget-wise. He also did not mention if the signature needed to be legally valid or not.
That said, I have 3 assumptions:
A company that sends a document to be signed is engaged in a process that generates income. More so if your combined usage makes it to 1000+ documents monthly (no one I know sends that many NDAs or other documents not driving income)
Generally, with income involved, it means you need the protection of knowing the signature cannot be challenged from the legal side of things. (other scenarios can make that mandatory too)
The API fee (even at the highest €0,50 per document rate) is likely lower than any manual effort that needs to take place to support the similar elements in the paper form (sending the paper out or having the recipient print it, have the document returned to you and archived in a proper fashion, possibly making a digital copy in the process. Not to forget that along the way you may have to send reminders and if the document needs to be signed by 3 or more individuals or in a specific order, things become hectic fast)
To me, it is all about what was the initial cost of handling the 15k documents. From there, you can establish if the savings are good or not. I can imagine someone who was paying €50000/year to achieve the same results will be happy to get the fees down to €7500 or whatever it is converted to.
On top of that, the pay as you go pricing of €0,50 goes down significantly if you can make a yearly commitment, something that should be possible when we are talking about such volume (it is not like a business is unexpectedly going to go from 15k to 10k documents, the drop required for PAYG to become better than the yearly commitment)
Bottom line is: if I know the signature itself is bringing income my way, and going with an API means better integration and shorter processing times from the time the document is issued to the time the last signature is applied and the document is filed, chances are I'll be happy to pay that because I was already paying more before.
Let's flip the question around: how much savings are you expecting from going the API route?
This is helpful business insight, and the way I think about the document processing too. With our small nonprofit, the numbers change a little, but the idea of cost saving processes is the same. We unfortunately often fall into the gap where, even though the benefits save a few people from doing tedious work, the cost of changing how we do things and implementing the new system outweighs those benefits.
