Adobe Sign vs. DocuSign - Which is the Better Signature Tool?
Signing documents by pen is very quickly becoming a thing of the past. With the pandemic putting a jump start on digital signatures, working remotely created a huge need for signature tools.
That’s why we decided to try out and review two popular signature tools - Adobe Sign vs DocuSign. In this article, we’ll compare the two tools based on features, prices, integrations, and more.
You might think that these two tools are pretty similar. However, our guide will show you the differences and which tool could be a better pick for a specific situation. If you feel like neither of the two options covers your needs, we’ll still recommend a signature tool for you.
What we'll cover
- Adobe Sign overview
- DocuSign overview
- Features comparison
- Ease of use comparison
- Pricing comparison
- Integrations comparison
Overview of Adobe Sign
Adobe Acrobat Sign is a popular signature solution that lets you sign PDF documents. It allows you to create legally binding digital signatures that come with audit trails. This means that your documents are secure and the signatures can be traced to the signers via their IP addresses.
Since the tool is a part of the Adobe family, it lets you easily integrate it with other tools, making the whole process simple and quick.
Adobe Sign lets you create and edit documents which can be entirely white-labelled and branded. The tool also offers 24/7 live phone support. All in all, it’s a pretty good signature tool.
Overview of DocuSign
DocuSign is another recognizable name in the digital signature industry. It lets you upload your documents and send them to clients very quickly. Once you send the documents, they can be signed at any time on any device.
The tool allows more than 350 integrations and offers a free trial that lasts for 30 days. If you’re interested in advanced branding options or customer support, you will have to pay more.
In short, DocuSign can cover your digital signature needs, as long as you’re not looking for any advanced features.
Features
In order to provide a detailed comparison, we’ve decided to compare the two tools. Let’s see who wins in the Adobe Sign vs DocuSign debate and how the tools stack up against each other.
Both tools will help you digitally sign your contracts and proposals. However, they lack in the document creation process. If you want to create a document that needs to be signed, you’ll need to create them from scratch.
The only templates DocuSign and Adobe Sign offer are the ones you create yourself. This will slow down your sales process immensely, seeing how you’ll need a considerable amount of time to create every new document.
This is a feature you don’t have to worry about when using Better Proposals since we offer more than 200 document templates. All of our templates are ready to be sent out with just a few tweaks needed.
On a positive note, both tools offer a free trial and have affordable packages. DocuSign and Adobe Sign allow multiple users with the former offering 5 and the latter an undisclosed amount of users.
The tools also offer notifications and reminders, which can help you keep an eye on which of your documents were signed, which you need to follow up on, and more.
Although both tools offer the same basic set of features, there are a few essential features they lack. For example, DocuSign is the only tool amongst the two that offers advanced analytics.
Adobe Sign doesn’t offer any type of analytics, which will make your follow-up process unnecessary hard.
Better Proposals, on the other hand, offer analytics that shows you when your documents were opened, signed, forwarded, paid, and more. This type of data can help you shape your follow-up strategy since you’ll know exactly what to say to your client.
Ease of use
Every new tool you incorporate into your sales stack should be easy to use. If you need coding experience or the tool comes with a long learning curve, it will just drain you of energy and time.
That’s why we decided to pay special attention to how easy these tools are to use.
Let’s start with Adobe Sign. In order to use this tool to sign a document, you will need to jump through hoops.
The steps you need to take are:
- Click the review link and choose a digital signature option
- Select Cloud Signature
- Create or select a previously created Digital ID
- Take a look at the preview of your signature and make edits if needed
- Authenticate the signature with your digital ID provider’s PIN and one-time-passcode
- And lastly, click Sign
As you can see, this process is quite lengthy and requires you to do a lot of work manually.
DocuSign however, has a pretty intuitive and easy-to-use interface. All you have to do is use the drag and drop feature and place your signature field in the desired place. Once you do that, just type in your name and it will get turned into a digital signature.
This round definitely goes to DocuSign, which is easier to use and doesn’t come with a long onboarding process.
Pricing
The pricing points of both tools are very affordable.
DocuSign offers 4 different plans, starting at $12 per month when paid monthly. This plan allows one user and lets you send 5 documents per month. The plan comes with basic integrations and an audit trail for your digital signatures.
The Standard package starts at $45 per user per month. It includes all of the features of the previous plan, as well as customized branding, in-person signatures, comments, and more.
The third plan, called Business Pro, starts at $65 per user per month and includes the features of the previous one, as well as collaborative fields, payment integrations, and more.
Adobe Sign has 2 plans for individuals and 3 for teams.
The individual packages cost $23 and $30 per month. The cheaper package works only on Windows and offers the digital signature option, tracking and sending reminders, and more.
The other package includes all the features of the previous package, as well as advanced tools to quickly compare PDFs, redact information, and more.
The team plans cost $15 and $24 per licence per month. The cheaper option works only on Windows and offers the digital signature option, tracking and sending reminders for documents, admin console access, and more.
The second plan includes all of the features of the previous one, as well as advanced tools which help you edit PDFs.
When you compare these two tools to Better Proposals, you can clearly see that we offer so much more than just digital signatures.
Even if you only focus on our most affordable plan, you’ll see that we offer:
- Payment integrations
- Content library
- Analytics and notifications
- Branding features
- Pre-written document templates
- Round-the-clock customer support
Integrations
When it comes to integrations, DocuSign takes the win. All plans include basic integrations, while the Business Pro plan offers integrations with Salesforce, SugarCRM, and more.
On the other hand, Adobe Sign mostly offers integrations with other Adobe products, like Adobe PDF, Creative Cloud, and more. As is the case with DocuSign, Adobe Sign’s integrations are available only in the pricier packages.
With all that being said, DocuSign is definitely the better option if you’re looking for more versatile tool integrations.
But if you’re looking to completely streamline your sales process, you’ll get more bang for your buck with Better Proposals. We offer more than 40 native integrations and any other tools can be easily integrated through Zapier and API.
Adobe Sign vs DocuSign
| Adobe Sign | DocuSign | Better Proposals | |
| Price | Starts at $23 per user per month | Starts at $15 per user per month | Starts at $19 per user per month |
| Users on lowest plan | 1 user in the individual plans and an undisclosed amount of users in other ones | Up to 5 | 1 |
| Ready-to-use proposal templates | No | No | 100+ |
| Custom domain | No | No | Yes |
| Online payments | No | As a separate product | Yes, through PayPal, Stripe, and GoCardless |
| Content library | No | No | Yes |
| Live chat | No | No | Yes |
| Document checker | No | No | Yes |
| Customer support | In the higher tier packages | In the higher tier packages | Available to everyone |
| Integrations | Mostly with Adobe products | Basic integrations in the first packages | 40+ integrations |
What to use instead
Don't let the debate of Adobe Sign vs DocuSign get you down. If you’re looking for a better signature tool which will help you streamline your sales process, you’ll love Better Proposals.
We’ve chosen to focus on more than just digital signatures and pride ourselves on the vast library of beautifully designed documents you can customize in minutes. All of our documents are web-based, meaning they get sent as secure links that lead to a landing page.
This feature allows us to utilize digital signatures, which we’ve purposely made easy to use. All of our document templates come with a digital signature field that turns a typed-in name into a legally binding signature.
Once you send your document to a client, they won’t have to download an extension or pay for a service, the only thing they will need is a keyboard.
Once they sign the document, you will be able to trace it to them via time stamps and their IP address.
Other Better Proposals features
As we’ve already mentioned, we offer a lot of pre-written document templates. This will speed up your proposal process since you will be able to respond to a request for a proposal in minutes.
Furthermore, our documents come with a payment option that allows clients to pay through the proposal itself. The payment integration can be set up through PayPal, Stripe, and GoCardless. Based on your choice of service provider, you can set up subscription models, monthly payments, annual payments, and more.
Also, once you send your document, you get access to proposal analytics. We’ve already mentioned the benefits of our analytics, but the best part is seeing exactly how much time your clients spent on a specific part of your proposal.
This information is extremely important when it comes to the follow-up process. If you’re reaching out to a client, willing to lower the price when they haven’t even read your proposals, you’re shooting yourself in the leg.
With our proposal analytics, you’ll know exactly when to reach out and what to say. If you see that the client spent a lot of time on the timescales and your process, you know you should reach out and offer some type of clarification. Maybe they need more information on your solution or a case study that shows how you helped a previous client reach their goals.
We also make sure to help you with any questions you might have about proposal writing. You can always check out our help pages, as well as proposal reports which show you how proposal trends change over time.
Conclusion
When it comes to the titled debate Adobe Sign vs DocuSign, we declare DocuSign the winner. It's the solution that offers more than just digital signatures while being the more affordable option.
It allows more users, has a way to offer online payments and includes proposal analytics and a good number of integrations. With all that being said, when it comes to these two tools, we would rather recommend DocuSign than Adobe Sign.
However, if you’re looking for a more advanced tool that can help you transform your sales process and speed up document creation as well as the agreement process then Better Proposals is just the tool for you.
We can help you create business proposals that your clients will actually want to read and speed up the time it takes you to get paid. Our clients wait for payment for an average of 6 hours, which is amazing.
But you don’t have to take our word for it. Sign up for a free trial and experience the ease of making new deals without spending too much time on the proposal process.
