DocuSign vs. Paperless

I am going to speak of a personal experience- on multiple occasions: I need my husband to sign documents during the day and I don't need him here- physically. He sometimes works in different parts of the state as well at his own company. There is no problem at all, as long as he has access to his cell phone, email, and cell phone service- he can sign the documents I need him to. It is AMAZING- I can't speak highly enough of Docusign.

Incentivized

Paperless is good for formalising the authorisation process. In my opinion, where it falls short is that the software is slow and has limitations. Some limitations are known to the company but not told at point of selling, leaving the user with add-ons that are useless. e.g. the Company Inbox module, which is used to automatically upload invoices to Paperless, is not fit for (our) purpose due to the fact not all emails can be uploaded to the system automatically. Apparently companies who send invoices using software packages such as Xerox / Quickbooks etc. have rules which do not allow onward forwarding. Therefore you need to cross check what has been uploaded and what hasn't. This is time consuming and we found manual upload was far easier. We wasted time and money implementing this add-on which was useless to us.

Incentivized

• Ease of sending the same document out to multiple recipients, at multiple locations, for multiple signatures
• Quick turnaround - once the recipient signs the document, we receive notification and the document back immediately
• Can resend, alter, change, and/or add to the email and/or document that is sent out very easily
• The recipient can save the document after signing, so they too have their own electronic copy for their records

Incentivized

• Formal authorisation process
• Easy to search invoice archive

Incentivized

• Tracking, particularly when collecting signatures through connected applications, such as an ATS, is not always clean or easily traceable.
• Formatting documents to handle electronic signature types (signatures, initials, etc.) is not always easy, and highly dependent on the partner's technology.
• It is not convenient to have to use DocuSign as a stand alone product if the signatures are required for 3rd party applications. It definitely excels on its own, but the scope of that usage, at least for us, is slim.

Incentivized

• Slow software
• Mailbox management not fit for purpose
• Hidden costs

Incentivized

I can't imagine doing business without DocuSign now. I would never want to go back to the way we used to do things. The "new way" is "the way" is "the right way." We can honestly be proud of a "one right way" process and not have to suffer through "5 ways for 5 days."

Incentivized

Generally user-friendly once you have command of the basics, but also has a lot of nuances that can make it difficult to train others on. DocuSign University is a helpful tool, but understandably a lot of content to get through to become a well-versed user. A lot of different functionalities but only a few I use on a weekly basis.

Incentivized

It does not go down. I have had zero issues with DocuSign, approaching 4 years.

Incentivized

Everything loads quickly. Reports are generated in a reasonable time. No noticeable difference in integrated software processing speeds.

Incentivized

I'd give them a 10, but there has been 1 or 2 small cases that seemed to fall to the wayside, but I was able to call them up and get them resolved. We were having a bad implementation night (after midnight) and we needed assistance from Docusign. They were able to get an engineer to help us in the early morning hours

Incentivized

Docusign is super easy to use, and apart from a few administration details, there was really nothing to train on. Post implementation, there were issues with configuration of auto-filled documents with the integrating 3rd party. That training required some time, because the DocuSign expert took the time to walk me through the 3rd party's configuration (how often does that happen?) so I could see how DocuSign should be best used to overcome weaknesses in the 3rd party platform. 10/10 expert care.

Incentivized

Until you get the hang of it, I recommend doing several internal tests before sending a document to a client. As I mentioned earlier, you have to go through a bit of trial and error at first to verify that the workflow works as expected.

I would say that DocuSign's biggest competitor and a most similar product is Adobe Sign. They both offer almost identical features with Adobe offering a slightly better interface. Adobe Sign is also less costly than DocuSign while offering templates that can be useful for various activities. If you are looking for more branding options then Adobe offers a slight advantage but for corporate control, I would say DocuSign offers more security.

Incentivized

In my years of using DocuSign, I have never had an outage. I haven't even encountered a bug.

Incentivized

• DocuSign has made fax machines obsolete for receiving, signing, and returning documents to multiple parties.
• DocuSign is a secure method of signing documents and that is a positive. Fax machines are generally not very secure.
• DocuSign stores your documents in an encrypted form which protects your privacy and the privacy of all parties named in a document.

Incentivized

• We feel the product over promised and under delivered

Incentivized