How to Sign a Contract Online In the Cloud

As businesses shift towards electronic communication and cloud storage, they inevitably look for a reason to ditch the fax machine forever. While some business processes can easily be transferred to the cloud, others are a little tricker: online signatures are one example.

Until recently, obtaining an electronic signature was a long-winded process that involved printing a paper document, signing it, scanning it back into the computer and emailing the resulting JPG or PDF. Now a variety of services have stepped in to make it easier, and the majority are based in the cloud.

In this article, we’ll look at some cloud signature tools. First, I’ll look at tools that allow you to compose, send and store documents signed in the cloud. In the second section, I’ll look at ways to sign regular attachments without printing them out. 

Obtaining a Signature Online

When you’re running a small business, it pays to get admin tasks out of the way quickly. A painless start to a project can make the difference between a quick start and a lost sale, and that means collecting an online signature rather than mailing out paper contracts.

There are a few cloud services that allow you to compose a contract, request an online signature and then store the resulting contract in the cloud. Here are three we’ve looked at.

1. Inkdit (Free for up to 4 users) – www.inkdit.com

Inkdit is a Canadian company that has built a cloud tool for electronic contract management. Its purpose is to make simple contracts easy to write, quick to send and easy to store. It doesn’t accept attachments: you build your document in the cloud, send it and are notified when it’s signed. 

Because Inkdit is a small company, it’s able to be very responsive: I asked for an easy PDF export option and the developers added it within a matter of days.

2. RightSignature ($14 per month for one user) – www.rightsignature.com

RightSignature is aimed at corporate customers with more complex needs. It supports two different signing methods. You can attach a regular document and request a signature, or build multiple form fields into a document you’ve uploaded for editing in the cloud.

RightSignature is very powerful, but the addition of fields is quite tricky and I found it tough to create a professional layout. However, it does offer impressive security and a wider feature set, which you’d expect given the cost.

3. EchoSign (Free for 1 user & 5 contracts per month) – www.echosign.adobe.com

Adobe has made some impressive cloud tools in the last few years; EchoSign is its cloud contract product. It works in largely the same way as RightSignature and Inkdit with a few additional features such as localization, viewer tracking and integration with office tools.

There are a few things about EchoSign we didn’t like. If you have multiple signatories, the document is sent in relay, so one person at the start of the chain could potentially hold up the rest. The website is also full of marketing material, which makes it difficult to assess the service on its own merits.

Finally, when we tried EchoSign, the initial notification didn’t send at all; the recipient didn’t know the contract was waiting until a reminder went out a couple of days later. 

Signing a Contract Sent to You

Now let’s look at the cloud signature market the opposite way round. Your supplier has sent you a contract as an attachment – perhaps a PDF or a Word document.

Time is running out, so you want to sign and return it without printing it out. Also, you want to retain a copy in the cloud. For this, apps are the best solution. 

1. DocuSign Ink (Free for basic features – iOS only)

DocuSign Ink is a very clever iOS app that allows you to sign documents on an iPhone or iPad. Simply set up your signature by signing the screen or taking a photo. Then, pull in the document from another app (such as Mail), tap to add your signature and position or resize it using drag-and-drop. The results are stored in the cloud.

The drag and drop interface in DocuSign Ink isn’t great, and it’s difficult to get your signature to appear at a realistic size. But the rest of the app is extremely impressive and allowed me to sign an urgent contract in less than a minute. My one grumble is that my email address was added to an email marketing list without my permission. 

2. SignNow (Free for unlimited users 5 contracts per month – iOS/ Android)

SignNow is a direct competitor to DocuSign with very similar aims, but its layout is slightly different and its features a little more comprehensive. As well as inserting a signature, you can also tick boxes and insert a date.

The free version covers the use of the iPhone, iPad and Android app for document signing, and it includes unlimited cloud storage for your signed documents. It doesn’t include the more advanced cloud features, such as the composition of contracts.

The Best Solution for Online Signatures

Until small business move fully into the cloud, users will have to use a mixture of services depending on their clients’ needs and processes.

For the simple issuing and management of documents, we found Inkdit to be very useful, although its composition screens could be improved. For signing attachments, SignNow offered everything we needed in a simple, friendly cross platform app.