DocuSign, Dropbox Sign, PandaDoc and SignNow all look cheap in the headline — $8 to $25 a month. The real difference is hidden one row lower: two of them cap you at 100 sends per user per year, and two sell unlimited sending on paid plans. This guide compares them at the send volumes freelancers and small businesses actually have.
Personal, billed annually. But read the envelope cap before the price.
Essentials (formerly HelloSign), billed annually, 1 user.
Starter, per user, billed annually. Monthly billing is $35.
Business plan, billed annually. Monthly billing is $20.
| DocuSign | Dropbox Sign | PandaDoc | SignNow | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Counterparties who expect the incumbent name | Solo senders and small teams with steady volume | Sales work: build the proposal, then get it signed | Low-volume teams that want the lowest seat price |
| Entry paid plan | Personal $10/mo billed annually ($15 monthly) | Essentials $15/mo billed annually ($20 monthly) | Starter $19/user/mo billed annually ($35 monthly) | Business $8/mo billed annually ($20 monthly) |
| Team plan | Standard $25/user/mo annual ($45 monthly); Business Pro $40 ($65) | Standard $25/user/mo annual ($30 monthly), minimum 2 users; Premium is custom-priced | Business $49/user/mo annual ($65 monthly); Enterprise custom | Business Premium $15/mo annual ($30 monthly); Enterprise $30 ($50) |
| Send limit — the key row | Personal: 5 envelopes/month. Standard & Business Pro: 100 envelopes per user per year (10/user/month on monthly billing). Overage is billed pay-as-you-go or via pre-purchased envelopes | Unlimited signature requests on paid web plans. The API is a separate, metered product | Paid plans: unlimited documents and e-signatures. Free plan: 60 documents/year | 100 signature invites per user per year on standard plans, per the vendor's pricing FAQ (see the wording note below) |
| Free option | No free sending plan — paid plans and trials | Yes — 3 signature requests per 30 days, unlimited self-signing | Yes — Free eSign, 60 documents/year, up to 2 recipients per document | No free plan — free trial |
| Users | Personal: 1. Standard / Business Pro: per user, up to 50 | Essentials: 1. Standard: per user, 2-user minimum | Per user (seat) pricing on paid plans | Unlimited users on paid plans — cost scales with sends, not headcount |
| Templates | Reusable templates on Personal; shared team templates from Standard | 5 on Essentials, 15 on Standard, unlimited on Premium | 5 on Free and Starter; unlimited on Business | Unlimited templates on all paid plans |
| Gated features to know | Bulk send, payment collection and web forms are Business Pro features, not Standard | Bulk send, custom branding, signer attachments and SMS authentication start at Standard | Auto-reminders, CRM integrations, custom branding and pricing tables start at Business — Starter leaves them out | Bulk send, signing links, payment requests, custom branding and auto-reminders start at Business Premium |
| Trade-off to know | The cap, not the sticker: 100 envelopes a year is about 8 a month, and overage pricing is quoted, not one fixed public rate | "Unlimited" covers web-app sending — API volume is priced separately, and template caps still apply | You pay for a document platform, not just signing; Starter's 5-template cap and missing reminders push many users to Business | The cheapest headline hides the same 100-per-year ceiling as DocuSign — and its pricing pages word that ceiling inconsistently (see below) |
Prices are USD, before tax, as published by the vendors in November 2026. "Billed annually" prices are the monthly equivalent of a year paid upfront; month-to-month billing costs more on every plan here. An envelope (DocuSign) or signature request / invite (Dropbox Sign / SignNow) counts once per send, even if it bundles several documents or signers — and a sent envelope generally counts whether or not the recipient signs. SignNow wording note: SignNow's pricing FAQ states the 100-invite limit per user per year, while other vendor wording and secondary sources read it as per account. Treat the unit as unconfirmed and check what your own account shows before relying on either reading. Plans change — always confirm the current price, limit and unit on the vendor's site before you buy.
Headline prices are annual-billing prices. Divide the yearly cost by the contracts you actually send and the ranking flips depending on volume. All figures below are simple arithmetic on the published prices and limits above — check them yourself.
| Your volume | SignNow Business ($96/yr) | DocuSign ($120–$300/yr) | Dropbox Sign Essentials ($180/yr) | PandaDoc Starter ($228/yr) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 contracts/month (60/year) | $1.60 each — inside the 100/year cap | Personal: $2.00 each (60 is exactly its 5/month cap) | $3.00 each — you pay for headroom you don't use yet | $3.80 each — most expensive at this volume |
| 20 contracts/month (240/year) | Cap reached at 100 — the $8 headline no longer covers your volume; extra invites are charged | Standard caps at 100/user/year — the rest is overage or pre-purchased envelopes, quoted per account | $0.75 each — unlimited sending wins at this volume | $0.95 each — unlimited, and the editor is included |
The crossover sits at roughly 8–9 sends a month: below it, capped low-price plans are cheaper per contract; above it, unlimited plans pull ahead and keep falling in per-contract cost as volume grows. Two more traps in the fine print: monthly billing raises the headline by 33% (Dropbox Sign Essentials) to 150% (SignNow Business), and DocuSign's monthly-billed plans switch the allowance to 10 envelopes per user per month — a hard monthly ceiling that cannot absorb a busy month the way an annual pool can.
DocuSign is the name most corporate legal and procurement teams already know, and for some senders that recognition alone settles the choice. Its self-serve pricing has three tiers. Personal ($10/mo billed annually, $15 monthly) covers one user and just 5 envelopes a month, with reusable templates. Standard ($25/user/mo billed annually, $45 monthly) raises the allowance to 100 envelopes per user per year for teams of up to 50, with shared templates, branding and commenting. Business Pro ($40/user/mo billed annually, $65 monthly) keeps the same 100-envelope allowance — the extra money buys capability, not capacity: bulk send, payment collection during signing, web forms and PowerForms. Past the allowance, extra envelopes are billed pay-as-you-go or pre-purchased; there is no single public overage rate, so high-volume senders should get the figure in writing before committing.
Dropbox Sign (formerly HelloSign) is the focused signing tool of the four: prepare a document, send it, get an audit trail back. Its structural difference from DocuSign is the meter — paid web plans include unlimited signature requests, so the bill never moves with volume. The free plan allows 3 requests per 30 days (self-signing your own documents is unlimited). Essentials ($15/mo billed annually, $20 monthly) is one user with 5 templates. Standard ($25/user/mo billed annually, $30 monthly) requires at least two users — so $50/mo is the real team entry point — and adds 15 templates, bulk send, branding, signer attachments and SMS authentication. Premium is custom-priced for five or more users. Read "unlimited" carefully: it describes web-app sending. The Dropbox Sign API is sold separately with per-request allowances, and service terms still allow limits against abusive or destabilising use.
PandaDoc is built backwards from the other three: you create the document inside it — proposals, quotes and contracts from a drag-and-drop editor with pricing tables — and the signature is the final step of that workflow, with tracking that shows when a recipient opened and read it. The Free eSign plan covers 60 documents a year with up to 2 recipients per document and 5 templates. Starter ($19/user/mo billed annually, $35 monthly) removes the send cap — unlimited documents and e-signatures — but keeps templates at 5 and leaves out auto-reminders, CRM integrations, custom branding and pricing tables. Business ($49/user/mo billed annually, $65 monthly) is where those arrive, plus a content library, deal rooms and approval workflows. If you only ever sign finished PDFs, much of what Business charges for is a document platform you may not need; if you build quotes before you sign them, it can replace a separate proposals tool.
SignNow (part of airSlate) competes on entry price and on a different cost structure: paid plans include unlimited users and unlimited templates, so adding a teammate doesn't add a seat fee. Business ($8/mo billed annually, $20 monthly) covers core signing, templates and cloud-storage integrations. Business Premium ($15/mo billed annually, $30 monthly) adds bulk sending, signing links, payment requests, custom branding and automated reminders. Enterprise is $30/mo billed annually, and a Site License prices by the invite ($1.50 per signature invite) for very high volumes. The ceiling to watch: standard plans include 100 signature invites per year — stated as per user in the vendor's pricing FAQ, though other vendor wording reads as per account, so confirm the unit on your own plan. Either way, this is a low-volume design: its per-contract cost is the best in this comparison inside the cap, and stops being the story once you pass it.
Your send count picks the pricing model before features matter. Five or fewer a month: free tiers (PandaDoc, Dropbox Sign) or the cheapest capped plans cover you. Around 8–9 a month is the crossover. Well above it: start with the unlimited plans and compare them.
If your PDFs arrive finished, a focused signer (Dropbox Sign, SignNow, DocuSign) is the right shape. If you assemble proposals and quotes before signing, PandaDoc's editor and pricing tables can replace a second tool — that's the only case where its Business price is easy to justify.
Per-seat plans multiply: three senders on DocuSign Standard are $75/mo, and Dropbox Sign Standard starts at two users ($50/mo). SignNow's unlimited users invert that math. Include template caps and the gated features you need — bulk send and reminders sit in different tiers at every vendor.
Every headline here assumes annual billing; monthly rates run 33–150% higher. Before paying, confirm three things on the checkout or plan page: the send allowance, the unit it's counted in (per user or per account), and what an extra send costs. Those three lines decide your real price.
This section summarises publicly available general information. It is not legal advice, and it does not assess any individual contract or any vendor's compliance for your situation.
Under Japanese law, most ordinary commercial contracts do not need to be on paper, signed by hand or sealed to be formed — agreement itself is generally what counts. Japan's Act on Electronic Signatures and Certification Business (2000) defines electronic signatures, and its Article 3 gives a presumption of authenticity to records signed with a qualifying electronic signature — one that only the signer could apply, through proper control of the necessary codes or devices. Government guidance published in 2020 also addressed cloud services where the platform applies the signature at the signer's direction (the "witness-type" model most of these tools resemble), and set out conditions under which such services can fit the Act's framework. Some categories of documents have their own form requirements or exceptions, and whether a given platform's signature attracts the Article 3 presumption depends on its authentication method and the facts of the case.
What this means in practice for a buyer: all four vendors market their services internationally and publish general legality information, but Japanese-interface availability, Japan-specific support, data-residency options and how each service maps to the witness-type guidance differ by vendor and plan, and change over time. Before using any of them for contracts that matter — and especially for regulated or high-value documents — confirm the current Japan support position with the vendor, check that your counterparty accepts electronic execution, and consult a qualified legal professional in Japan. Do not treat any comparison site, including this one, as a substitute for that check.
An envelope is one send: a bundle of one or more documents sent to one or more signers in a single transaction. It counts once regardless of pages or signers — and it generally counts when sent, even if the recipient never signs. Vendors meter differently under different names (DocuSign "envelopes", Dropbox Sign "signature requests", SignNow "signature invites", PandaDoc "documents"), which is why headline monthly prices can't be compared until you line up each plan's send allowance next to its price.
It depends on volume, by design. Inside 100 sends a year, SignNow Business at $8/mo billed annually has the lowest per-contract cost of the four. Above roughly 8–9 sends a month, DocuSign's and SignNow's caps bind, and the unlimited plans — Dropbox Sign Essentials ($15/mo billed annually) and PandaDoc Starter ($19/user/mo billed annually) — become cheaper per contract the more you send. At five sends a month or fewer, the free tiers of PandaDoc (60 documents/year) and Dropbox Sign (3 requests/month) may cost nothing at all.
Read it as "no per-send meter on this plan's web app", not as a blank cheque. Dropbox Sign's unlimited requests apply to its web plans; its API is a separate product with its own allowances, and its terms allow limits against abusive use. PandaDoc's paid plans list unlimited documents and e-signatures, while template counts are still capped on Starter (5). SignNow inverts the pattern: users and templates are unlimited, sends are capped. The word always has a scope — the comparison table above names it for each tool.
On DocuSign's Standard and Business Pro, additional envelopes are billed pay-as-you-go or can be pre-purchased; the per-envelope overage figure is set per account rather than published as one standard rate, so ask for it before you sign. On SignNow, extra invites are likewise charged beyond the included 100. In both cases the practical risk is a renewal-time surprise, which is why Step 4 of the choosing guide says to get the overage term in writing first.
These vendors operate under frameworks such as the US ESIGN Act and UETA and the EU's eIDAS regulation, and publish their own legality guides — but legal effect always depends on the jurisdiction, the type of document and how the signature was applied and authenticated. For Japan, see the general-information section above; this site does not give legal advice for any jurisdiction, and important contracts deserve a check with a qualified professional and the counterparty's acceptance.
Because this guide is compiled from the vendors' published specifications and pricing, not from testing we haven't done. Where a judgment appears — for example, that a capped plan is poor value at 20 sends a month — it is arithmetic on the published prices and limits, shown next to it so you can redo the maths with your own numbers.