Adobe Acrobat Sign vs. PandaDoc

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Acrobat Sign
Score 8.5 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Acrobat Sign is an e-signature solution that combines simple and secure e-signatures with Adobe Acrobat. With Acrobat Sign, the user can create, sign, send for signature, manage, and track documents from one Adobe platform. The user can create signing experiences for customers and teams by enabling them to sign documents on any device or browser – anytime, anywhere. No additional software download or accounts are needed. As Microsoft’s e-signature solution, Acrobat Sign…
$14.99
per month license
PandaDoc
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
PandaDoc headquartered in San Francisco offers their eponymous electronic signature platform for sales teams, containing sales proposal automation and CPQ (configure, price, quote) features, and integration with CRMs.
$35
per month per seat
Pricing
Adobe Acrobat SignPandaDoc
Editions & Modules
Acrobat Standard DC for teams
$14.99
per month license
Acrobat Pro DC with advanced e-sign
$16.99
per month license
Acrobat Sign Solutions
Call 800-685-4192 for pricing
Starter
$35
per month per seat
Business
$65
per month per seat
Enterprise
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe Acrobat SignPandaDoc
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup Fee$34.99 license per monthOptional
Additional DetailsPandaDoc offers a free eSign plan and 3 paid packages for eSigning and document automation. All plans include unlimited documents and eSignatures. Evaluations start with a free 14-day trial. Up to a 46% discount for annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe Acrobat SignPandaDoc
TrustRadius Insights
Adobe Acrobat SignPandaDoc
Highlights

TrustRadius
Research Team Insight
Published

PandaDoc and Adobe Sign are both tools competing in the eSignature software space. PandaDoc’s key feature is eSignature. However, it also supports contract and proposal management. PandaDoc also has a related tool Quote Roller, focused on sales proposal automation.

Adobe Sign, as its name suggests, is primarily focused on eSignature as well. While an increasing number of eSignature products feature advanced functions such as in-app document creation, tracking, and real-time collaboration, a simple eSignature tool is an attractive choice for administrators who need a large number of signatures for a small selection of documents.

Adobe Sign reviewers are primarily working in mid-sized companies and in the Computer Software space. PandaDoc reviewers are primarily small businesses, but have their largest representation industry-wise from Computer Software companies as well.

Features

A key selling point of Adobe Sign is its integration with Adobe Acrobat, which is a commonly used tool for designing and arranging online documents. This allows administrators to seemingly create and alter documents on the fly without inefficient and error-prone editing processes.

PandaDoc really speaks to its utility as a sales support tool. The value proposition from PandaDoc is that using its features can help sales teams “crush their quota from propose to close”. PandaDoc seeks to accomplish this goal by providing insights into document workflows, changes, and analytics to streamline, automate, and improve upon online document management and eSignature user experiences.

Limitations

Adobe Sign’s standard plan features all the necessary capabilities of an eSignature software, however, it does not support advanced eSignature authentication, which is a requirement for some organizations. Adobe Sign’s online support and documentation have also left many reviewers with much to be desired. This makes Adobe Sign difficult to learn or troubleshoot, which is a major con.

PandaDoc’s biggest drawback appears to be its ease-of-use. Many reviewers report that there is a learning curve with PandaDoc and that memorizing its intricacies, especially as they change between upgrades, can make use across large teams and departments difficult. PandaDoc continues to be popular, however, given it has a version available completely free and with a high-rated payment portal.

Pricing

Adobe Sign does not have a free version available. Standard pricing starts at $20.99 per license a month. Each license supports up to 8 users. Enterprises with multiple teams and departments requiring eSignature functionality are encouraged to contact their sales team for customized pricing and access to features outside of the Standard plan.

PandaDoc’s cheapest paid plan starts at $9 per month per user, designed for use by individuals within a department or organization. Its Business plan is $49 per month per user and introduces an unlimited number of created documents, CRM integrations, a content library, custom branding, and workflow tracking.

User Ratings
Adobe Acrobat SignPandaDoc
Likelihood to Recommend
7.1
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.6
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.3
(0 ratings)
6.1
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(0 ratings)
6.3
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(0 ratings)
2.8
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.7
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.0
(0 ratings)
6.7
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe Acrobat SignPandaDoc
Likelihood to Recommend
Organizations with heavy usage inside Adobe product suites will find adoption seamless. However as it is driven on Adobe's platform some users may face challenges but as a whole the same business philosophy drives this as other Adobe platforms - they want your business - all of your business and it presents challenges if you don't agree. Product inculturation has been successful for organizations like Apple and even BMW, but with the global economy it can provide an appearance of elitism, often duly earned, or present unnecessary hurdles for integration which always impacts adoption timing and usage. While I understand and agree (for the most part) with revenue driven product layering, I believe that easier integration and full product availability definitely affect both acquisition and retention numbers. Adobe has a mighty and well deserved pedigree, and if you are aware of and prepared for the challenges I listed - you will probably love this software. If you need to have an easier and larger adoption and rollout, there are other options that will be a better fit especially if one of your data points is monitoring the impact and efficacy of the software on your team's time, conversion metrics and the impact on your clients. Adobe doesn't appear fond of self report analytics. On a side note, Adobe is a HUGE corporation and I have managed several of their enterprise platforms and they are awesome at allowing access to and support of legacy products, but identifying direct support was moderately to extremely difficult and requires a patience and tenacity above what one might expect for a company with whom you contribute significant income for their products. In a time when a new software pops up by the minute, having the heritage of Adobe is rock solid but a little more flexibility would make this product more attractive. I would still recommend the product albeit with awareness and acceptance of aforementioned challenges
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As an alternative to other electronic signature mechanisms, I can't recommend PandaDoc more highly. It works, plain and simple. It is less costly - by a lot - than most alternatives, stores signed documents online for easy access, is simple to use by both our staff and our clients, and makes our lives far easier.
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Pros
  • Adobe Acrobat Sign tracks whether or not a signer has viewed a document
  • Adobe Acrobat Sign tracks when a signer has signed, and the document has been sent to the next signer
  • Adobe Acrobat Sign sends you confirmation emails and progress update emails along the way
  • Adobe Acrobat Sign provides a "confirmation of signing" page at the end of the document package you put together, to prove the signatures are authentic
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  • PandaDoc allows our team to create and send detailed sales proposals and quotes with the use of their templates.
  • The use of collaborative editing is also beneficial because our team is able to have multiple users edit and comment on documents simultaneously.
  • Document tracking is useful because we are able to receive real-time notifications and updates on the proposal process.
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Cons
  • I've noticed if I am sent a link to sign through Adobe Acrobat Sign and I have several Acrobat windows open (especially if there is a prior sign window still open) the program freezes when it tries to open the new signature link (my firm uses Macs, so not sure how or if that is related to the glitch).
  • I have had times when one of the parties in the email string sent to gather signatures either encountered issues or are unable to sign and the integrated help menus don't seem to be sufficient to walk a novice through the process.
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  • I would like to see the ability to LOCK a field instead of locking an entire block or document.
  • I would like to see more standard features that need to be part of the service instead of add-ons.
  • Would like to see an option to allow different levels of users than just the two standard options.
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Likelihood to Renew
EchoSign has without a doubt helped our company to become more economic and time efficient. We can provide our customers with an entire documentation packet filled with all of the required paperwork they will ever need to sign in one quick email. The return time is at least four times quicker than sending through traditional mail methods, and is just as easy to instruct as flagging a hard copy. Our company is in the renewable energy industry, and it's great to know that there's a product like this that can help reduce waste. EchoSign diligently secures all documents and signatures, and provides an audit trail that is integral to keeping our customers' information private
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We have been using it for a few years now and find it vital to getting our bids out quickly and accurately to our customers. We can get a request for information from a customer and once we have their basic parameters create a professional bid in minutes. It's actually usually harder to find out what the customer wants than to use PandaDoc and create a document with it
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Usability
I've had very little trouble with it in all my uses with it. I do wish the text boxes you add wouldn't cut off the text if you entered too many words and that it would adjust it's size to fit within the space you've provided. However, that just takes a little refining in the initial set up of the document before you send it out.
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Once you get the hang of it, it's very easy to use. There can be a slightly steep learning curve to get fully in on the system. The new editor v2 has really improved usability and allows us to collaborate on documents simultaneously. Once the templates and library items are set up, a new document, whether it be a sales or HR document, takes very little time to complete.
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Reliability and Availability
I would have rated this a 9 or greater had they not had had such critical outages. They have taken steps to resolve this so I may come in and revise this
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We haven't had any real issues regarding downtime as of yet.
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Performance
The Adobe Acrobat Sign's performance are excellent.
When we send electronic document by email for signature all the customers receive it regularly, nobody has any issue to open it and the signature phase was very easy. The user-friendly aspect of this product reduce or reset the call for IT support
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As I mentioned earlier - performance is near perfect as I can create, send, adjust my documents. I love the tracking feature as well as I can tell when my documents have been seen and by whom. The only issue I have run into is with saving and formatting - occasionally the file document does not save with the newly assigned name or the content of the document does not stay formatted nicely.
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Support Rating
It is a great tool to get signatures from the client and has reduced a lot of overhead that was caused before resulting in very long delays. With the integration of Adobe Acrobat Sign, we have reduced this delay making the process much smoother and more efficient.
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Recently I could not upload a pdf to a contract - support was very responsive and easy to work with. They got back to me the next day with an apparent fix - however when I opened the document nothing had changed. I then could not respond to the rep who was helping me because it was a "no-reply address", the problem still has not been solved and we had to make alternate arrangements to get this to the client. Never had it happen before and was only with this one contract.
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Online Training
The best types of training are well integrated into the product and Echosign does this well. As mentioned earlier in my review - there are some areas of functionality that can be difficult to understand ("only I sign") for the novice user. Other areas such as macro usage, bulk signature and so on were easily learned and understood via the online tools.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Our IT team implemented and the implementation was fine. The only lesson learned is that the integration with Salesforce.com is great, but if you use the product for something other than sales orders (e.g. timesheets, client correspondence etc.), you need to plan with that in mind. They have a very good web based interface for that
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Implementation was before the time I was here at Riafox, however, support has been great in assisting to merge spaces and upgrade to 2.0 Editor.
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Alternatives Considered
DocuSign is a little more user-friendly and more updated that Adobe Acrobat Sign. Ultimately, we made the switch to Adobe due to their product offerings. By choosing Adobe, we can utilize other platforms within the suite that allow us to further edit documents. Which provides capabilities beyond what DocuSign offers
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PandaDoc is a more polished, professional, and 'legitimate' software site than other solutions, since PandaDoc really specializes in creating professional proposals, quotes and invoices. The eSignature capacity and pricing table capacity embedded in the documents as well as fillable fields, pre-made, customizable and reusable templates also make PandaDoc stand out.
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Scalability
At the beginning we assigned Adobe Acrobat Sign just to Purchase Office Department because at that moment we needed a tool that supported us to avoid manual signature and was compliance with remote working.
Now we are using it also in other situation because it help us with time and we can also reduce cost
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I agree. We have created folders for multiple departments and have been successful with the usage.
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Return on Investment
  • Significantly reduced the time required for document signing processes reducing wasted time and effort
  • Cost savings since there is no longer any need to print and post/scan traditional signed paper-based documents
  • Faster decision-making since time-sensitive decisions and approvals can now be processed much more quickly by using e-signatures.
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  • We have greatly increased the efficiency in which we can get signatures from individuals for documents and increase productivity.
  • We have been able to find older documents very easily.
  • W-9 have been very difficult due to Section 3, but this was addressed with conditional logic
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ScreenShots

Adobe Acrobat Sign Screenshots

Screenshot of Send, sign, manage and archive documents with 100% legal e-signatures. Collecting e-signatures is as easy as swipe and tap with Adobe Sign. Sign from any device. Legally binding. Works with multiple apps. extremely cost-effective.Screenshot of Easily send e-signature requests to multiple recipients using Send in bulk feature.  Send a document to multiple people with one click, and every recipient gets their own personalized form ready to sign.Screenshot of Track and manage signatures with Adobe Acrobat Sign.  Get real-time visibility for every document out for signature, and receive notifications when documents have been signed.Screenshot of Create an online web form with Acrobat Sign.  It allows your recipients – whether they’re your employees or customers – to quickly access, complete, and sign critical documents without printing or mailing anything.  You will also get immediate access to the data and signatures.

PandaDoc Screenshots

Screenshot of some of the custom-designed themes, templates, embedded rich media, and interactivity to give every deal the opportunity to get noticed.Screenshot of automatic notifications, on-the-fly editing, CRM Integrations, and integrated eSignatures.Screenshot of reporting, with drill down to the deal level with proposals, to pick which deals to include (or exclude).Screenshot of legally binding eSignaturesScreenshot of centralized communications to streamline the negotiation process, and make revisions in real-time in a single location.Screenshot of document analytics that display what’s really happening after documents are sent with real-time reporting on engagement and activity on the documents. This enables teams to respond faster to prospects.