DocuSign supports transactions with document sharing and electronic signature, as well as automated and guided data collection and entry, record updating across disparate systems and payment collection upon agreement, as well as analytics and reporting.
$15
per month
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
DocuSign
PandaDoc
Editions & Modules
Personal
$15
per month
Real Starter
$15
per month
DocuSign for Realtors
$35
per month
Standard
$40
per month
Business Pro
$60
per month
Advanced Solutions
Custom Pricing
Starter
$35
per month per seat
Business
$65
per month per seat
Enterprise
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DocuSign
PandaDoc
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
—
PandaDoc 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
DocuSign
PandaDoc
TrustRadius Insights
DocuSign
PandaDoc
Highlights
Research Team Insight
Published
DocuSign is the flagship product of the DocuSign Agreement Cloud, a platform consisting of software focused on “agreement processes”. DocuSign’s key feature is eSignature and document generation.
Similar to DocuSign, 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.
DocuSign reviewers are primarily from mid-sized companies and part of the Computer Software industry. PandaDoc reviewers on the other hand are primarily small businesses, but also have their largest representation from Computer Software companies.
Features
DocuSign’s biggest selling point is helping controllers create documents that can be signed online, cutting out the hassle of dealing with printed materials, and using postal mail. DocuSign also supports managing document workflows, creating documents through integrated apps like Salesforce, version controls, and analytics of contracts and agreements.
PandaDoc 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
While DocuSign may be best suited for enterprises that transmit a large number and variety of online documents daily, there are some types of businesses and use cases that may want to more closely inspect competitors’ offerings. For example, DocuSign may not be best for businesses who need a free or more “budget”-friendly option. It may not also be the best tool for businesses that are looking for a high level of customization with their online documents.
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
As previously mentioned, DocuSign does not have a free version available like PandaDoc. For many, this makes PandaDoc the instant choice in terms of affordability. However, DocuSign’s paid plans are more than considerable given their expansive feature set and wide array of use cases.
DocuSign’s cheapest paid plan starts at $10/month for a single-user. DocuSign also provides a specialized solution for the Real Estate industry and an “API” version for organizations looking for advanced customization and authentication abilities. This version starts at $50 per month.
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.
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.
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.
You have to purchase a subscription and unless you really need to originate a lot of documents, it's not cost-effective to maintain the subscription. It would be better to have a subscription that allows you to purchase a bundle of say, ten documents and then use them as needed for the occasional user.
You'll be hard-pressed to find anything negative from users other than the price.
The product is a great tool for a remote workforce. As the company gets bigger, adding users to the account can be rather expensive. We considering providing read/sign only access for certain individuals and providing full access to other users as necessary to reduce costs.
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
As an Administrator of the system, its ease of configuration and the guidance around doing it is second to none. The screens are broken down into manageable segments and easy to navigate to the area that needs to be looked at. Our Process Delivery teams, after initial training are using the system without any problems and find it easy to operation. We get minimal if any, requests for support.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Adobe Acrobat Sign is less user-friendly and more suited to small scopes, or one-off documents. It lacks the use of templates that DocuSign has, which is what ultimately streamlines and delivers the consistency and efficiencies for the business.
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.
