Adobe Acrobat Sign vs Docusign eSignature

Adobe Acrobat Sign

All three eIDAS levels are named — Simple, Advanced and Qualified — for electronic seals applied through trust service providers recognized under the eIDAS regulation, with Intesi Group, Entrust, GlobalSign and TrustPro listed alongside named qualified timestamp authorities. The captured pages say nothing about which plans include which level, which countries they cover, or which document types need which level, so this stops in the middle of the scale.

Docusign eSignature

All three eIDAS levels are documented by name — simple signatures on every plan, advanced signatures on the higher plans and qualified signatures as an add-on to the e-signature plans — and Docusign names itself as a registered qualified trust service provider in Europe. That is a stronger story than most, but we found no public information on a linked EU Trust List entry, qualified electronic seals, Swiss ZertES coverage, or the signature level being shown in the signed document and its evidence.

Adobe Acrobat Sign

We found no public information on how signers are identified — nothing on email or SMS codes, video ident, eID cards, bank ident or wallet. The authentication the captured pages describe is a static PIN and OAuth 2.0 for API and trust service provider connections, not signer identification. We read the developer pages on the electronic seal API, the Acrobat Sign API and the webhook documentation.

Docusign eSignature

Methods are named and modern: one-time passcodes, phone authentication, automatic validation of government identity documents, biometric liveness via video selfies, signers reusing an existing CLEAR or ID.me account, an identity wallet to re-apply a completed verification on later agreements, and a proof file for audits. What the public pages do not show is which method applies to which signature level in which country, who performs the identification, or what happens to ID data afterwards — for a team sending into Germany versus France that is the question that decides cycle time.

Adobe Acrobat Sign

Recipients sign on any desktop or device with a click, tap or swipe — no downloads and no account required — and the sender can track document status, which is exactly the signer experience I want for quotes. But we found no public information on templates, signing order, automatic reminders, roles or bulk sending on the captured pages, and that is where a quote turnaround lives or dies.

Docusign eSignature

The core of a revenue signing flow is documented: reusable team templates, conditional fields, delegated signing, bulk send, custom branding, mobile-optimized web forms with drag-and-drop building and versioning, signing in 44+ languages, and WCAG 2.0 AA listed on the plans. Signing order only appears in passing (automatic routing in the Word integration), and we found no public information on signer roles, parallel versus sequential routing, substitute signers or a published accessibility conformance statement.

Adobe Acrobat Sign

Sealed documents get tamper detection, verification in Acrobat with tamper-evident credentials, and a real timestamp chain — named qualified timestamp authorities over RFC 3161, including InfoCert and Namirial — plus an archiving and retrieval use case with OCR and searchable output. We found no public information on an audit trail or certificate of completion, a retention period, or export of documents together with their evidence.

Docusign eSignature

An audit trail is automatically generated and stored for every agreement and identity checks compile into a proof file, which is the minimum I need. But we found no public information on what the audit trail records, whether it attaches to or embeds in the signed PDF, whether timestamps are qualified or long-term validation is supported, or how long documents and evidence are retained — the only statement is the generic privacy-policy line that data is kept no longer than necessary.

Adobe Acrobat Sign

The plumbing is strong: a documented REST API, a full webhook endpoint API with OAuth 2.0, scopes, CRUD operations and pagination, SDK samples for Node.js, Java,.NET and Python, and an OEM/Embedded partnership for building signing into your own application. But signing from inside the CRM, Microsoft 365 or an HR system is what I actually buy for, and the captured pages name no such connectors and show no sandbox or published rate limits.

Docusign eSignature

Signing from the systems where revenue closes is well covered: connectors for Word, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, Power Automate and Dynamics 365, Salesforce and NetSuite named behind a sales conversation, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox and Box on every plan, an App Center with more than 1,000 partner integrations, a free developer account and embeddable web forms with API pre-population. We found no public information on webhooks, SDKs or published rate limits, so I could not confirm from public pages that the API covers every signature level.

Adobe Acrobat Sign

One European element is proven: the seal service works with trust service providers recognized as qualified under the EU eIDAS regulation, and an ISO 27001 certification is published. Where documents, audit trails and signer data are stored, who the subprocessors are, and the ownership chain are not addressed on the captured developer pages, so this scores as a single proven element with the rest unstated.

Docusign eSignature

The contracting entity is Docusign, Inc. of San Francisco, the privacy policy says data is likely hosted across Australia, the United States, the EU and Canada with transfers to some twenty countries, and EU data residency appears on the pricing page only as a contact-sales line. Proven European elements exist — an EMEA entity in Dublin, a French controller, data centres in three EU countries and Docusign's own EU trust-service-provider status — but we found no public information on ownership, hosting providers or subprocessor locations; the only third parties named are US app-store billing intermediaries and a marketing data vendor.

Adobe Acrobat Sign

One public number exists: a free tier with 500 free Document Transactions per month on the developer page. We found no public information on paid plan prices, per-signature pricing for advanced or qualified levels, identification fees, overage, or contract term and notice period — a buyer cannot compute the cost of their signing volume from these pages.

Docusign eSignature

Personal at 9 € per month with 5 envelopes per month, Standard at 23 € per user per month with 100 envelopes per user per year and Business Pro at 38 € per user per month are public with the billing period stated, identity checks are listed ab 2,35 € per check, and renewal, overage, the five-business-day cancellation notice and exclusive-of-tax terms are published. A buyer still cannot compute a qualified-signature volume: the QES add-on carries no public price, the Business Pro envelope limit is not stated, the identity-verification page itself says 'contact sales', plans and prices may apply to new customers only, and the captured pages give different figures on refunds.