As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates Dropbox Sign 3/5 and Zoho Sign 2.5/5 in E-Signature. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 6 of the 6 judges pick Dropbox Sign and 0 pick Zoho Sign. Dropbox Sign scores higher on 5 of 7 criteria (Signer identification, eIDAS levels & trust services, Integrations & API, plus 2 more). Zoho Sign scores higher on 2 of 7 criteria (Signing workflow & signer experience and European sovereignty). Provenance — Dropbox Sign: Rest of world; Zoho Sign: Rest of world. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
The benches split. Dropbox Sign holds the higher mean on five of seven criteria — signature levels 6.0 to 4.2, identity verification 6.0 to 2.8, evidence and retention 5.2 to 4.3, integration and API 7.0 to 5.5, pricing transparency 4.0 to 3.7 — and six judges lean its way on signature levels, identity verification and integration and API. Zoho Sign takes signing workflow 6.7 to 6.0 (four leans, two ties) and sovereignty 4.5 to 3.8 (five leans to one). Pricing transparency splits two leans to Dropbox Sign and four ties. Weighted totals favour Dropbox Sign on six of six judges, 5.2 to 6.0 against 3.8 to 5.3, yet the attributes list Zoho Sign's data residency as EU only and Dropbox Sign's as US default, while Dropbox Sign's pages name connectors, SDKs and an eID add-on and Zoho Sign's say identity is verified before a qualified signature without naming a method.
Choose Dropbox Sign if
You need advanced or qualified signatures with verified signer identity — signature levels run 6.0 to 4.2 and identity verification 6.0 to 2.8, with six judges leaning Dropbox Sign on each.
Your developers need embedded signing and a documented API with events, callbacks, official SDK libraries and free test mode — integration and API stands at 7.0 to 5.5, six judges lean Dropbox Sign.
You want named third-party connectors — Google Drive, Microsoft Word and HubSpot are the named connectors on Dropbox Sign's pages; Zoho Sign's verdict names no individual third-party connector.
Your legal team weighs long-term evidence and retention — evidence and retention reads 5.2 to 4.3, with four judges leaning Dropbox Sign, zero leaning Zoho Sign and two ties.
You need a published per-user price before purchase — Dropbox Sign's captured pages price the Standard plan at '€24 EUR / user / mo' and 'Starting at €576 EUR billed yearly'; Zoho Sign's verdict records that its paid plans' prices are not public.
Choose Zoho Sign if
Your data must stay in the EU — Zoho Sign's sovereignty attributes list data residency as EU only, against Dropbox Sign's US default, and sovereignty reads 4.5 to 3.8 with five judges leaning Zoho Sign.
Your team sends routine documents at volume — signing workflow runs 6.7 to 6.0 with four judges leaning Zoho Sign and two ties, on documented templates, definable signing order, bulk sending, automatic reminders, status tracking, approval workflows and SignForms self-service links.
Your signers must complete documents without creating an account — Zoho Sign's verdict records that signers need no account.
You need a European data protection contact and a DPA — Zoho Sign's verdict credits the Utrecht data protection contact, the EU data-centre statement and a DPA on request.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Legal Counsel
Decides which contracts may be signed electronically and at which level. Wants SES, AdES and QES named per plan and country, the qualified trust service provider linked to the EU Trust List, and an audit trail with timestamps that still validates when the contract is disputed in eight years.
Dropbox Sign
This judge's pick
Zoho Sign
Criterion by criterion
eIDAS levels & trust services
Dropbox Sign
Advanced and qualified electronic signatures are named as eIDAS levels delivered through qualified trust service providers, with the eID add-on on the API Premium plan, providers per country — Belgian eID and Finnish eID as qualified, Danish Mit-ID as advanced — and Swisscom stated as qualified under ZertES, which is rare and welcome. However, no trust service provider is linked to the EU Trust List, we found no public information on qualified electronic seals, and the level reached is not shown to be recorded in the signed document or its audit trail, which a court will ask for.
Zoho Sign
The captured pages name qualified electronic signatures issued from a qualified trust service provider's certificates and list QES among the enterprise plan's compliance controls, but the provider itself is never named and no EU Trust List entry is linked. We found no public information on simple or advanced signatures named as eIDAS levels, on ZertES, on qualified electronic seals, or on which documents need which level. Before I decide which contracts may carry which level, I need to know who the trust service provider is, and these pages do not say.
Signer identification
Dropbox Sign
SMS verification codes are documented on the Standard and Premium API plans with resend handling, and the eID add-on names its identification methods by country — Belgian eID, Finnish eID, Danish Mit-ID, and EvroTrust with a long list of accepted identity-document countries — with personal certificates issued via InfoCert. We found no public information distinguishing automated from agent-based identification, on reuse of one identification for later signatures, or on retention and deletion of the identification data itself.
Zoho Sign
Recipient authentication and SMS delivery of envelopes appear as standard-plan features, and the qualified-signature description states the signer's identity is verified first, but no identification method — video ident, eID card, bank ident, wallet — is named anywhere we captured. Countries accepted, the provider performing the identification, and what happens to ID data afterwards are undocumented. I cannot sign off on qualified signatures when the identification chain behind them is invisible.
Signing workflow & signer experience
Dropbox Sign
Templates with field placement and a gallery of over forty, several signers with roles, bulk requests with a status view and targeted reminders, decline-to-sign, signer reassignment and variable signers on Premium, and signing without an account are all documented, which covers the machinery a contracts team sends out daily. We found no public information on conditional fields, a branded signer experience, signer languages, or signer accessibility.
Zoho Sign
Reusable templates, a definable signing order for several recipients, automatic reminders, bulk sending, approval workflows with custom roles and permissions, branded signer emails, mobile and desktop apps, self-service SignForms via URL, and signing without an account or subscription are all documented. We found no public information on delegation or substitute signers, conditional fields, or signer accessibility. The core signing path is well evidenced; the governance around it is thinner.
Evidence, validation & retention
Dropbox Sign
A non-editable audit trail recording timestamps and IP addresses is appended to every executed request, records a hash of the PDF for tamper comparison, can be returned as its own file, and the vendor offers assistance with its database transaction log — genuinely useful in a dispute. We found no public information on qualified timestamps, PAdES long-term validation, a self-service validation report, or a configurable retention period, and the terms permit deletion of customer data 30 days after termination, which is thin comfort for a contract contested in eight years.
Zoho Sign
Audit trails are listed as a feature, document timestamps plus a blockchain timestamp for public verification are documented, and export to cloud storage exists, with account data stated to be deleted from the active database within six months of cancellation. We found no public information on long-term validation (PAdES-LTV), qualified timestamps from a named provider, validation reports, or a retention period for signed documents and their evidence. If a contract is disputed in eight years, these pages give me no basis to assert the evidence will still validate.
Integrations & API
Dropbox Sign
The API is documented with walkthroughs, official SDK libraries, free test mode, events and callbacks, and embedded signing inside the customer's own application, with SMS verification and eID parameters carried on the same endpoints; named integrations include Google Drive, Microsoft Word, HubSpot and Dropbox. We found no public information on published rate limits, API versioning, or connectors to document-management, ERP or HR systems.
Zoho Sign
A REST API with webhooks and web and mobile SDKs is documented, an API-only plan exists, and integration into Zoho and third-party apps is stated. We found no public information on a sandbox, embedded signing in the customer's own application, rate limits, or named connectors for Microsoft 365, CRM, HR or ERP systems. The API is real and sold as its own plan, but the named connector ecosystem is not on the captured pages.
European sovereignty
Dropbox Sign
Customers outside the United States, Canada and Mexico contract with Dropbox International Unlimited Company, a data processing agreement and a subprocessor list are published at stated links, and qualified signatures come via InfoCert, described as a trust service provider in the EU. We found no public information on where documents, audit trails and identification data are stored or on European ownership, and the terms expressly permit transferring and storing customer data in locations other than the customer's country; data residency appears only as a feature-comparison row without any stated location.
Zoho Sign
One European element is proven several times over: the German homepage states data is stored in an EU data centre, a Dutch entity (Zoho Corporation BV, Utrecht) appears as the data protection officer contact, and a DPA is available on request. But the contracting entity is the Indian vendor, the privacy policy describes processing in the USA, the EEA and other Zoho countries, and ownership, the trust service chain and subprocessor locations are unknown. The captured pages give different pictures of where data lives, and I cannot build a sovereignty case for the chain on them.
Pricing transparency
Dropbox Sign
The Standard plan is priced at "€24 EUR / user / mo" and "Starting at €576 EUR billed yearly", with unlimited signature requests across the paid tiers, a free plan, a 30-day trial, and public terms on overage auto-upgrade, taxes, non-refundability and the 30-day non-renewal notice. The eID add-on that carries qualified signatures is sold only by contacting an account manager or support, and we found no public per-signature price for advanced or qualified signatures nor figures for the other plan tiers; the cost of a qualified-signature volume is therefore not computable from public pages.
Zoho Sign
Envelope limits and features are listed per plan, the free tier's five envelopes a month are stated, signature credits are priced at €0,10 in increments of 500, annual billing saves 20 percent, and VAT, auto-renewal and price-change terms are published. We found no public information on the prices of the paid plans themselves, per-signature pricing for advanced or qualified signatures, identification fees, or overage. A buyer can price the credit add-on from these pages but not the subscription it attaches to.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Dropbox Sign
Zoho Sign
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
Not determined
Not determined
Subprocessors
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates Dropbox Sign higher: 3/5 against 2.5/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 6 of the 6 judges pick Dropbox Sign and 0 pick Zoho Sign. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is Dropbox Sign or Zoho Sign European?
Dropbox Sign is not European by provenance (Rest of world). Zoho Sign is not European by provenance (Rest of world). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Where do Dropbox Sign and Zoho Sign store customer data?
Per the vendors’ own pages as captured — Dropbox Sign: its pages as captured do not say. Zoho Sign: Default not stated; pages mention the EU.
Do Dropbox Sign and Zoho Sign have a free plan?
As of 28 Oct 2026, both vendors’ own pages state a free plan. Each product page links the pricing page it was read from.