Why DocuSign Isn’t Your Best Choice for eSignature Software

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before:
You’re closing in on finalizing a deal with a prospect. It’s getting down to the wire, and you’re both in a hurry to get an agreement in place so you can take the next step in your business relationship. The only thing left to do is collect the legally binding eSignatures from each party to close the deal.

“No problem,” you tell the prospect. “We’ll send over the agreement via DocuSign.”

And that’s where everything goes to hell…

DocuSign Dysfunction Strikes Again

Maybe the prospect has trouble opening the message to view the contract. Or maybe DocuSign’s cloud-based service is simply down and nobody can do anything. That wouldn’t be a shock. The platform was down for over five hours in September 2022, leaving many customers unable to move forward with critical contracts and agreements.

Or maybe there’s a “problem” on your end. Do you have enough envelopes left under your current service plan? Would you even know how to check that in the first place? Does anybody really understand how DocuSign’s envelope system works, anyway? 

You could try contacting DocuSign for help, but good luck getting in touch with an actual person who can solve your problem. Instead, you can plan on talking in circles with their automated support system or digging through bottomless FAQs on the DocuSign site trying to find the answers you need.

Even if you manage to navigate these problems and get your agreement signed, everyone probably ends up walking away from the situation asking “Wait, why do we keep using DocuSign if it keeps causing us so many headaches?”

“Why Are We Using DocuSign, Anyway?”

If this situation sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Even though tons of companies use DocuSign, you’ll have a hard time finding anyone who’s actually happy about the service. From a clunky, outdated user experience to consistently dreadful and out-of-touch customer support, DocuSign has long been considered a “necessary evil” by organizations that utilize eSignature software.

So why does everyone keep using a service that doesn’t even hit the mark of “good enough”? 

Basically, it’s because people know and recognize the brand name. DocuSign owns about 75% of the eSignature market largely by virtue of being one of the oldest vendors in the industry. For many organizations, it’s a safe and predictable choice for eSignature software. To adopt an old business expression, nobody ever got fired for hiring DocuSign.

But maybe they should be.

After all, what’s the point of going with familiarity if that means suffering through a terrible user experience? Sure, everybody knows DocuSign and they’re not going to ask questions when you use it to collect eSignatures, but forcing people to use a service they hate is hardly the best way to kick off a new relationship.

“But Seriously, Why Are We Still Using DocuSign?”

Just because DocuSign is the biggest eSignature vendor on the market doesn’t make them the best. That’s especially true if you’re anyone other than one of those big-time enterprise customers the company loves to brag about on its website. If you’re like most customers, you’re not getting an eSignature solution that’s customized around the needs of your business, but rather a rudimentary service package and pricing structure that works best for DocuSign. 

Wish you could structure your eSignature plan around how many users you have rather than how many envelopes you use? Or maybe you’d like a way to incorporate eSignature capabilities directly into your own applications to create a better user experience. Unfortunately, DocuSign doesn’t offer customers much in the way of flexibility. In a lot of cases, organizations end up having to restructure their agreement and contract processes to accommodate DocuSign’s limitations rather than the other way around. This may work great for DocuSign, but it doesn’t do a lot to help your business needs.

And that’s not even getting into the company’s reputation for hitting clients with an array of hidden fees and pricing changes after locking them into long-term contracts.

Your DocuSign Alternative is Here

Just because DocuSign has the biggest market share doesn’t mean it’s the right eSignature software for every organization. In fact, unless you’re a large enough enterprise to be considered one of DocuSign’s strategic accounts, you’re almost certainly wasting resources on an inflexible solution that was never designed to accommodate your processes.

Luckily, there are alternatives available on the market that can provide you with the same, familiar eSignature functionality of DocuSign while also delivering the flexibility and support that meets your business needs. Docubee is an intuitive eSignature solution that allows you to quickly add secure signatures to any form or document to create smooth digital experiences that keep your business processes moving. 

With Docubee, you can send, assign, and review eSignatures over any device and make sure actions are completed by tracking progress and creating reminders, notifications, and escalations. Fully compliant, secure, and legally binding, Docubee delivers all the functionality you know and expect from DocuSign but without any of the hassle and confusion associated with its complex plans and limited interface.

5 Ways Docubee Outclasses DocuSign

1. Transparent Pricing, Always

If you have any experience working with DocuSign, then you probably have your own story about an unexpected fee, a sudden price increase, or confusion over how your account is being charged. DocuSign’s envelope-based pricing system has long been a source of dread among customers, but the company shows no sign of making changes. Docubee has always avoided complex pricing systems that make it difficult for customers to accurately predict how much they’re spending. We never hit customers with hidden fees, and our user-based pricing structure makes it easy to expand your eSignature capabilities as your business grows.

2. White Labeling for a Better Brand Experience

DocuSign has invested quite a lot in building up its brand, so it’s hardly surprising that branding is hard to escape. Every time DocuSign customers send out a document for signature, it’s clear that they’re using DocuSign to do so. This makes it difficult to create a seamless user experience that keeps your customers within your brand environment. Thanks to Docubee’s custom branding and white labeling features, you can easily remove our branding and replace it with your own to provide users with a more consistent brand experience.

3. Truly Seamless API Capabilities 

As a software development company, we understand that sometimes you need a solution that integrates seamlessly into your existing software rather than existing alongside it. Our eSignature API allows you to add a variety of eSign and workflow capabilities directly into your application with just a few lines of code. With simple, “pay-as-you-go” pricing available for API customers, Docubee makes it easy to get started right away without having to navigate complex pricing plans or licensing agreements. In addition to our detailed documentation, we have an experienced support team on hand to walk customers through any difficulties they might encounter during implementation.

4. Customer Support from Actual Humans

There’s no substitute for being able to feel seen and heard by a real customer support representative when you encounter a technical challenge. Unfortunately, companies as large as DocuSign have too many customers to field every support request manually. They rely instead upon automated systems that are frequently unable to resolve anything beyond the most basic problems. At Docubee, we work hard to ensure that every time our customers contact us with an issue, they will be connected to a human being with the technical expertise necessary to address their challenges.

5. Customer Feedback = Continuous Feature Improvement

One of the benefits of providing ongoing live support is that it gives us an opportunity to communicate regularly with our customers. Our team is always listening for suggestions and observations to help us make improvements that enhance our eSignature capabilities. Many of the Docubee features people know and love today can be traced back to some form of customer feedback. Where DocuSign’s development priorities are often set by internal teams and can take months, or even years, to implement, our engineering team can receive customer feedback, evaluate it, develop a solution, and deploy an update in a very short period of time. This allows the Docubee team to adapt quickly to customer needs and work continuously to improve our eSignature features.

Do Something Different, Without the Risk

In many cases, there’s a great deal of risk involved with doing something different. Selecting a plucky startup over an established software vendor, for instance, is the kind of decision that can cause business leaders to lose a lot of sleep because they don’t know if they can rely on an unproven new company.

Docubee provides all the benefits of trying something new without the risks that typically come with them. That’s because we’re built on the foundation of Accusoft, a veteran software development company with 30 years of experience building dynamic solutions for a variety of industries. We’ve actually been around longer than DocuSign, and we’ve been building the technology to support eSignatures for decades.

Rather than going with an inflexible eSign vendor that’s unlikely to be responsive to your needs, do something different and work with a company that’s genuinely committed to customer support and building a better solution that works for your business.

Talk to one of our eSignature specialists today to find out how Docubee eSignatures and eSign API can give you so much more than DocuSign.