Adobe Acrobat Sign vs. DocuSign
Adobe Acrobat Sign is a digital signature solution integrating seamless and secure document delivery with easy-to-use signing capabilities. Users can create, send, sign, manage, and track documents using a single Adobe platform. Acrobat Sign helps companies experience smooth signing experiences by enabling document signing on any device or browser, from anywhere and at any time, without requiring additional software downloads or user accounts.
DocuSign, on the other hand, with its digital solutions, helps organizations to create, execute, and manage contracts and agreements. Designed to support various industries and business functions, DocuSign helps streamline document workflows, improve compliance, accelerate approvals, and enhance collaboration. Its solutions enable departments and industries to modernise agreement processes, reduce manual effort, and deliver faster, more secure digital transactions.
This article compares Adobe Acrobat Sign and DocuSign, highlighting their unique strengths and helping businesses determine which solution best aligns with their needs.
Adobe Acrobat Sign
Adobe Acrobat Sign is built to offer a simplified process of signing and managing documents digitally.
Core purpose and unique value proposition
It helps individuals and organizations to use manual signature workflows with secure, legally compliant electronic signatures, improving efficiency and reducing turnaround times. Adobe Acrobat Sign combines trusted Adobe document technology with seamless e-signature capabilities in a single, integrated platform. It delivers secure, worldwide compliant digital signing, easy integration of widely used business applications, and flexible signing experiences that work across devices and browsers. This helps businesses to streamline agreement workflows while enhancing customer and employee convenience.
Target user base or company size
Adobe Acrobat Sign is offered to a wide range of users, including:
- Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs): It serves easy and cost-effective way to digitise document signing and reduce paperwork.
- Large enterprises: It is offered to large enterprises with scalable, secure, and compliant e-signature workflows across cross-functional departments and teams. The solution can be used in sales teams, finance teams, legal teams, HR departments, and customer service teams.
Adobe Acrobat Sign is also used by professionals such as freelancers, educators, and government organizations as well.
Key strengths and integrations
- It provides a secure and compliant digital signature alternative built on Adobe’s well-known document technology.
- It’s easy to create, sign, send, track, and manage agreements on a single platform.
- To improve document security, it offers sophisticated authentication choices and compatibility for international compliance standards.
- In addition to supporting signing across many devices and browsers, it promotes automated workflows, speeds up approval cycles, and minimizes tedious paperwork.
- Organizations can more effectively handle larger volumes of agreements thanks to their scalability.
- Enables organizations to optimise document operations within their current systems by integrating seamlessly with popular business and productivity platforms.
Reviewer pros and cons
Per user reviews on the TrustRadius website, Adobe Acrobat Sign is easy for end users to use, collecting signatures quickly and allowing a specific signing order. However, the initial set was hard for some users. It doesn’t maintain formatting when uploading non-PDF files.
“We use Adobe Sign to get legal signatures on various documents. In HR, I use it to gain signatures on Offer Letters, Promotion Agreements, Disciplinary Documents, and anything that requires proof of review (Ex, Employee Handbook, Dress Code Doc). I will also use it sometimes when I am filling out a form that requires input from other employees.”
Read Kennedy’s full review here.
DocuSign
DocuSign helps businesses to excel and reduce expenses by enabling user-friendly signing experiences that function flawlessly on almost any device.
Core purpose and unique value proposition
DocuSign shapes companies with the digital transformation. It helps companies work on how agreements are drafted, signed, organized, and saved. With the primary goal to replace manual, paper-based processes with secure, automated, and fully digital agreement workflows, DocuSign enhances efficiency, speed, and accuracy.
DocuSign furnishes comprehensive agreement management platforms beyond e-signatures. It collectively offers secure digital signing with workflow automation, AI-driven insights, and contract lifecycle management in one unified solution. This streamlines businesses in controlling operational costs, minimizing risk, and improving customer and employee experiences, along with ensuring compliance and security operations globally.
Target user base or company size
DocuSign can be used in a good range of businesses, including:
-
Small Businesses (SMBs): DocuSign facilitates freelancers, startups, and small to mid-sized businesses.
-
Growing Businesses: It operates great for growing businesses with seamless workflow automation, integrations, etc.
-
Large Enterprises: It is suitable for global organizations with complicated agreement processes.
Key strengths and integrations
- It is a globally recognized and widely adopted leading e-signature company, following e-signature compliance and international regulations.
- It is easy to use for sending, signing, and tracking agreements.
- Offers enterprise-grade security by implementing high-level technology.
- It integrates with Salesforce, Google Workspace, Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft, ServiceNow, and others.
- Works excellently with PDFs, Word documents, and other maintaining flexibility in workflows.
- Users can sign documents from any device and that too from anywhere in the world, making it perfect for remote jobs.
Reviewer pros and cons
Per DocuSign users, it is good at streamlining the process for onboarding employees. It also allows users to bookmark locations for signing documents, which proves to be invaluable for time and cost savings. However, many users find it difficult to document download automation, document metadata tagging, and AI analysis.
“I use it to sign contracts with partners and to send them letters of authorized MuleSoft partners. So, managing master partner agreements through DocuSign, where I create and we do virtual signatures between the partner and Salesforce.”
Read Celeste’s full review here.
Head-to-Head Comparison
Feature Set
Below is the feature comparison of Adobe Acrobat Sign and DocuSign:
| Features | |
| From any desktop computer or mobile device, send documents for eSignature straight from Acrobat. | Easily send and sign documents with DocuSign eSignatures. |
| Saves time, sends a document to several signers at once. | Make businesses speedy, easier, and more cost-efficient with electronic signature solutions. |
| You can gather an infinite number of eSignatures with Acrobat for Teams plans, which have no usage limits. | A legally binding method of signing papers online from any device is an electronic signature, sometimes known as an e-signature. |
| Make sure everyone has a flawless eSigning experience, with simple access from beginning to end. | Offers the ability to sign almost any kind of contract on any kind of device. |
Customer Experience and Support
Customer experiences, support, and their feedback are the most crucial aspects for the success of any product. Here are the user insights shared by various customers on the TrustRadius website:
| User Insights | Adobe Acrobat Sign | DocuSign |
| Delivers good value for price | 93% | 84% |
| Happy with the feature set | 92% | 88% |
| Lived up to sales and marketing | 93% | 83% |
| Implementation as expected | 96% | 87% |
| Would buy again | 93% | 85% |
“We needed a way to send forms to candidates and remote employees to avoid having them come into our office to complete forms. Adobe is a trusted big household name, so we felt comfortable exploring it as a solution first. Adobe Sign makes it easy to customize our forms and send them to one person or multiple people simultaneously. I’ve never had any issues with it.”
Read the full review here.
Pricing and Value
| Price | Adobe Acrobat Sign | DocuSign |
| Free Trial | Available | Available |
| Free/Freemium Version | NA | NA |
| Premium Consulting/ Integration Services | Available | NA |
| Pricing |
Acrobat Standard DC for teams: $14.99 per month license on Cloud Acrobat Pro DC with advanced e-sign: $16.99 per month on Cloud |
Personal and Real Starter: $15 per month on Cloud
DocuSign for Realtors: $35 per month on Cloud |
User Experience
User experience reviews are the most valuable aspect of any business to understand how the much satisfied the users are after using the product. It gives an idea of the advantages and disadvantages that a product has. Adobe Acrobat Sign and DocuSign users share their experiences of using these products on TrustRadius’s feedback platform. Here are the usability scores of the products:
| User Ratings | Adobe Acrobat Sign | DocuSign |
| Usability | 3.2 | 8.1 |
| Availability | 9 | 10 |
| Likelihood to Renew | 8 | 7 |
| Support Rating | 7.3 | 10 |
| Implementation Rating | 8 | 10 |
Here is some user feedback:
“We use Adobe Sign to get legal signatures on various documents. In HR, I use it to gain signatures on Offer Letters, Promotion Agreements, Disciplinary Documents, and anything that requires proof of review (Ex, Employee Handbook, Dress Code Doc). I will also use it sometimes when I am filling out a form that requires input from other employees.”
Read Kennedy’s full review here.
“I think I have seen the use of this product. I’ve been with the company for one and a half years, so I have been seeing it since I joined. I think of having a copy of the contract signed by both parties and then even for the job offers when we send it to the candidates, get it signed, and then have it, so it’s fairly easy because it’s online, and it allows both parties to not meet physically but just still get the contract done.”
Read the full review here.
AI Capabilities
With AI-driven speed and efficiency, Adobe Acrobat swiftly produces summaries and unearths deeper insights from files. Then, use that information in polished presentations and other high-quality content. Using the PDF Spaces and a built-in AI assistant to ask questions, it summarizes documents and obtains insights. AI can expedite document preparation by remixing papers into presentations, organising files in PDF Spaces, or producing audio summaries akin to podcasts.
DocuSign, with its AI engine named DocuSign Iris, improves the entire agreement lifecycle, helping organizations build agreements faster, make decisions with confidence, and maximize business outcomes. The DocuSign AI increases revenue and reduces costs with agreement insights, accelerates agreement completion, and reduces financial and legal risks.
Integrations
Adobe Acrobat Sign integrates with a wide range of business, productivity, and enterprise platforms to streamline document workflows, automate approvals, and improve collaboration. These integration tools include Microsoft 365, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive accounts, and Microsoft 365 files.
DocuSign has extensive integrations to expedite customer agreements and contract procedures. It integrates with several tools, including Salesforce, Google Workspace, Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft, ServiceNow, and Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Market Segment and Scalability
Adobe Acrobat Sign
As a component of Adobe Document Cloud, Adobe Acrobat Sign competes in the e-signature and digital document workflow automation markets, being suitable for small and mid-sized businesses, consultants, freelancers, and startups. It works best for growing companies or expanding businesses working with cross-functional departments, including sales, HR, legal, and finance. For large enterprises, it stands out as a perfect choice by offering complex document workflows, advanced compliance and security requirements, enterprise-grade identity verification and authentication through deep integration into Microsoft, SAP, and enterprise ecosystems.
DocuSign
With significant emphasis on e-signatures and contract lifecycle management, DocuSign leads in digital transaction management and business management agreements. It operates with small and medium-sized enterprises, startups, expanding businesses, and independent contractors with simple e-signature requirements using DocuSign. It is also suitable for growing businesses, big businesses, and multinational firms. It is used for substantial transaction volumes, complicated contract procedures, legal requirements, identity verifications, and enterprise security measures.
Adobe Acrobat Sign: Best for medium to large Businesses
Acrobat Sign’s stand-alone e-signature solution offers an infinite number of seats, strong integrations, industry-ready compliance, and cutting-edge features. From any desktop computer or mobile device, eSignature documents can be sent straight from Acrobat. It saves time to send a document to several signers at once. Each recipient receives a customised version, and companies can gather an infinite amount of eSignatures with Acrobat for Teams plans, which have no usage limits. It makes sure that everyone has a flawless e-signing experience, with simple access from beginning to end. Request and obtain eSignatures more quickly. The app gets real-time visibility into the status of the papers sent for signatures, including audit trails. Alerts are also set when completed and signed documents are available.
DocuSign: Best for mitigating risks through comprehensive security
DocuSign’s eSignature guarantees a smooth, mobile-friendly experience on any device with features like responsive signature, SMS delivery, and user-friendly web forms. Higher completion rates, faster turnaround times, and happier clients are the results of this. Customers feel at ease utilizing DocuSign, a reputable company, to sign significant contracts. DocuSign uses enterprise-grade security and compliance to safeguard the company’s data, including security authentication, modules for CFR Part 11, Compliance with SOC 2, and GDPR.
A Certificate of Completion and a thorough audit trail support each transaction, guaranteeing both legal admissibility and peace of mind. By using rules-based alerts to identify unauthorised activity and taking prompt action once a threat has been confirmed, DocuSign Monitor adds an extra layer of protection to help protect your important agreements.
Conclusion
Electronic signatures, or e-signatures, are efficient, safe, and legally binding substitutes for handwritten signatures when used to sign digital documents online, frequently using mobile apps or web browsers. Without using physical, paper-based procedures, they ensure compliance and validity by verifying signers using technologies like e-KYC, OTP, or biometrics. Adobe Acrobat Sign and DocuSign are the two most compatible electronic signatures for businesses of all sizes.
To explore more about tool comparison and discover a suitable e-signature solution for your organization, check out TrustRadius’s Electronic Signature Software categories.
