Three ways e-signature services charge
| Model | How you pay | Fits when | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subscription | A monthly or yearly fee per user, often with a cap on documents | You send documents every month, or a team sends them | Yearly commitment, months you pay for and do not use, caps per user |
| Free plan | Nothing, up to a set number of documents | You send a handful of documents and the features cover you | The cap, features kept for paid plans, upgrade prompts |
| Pay per document | You buy documents or credits when you need them | You send documents now and then, in uneven batches | The price per document, and whether unused credits expire |
“Envelope” in vendor pricing means one sending: one or more documents that go out for signature together. Most caps count envelopes, not pages or signers.
What the large vendors offer
Checked on each vendor's pricing page on October 28, 2026. Prices change with your region, the billing period and promotions, so the list leaves out amounts. Check the vendor's site before you decide.
- DocuSign: paid plans are subscriptions. The cheapest plan, Personal, is for one user, is billed yearly and allows 5 envelopes a month. Standard and Business Pro are priced per user and allow 100 envelopes per user per year.
- Dropbox Sign: subscriptions billed monthly or yearly. The cheapest paid plan, Essentials, has one sender. There is also a free plan; the pricing page does not list its limits.
- Adobe: sending documents for signature comes with Acrobat Standard, Acrobat Pro and Acrobat Studio for teams, priced per license per month.
- PandaDoc: a free eSign plan with up to 60 documents a year and no credit card. Paid plans add unlimited sending, more users and integrations.
Smaller services, SignClearly among them, sell documents one at a time or in packs of credits. Their price per document varies widely, so compare them the same way as subscriptions: by what you would pay over a year.
How to compare the cost for your volume
- Count the documents you sent for signature in the last 12 months. Note the busiest month too.
- For a subscription, take the yearly price of the plan whose cap covers your busiest month, and divide it by the number of documents. That is your real price per document.
- For pay per document, multiply the price per document by the same number. Check whether unused credits expire and whether you pay for a document the signer never signs.
- For a free plan, check that your busiest month fits under the cap and that the plan includes what you need, such as the audit trail and the signed PDF.
- List what you need beyond signing: more signers per document, templates, team accounts, integrations. Drop the options that lack one of them before you compare prices.
How SignClearly charges
- No subscription. You buy a pack of credits and each document you send uses credits. Current packs and the cost per document are on pricing.
- Unused credits stay on your balance. They have no expiry date.
- If a document is not signed because the recipient declined, you revoked the link or it expired, its credits go back to your balance.
- Reminders and resending the invitation are free.
- The recipient signs in a browser without an account and pays nothing.
An advanced electronic signature (AES) with an ID check uses more credits than a simple one. If such a document is not signed, the credits go back except one for each ID check attempt that got a result, because the identity service charges for every attempt. See what each kind includes.
When a subscription is the better choice
SignClearly sends each document to one signer. If your documents need several signers in a set order, a team that shares templates, or a link to a CRM, a subscription service fits better. The same holds when you send many documents every month: once your volume is steady and high, a plan with a large cap can cost less per document than paying for each one.
For an NDA now and then, a quote your client accepts, or a release form after a shoot, paying per document keeps the cost tied to the documents you actually send. How it works.