The Best WordPress eSignature Plugins
We’ve all sent emails back-and-forth to get a document signed off on more than one occasion – and it usually ends with someone having to print, sign, and scan the document before sending it back. Despite the clear benefits of the electronic approach, paper still appears to be an essential part of our world.
Fortunately, there are a number of WordPress plugins available to help clients sign a document electronically, with no printing required. With a few tweaks, you can send your client a professional form or document, and take their signature straight from your WordPress site. Welcome to the future! But if you are unfamiliar with the concept, you might want to learn more about e-signature before diving into our WordPress E-signature tools list.
This article will look at seven useful plugins to help you get documents signed, saving you and your clients immense amounts of time. Let’s get started!
1. JotForm
With Jotform Sign, you can easily embed your documents straight on your website using their WordPress plugin so your users can digitally sign them. Use their workflow automation features to save time and money while also collecting legally binding signatures.
Collaborate with your team on the same documents and generate reports to gain insight on your business. Use automated approval flows for your e-signature documents by adding signers and get notified when a change happens. You can do all of this securely thanks to their many security compliances for sensitive data. Add even more security by using an access code unique to you.
Get started on creating your document by choosing one of their thousands of ready-made templates. Just select a template and customize it using their drag-and-drop builder. And best of all, the Jotform Starter plan is completely free and includes many great features at no cost to you.
2. ApproveMe
If you are looking to sign documents online with WordPress, ApproveMe’s WP E-Signature is the frontrunner. This premium plugin is designed to enable you to legally sign documents using your own WordPress website.
Similar to e-signature services such as DocuSign and HelloSign, WP E-Signature enables you to upload documents and send them to your clients for signature. You can have unlimited documents and unlimited signers all managed through your own site. WP E-Signature is UETA and ESIGN compatible, so the signatures are legally binding and can be enforced in court.
If you need a legally binding solution for signing documents in WordPress, WP E-Signature is the obvious choice. Though pricey, the time saved and the peace of mind is arguably well worth the cost.
3. WP Online Contract
WP Online Contract is a full-featured contract management plugin. With over 3,000 sales it is carving out a niche for itself. With this plugin you can create, manage, and save contracts online and have your clients sign from any device.
Enabling you to create your own contract templates using the built-in WordPress editor, WP Online Contract stores the IP address and time-stamps when a contract is signed, providing you with an audit trail. The plugin also integrates with several payment gateways through add-ons.
WP Online Contract is a great solution if you are looking for an all-in-one contract management platform within WordPress. However, you may want to investigate another option if you need court-enforceable contracts.
4. Signature Field For Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 is one of the best known and most popular free form builder plugins, with well over 5 million active installs. Though originally created for contact forms, it has expanded beyond that, especially with the help of add-ons such as this free signature add-on, which adds a quick and simple signature field to the popular form builder.
The signature field is added to your form through shortcode tags like any other field, and can be customized using CSS. Just be sure to also add an attachments field for your documents.
If you are already using Contact Form 7 and are comfortable with its interface, this add-on will be perfect for you to add signatures to your online forms. This is not a legally binding solution, but can work for less strict applications.
5. Formidable Forms Signature
In the world of free form builders, Formidable Forms is a strong contender, with hundreds of thousands of active installs. The usefulness of the form builder is extended through premium plans, which offers tons of great features such as their Signature add-on. Premium licenses start at less than $40/yr for a single site.
The signature field is added to a form like any other field, along with your documents field, and has a few options for customization. Once the signature is submitted, it is converted to an image and stored with the form data.
If you are a Formidable Forms fan, this feature will make it easy to collect signatures. However, it is not a particularly secure solution, nor is it really designed for legally binding situations.
6. Signature Addon for ARForms
If you’re not already familiar with it, ARForms is a well-rated premium form builder plugin with and easy to use interface. They have created a premium signature add-on which enables you to capture signatures online by simply adding a field to your form. Then with the PDF Creator Add-on you can save your completed and signed forms as PDFs.
The easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface makes adding the signature field to your forms simple. Your website users will not need any special browser plugins to add their signature, which will be converted and stored as a PNG file with the form submission.
If you need a legally binding solution, this may not be the approach for you. However, if you are already an ARForms user and want an easy way to collect signatures, check this out.
7. HubSpot
This free plugin makes it easy to integrate Hubspot’s business suite of services with WordPress – including many WordPress e-signature options. This includes electronic signature support for Skribble Electronic Signature, Zoho Sign, Dropbox Sign (formerly Hellosign), ZapSign, Fill eSignatures, Eurosign, SimpleSign, Jotform, SnapSign, Proposify, PandaDoc and more.
This could be a useful solution if you are looking for a wide array of integrated set of services. Especially since HubSpot offers many useful CRM features to help you manage your business with WordPress such as live chat, custom forms, email automation, analytics and much more.
Note – you must create a free HubSpot account to use the plugin, and a premium plan may be required depending on the signature option you want to use.
Getting documents signed can often be a painful and time-consuming process, especially if you’re unable sit down with your client in person. Emails sent back and forth end with the need to print, sign, and scan a document before emailing it back to complete the process.
WordPress offers several solutions to help you get those documents signed electronically. We’re sure one of these will meet your needs, though we definitely recommend WP E-Signature as an all-round solid solution.
Is electronic document signing crucial to your business, and if not, could you adopt the practice in future? Share your insights in the comments section below!
John, this is Eric from WP Online Contract. Thank you for listing our plugin as part of your resources. Your post was very well informed. One quick question…what do you mean by not court enforceable? We are always looking to improve our plugin and any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
I’d also like to know why the e-contracts you mentioned in your article wouldn’t be legally binding. And, if that’s true, is there an extra step one could take to make it binding? For instance, if we were to convert it to a PDF upon completion, would it be binding then?
Hi Patti! My understanding is that for a signed document to be legally binding you need an timestamp to go with the signature. A PDF is great for your own records, but if you ever had an issue come up with the person you had sign the document you’d have no way to prove when (or if) they actually signed the document. Hope this helps!
@Kyla and @Patti Our WP Online Contract plugin generates a timestamp that is displayed on the signed contract when it is signed. The timestamp is also part of the signature image file name. Was that the issue with our plugin not being enforceable? We have done our research to make sure that our customers are protected so if you see any other inconsistencies please let me know so we can resolve them.
That’s awesome about the timestamp! As for the enforceability for your particular plugin I’ll have to default to John since I didn’t do the research on this post 🙂
Hi Kyla, Yes, that helps a lot! It seems like something that would be easy to fix, though. Can we add a timestamp either with a manual entry or another plugin? Thanks again for your input!
Thanks John for including SwiftSignature! For anyone reading “enforceable” is a bit vague but I’m guessing most of the above, including us, are enforceable for most legal jurisdictions including the USA and EU. Laws vary by country. You may wish to read the fascinating (just kidding… but it is important) details at swiftsignature.com.
Practically speaking, “enforce-ability” should have the following:
1. Meet all the legal requirements, including timestamps and audit trails
2. verification of identity, and user “fingerprinting”, because if this goes to court, you want a ton of info to prove your case to a judge
3. A neutral 3rd party with expert witnesses and staff available for depositions and/or in-court-appearances
4. Some “sword rattling” media so that the other party will have no illusions about your ability and willingness to enforce the contract.
For #3 and #4, this is why we believe it is best that signed documents should be “held in trust” by a service, and not solely existing on your own website. Any document held only by you could be deemed as not immutable by a court – prone to tampering – and thus the agreement thrown out.
Legally, a contract usually has consideration and agreement; a “signature” (electronic or ink) is a claim to identity as well as agreement, and a good electronic signature should have both.
Last, I’m not an attorney, and legally advise you to seek legal counsel from duly licensed and appointed professionals for your jurisdiction.. that might seem a bit overly formal but if there’s real money on the line, good legal help is worth the security.
Thank you so much for the detailed response! Definitely clears up the understanding of enforceable for me
I would steer clear of ApproveMe’s solution. They employ some shady business tactics to get you to renew every year, essentially rendering your plugin completely useless via intrusive popups to remind you to renew your subscription. It is so intrusive that it makes the plugin (that you paid for) unusable, thus holding your data hostage on your own server. Complete BS extortion. Really poor business practice. If you’re going to pay every year, you might as well go with the pros like DocuSign/HelloSign/etc, not half-a**ed ApproveMe
I’ve just bought and installed WP Online Contract and it does everything I need it to. Our compliance team have no issues with the legality of the contracts either as the IP address and time and date suffice. However, one issue I have come across is the fact that in order for the plug in to work it needs to call php files directly in the plugins folder, which is considered bad practice apparently. I have had to deactivate some security features in order for the plug in to work. I don’t know if there’s any other way the plug in can work but it may be worth researching and rolling out a security update, as this is the only issue in an otherwise perfect plugin.
That’s awesome to hear that it’s worked so well for you! I’m not a coder myself, but if you have any concerns try reaching out to the developer 🙂
Hello, you can also use Contact Form 7 Docusign Envelope Creator for WordPress. It lets you use your contact form 7 data to populate a document of your choice which then gets sent onto Docusign for you or your customers to sign and because it uses Docusign the signautes are legally certified and secure.
Several of these plugins haven’t been updated in years and therefore likely aren’t viable.
I just went through and updated our list! And I did remove one plugin, but otherwise all the options still appear to be great WordPress e-signature options.