Electronic signatures · Comparison
DocuSign vs Dropbox Sign vs BoldSign: BoldSign leads at 9.2; 3 senders cost $15 to $135 a month
We read the pricing, API pricing, security, legal and docs pages of three e-signature services on the same day and scored them on the same six indicators. How each one bills, what 3 senders cost, and who should pick which.
On this page9 sections
On six indicators read from each vendor's public pages, BoldSign scores 9.2, Dropbox Sign 6.7 and DocuSign eSignature 6.6 out of 10. For our reference scenario, 3 senders sending 30 envelopes a month each, billed annually, all three can be priced: BoldSign $15 a month on Growth (if its 50-envelope allowance is per user, as the plan card says; $45 on Business if not), Dropbox Sign $75 on Standard, and DocuSign $135 on IAM Standard. BoldSign scores highest on four of the six items and ties DocuSign on API and templates (both 10). DocuSign scores highest on compliance, and both it and Dropbox Sign state an ISO 27001 certificate in their own name, which BoldSign's pages do not.
Most of the gap comes from the free plan and the price for 3 senders. The rest comes from what each vendor sells online at a published price: DocuSign and Dropbox Sign put qualified (QES) signatures and the HIPAA BAA behind sales, and Dropbox Sign does the same with SSO; BoldSign lists all three on its self-serve Business plan. The scores measure what the public pages commit to, not how well each product works, and we did not sign up for any of them.
At a glance
| DocuSign eSignature | Dropbox Sign | BoldSign | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | Per-user seats with an envelope allowance | Per-sender seats, unlimited requests | Per-user seats, add-ons per use |
| Lowest paid plan | Personal $10/mo (1 user, 5 envelopes a month) | Essentials $15/mo (1 user, unlimited) | Growth $5/user/mo (50 envelopes a month) |
| Free option | Free signing only; trial of about 14 days | 3 requests a month; 30-day trial | 25 envelopes a month; 30-day trial |
| Reference scenario (3 senders, 90 envelopes/mo) | $135 on IAM Standard, computed | $75 on Standard, computed | $15 on Growth, or $45 on Business, computed |
| API entry price | $50/mo for 40 envelopes | $75/mo for 50 requests | $30/mo for 40 envelopes, then $0.75 each |
| Qualified signatures (QES) | Enhanced plans, by sales | eID add-on on API Premium, by sales | $3 per signature, Business and up |
| SOC 2 / ISO 27001 | Own SOC 2 Type II; ISO 27001:2022 | Own SOC 2 Type 2; ISO 27001 | Own SOC 2 Type II; ISO 27001 not stated |
| SSO | IAM Professional, or by sales | Premium, by quote | Business, $15/user/mo |
| Storage regions | 5; placed by location, or chosen through a Docusign representative | 6, on Premium | 4 on every plan, chosen at sign-up |
| Score (public pages) | 6.6 Good | 6.7 Good | 9.2 Excellent |
Prices are monthly with yearly billing (DocuSign: billed upfront).
What the public pages show
DocuSign eSignature prices each plan three ways: billed upfront, annual billed monthly and monthly. Personal is $10 a month billed upfront for one user and 5 envelopes a month. Standard ($25 per user) and Business Pro ($40) include 100 envelopes per user per year, shared across the account, and a help-center article prices extra envelopes. IAM plans add unlimited web-app sending with a 3-user minimum. Every plan includes the audit trail, certificate of completion and tamper seal, and recipients sign for free.
Dropbox Sign, formerly HelloSign, prices by sender, with unlimited signature requests on every paid web plan. Essentials is $15 a month billed yearly for one user, and Standard $25 per user from 2 users, with sales at 5 or more. Premium, with SAML SSO and six storage regions, is by quote. The free plan sends 3 requests a month. The API is priced by monthly quota, with a free test mode on every endpoint.
BoldSign, from Syncfusion, sends 25 envelopes a month on its free plan (5 for sign-ups with a personal email address). Billed yearly, Growth is $5 per user a month, Business $15 per user with unlimited envelopes, SSO, SCIM and HIPAA, and Premium $99 a month for unlimited users and 250 envelopes. QES, ID verification, KBA, SMS and bulk send are add-ons with published per-use prices.
Strengths and things to know
DocuSign eSignature. Strengths: evidence features on every plan, the longest certification list of the three (ISO 27001:2022, SOC 2 Type II, PCI DSS 4.0, a qualified trust service provider in Docusign France), five storage regions, published prices for extra envelopes, and an API with SDKs, webhooks and a free developer account. Things to know: Standard and Business Pro count envelopes per seat; SSO is on IAM Professional or through sales, and the HIPAA BAA and QES go through sales; there is no free plan for sending; and the price of API envelopes beyond a plan's starting amount is not published.
Dropbox Sign. Strengths: unlimited requests at a per-sender price, SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 for Dropbox Sign itself, an audit trail on every request and a digital seal on paid plans, bulk send on self-serve Standard, and six official SDKs. Things to know: SSO and data residency are on Premium; HIPAA needs an annual plan, a BAA and an unpublished minimum contract value; going over an API quota moves the plan up a tier; and QES is an API Premium add-on with no published price.
BoldSign. Strengths: the lowest scenario price here, SSO, SCIM and HIPAA on a plan bought online, published per-use prices for QES ($3), ID verification ($2) and KBA ($1.50), and four storage regions on every plan. Things to know: Growth's 50 envelopes a month are per user on the plan card but for the whole account in the plan table; an extra Enterprise API user is $28 or $15 depending on the page; no ISO 27001 certificate is named; and the storage region cannot be changed after sign-up.
Pricing reality
Reference scenario: 3 senders each sending 30 envelopes a month (90 a month, 1,080 a year) from the web app, billed annually, at the lowest listed prices.
| Service | Plan | Monthly cost | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| BoldSign | Growth | $15 | Computed: 3 users × $5 billed yearly; 50 envelopes a month per user on the plan card |
| Dropbox Sign | Standard | $75 | Computed: 3 users × $25 billed yearly ($900 a year); unlimited signature requests |
| DocuSign eSignature | IAM Standard | $135 | Computed: 3-user minimum × $45 billed upfront ($1,620 a year); unlimited web-app envelopes |
BoldSign's $15 rests on the plan card. If Growth's 50 envelopes are for the whole account, as the plan table says, Growth cannot cover 90 a month and has no way to buy more, so the scenario moves to Business at 3 × $15 = $45. For DocuSign, Standard at 3 × $25 = $75 includes 300 envelopes a year; the other 780 pre-bought at $3.00 add $2,340 a year, or $195 a month, for $270 in total (our arithmetic). IAM Standard's unlimited web-app sending is subject to a Reasonable Use Policy that the pages do not quantify. Dropbox Sign shows an offer of 30% off the first year of an annual plan, which would make Standard $52.50 a month; that is an offer, not the list price.
How we scored them
Every product in this category is scored on the same six indicators, read from the vendor's own pages, with fixed formulas. The overall score is the plain mean. Our methodology page explains how these scores work.
| Indicator | DocuSign eSignature | Dropbox Sign | BoldSign |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing clarity | 5 | 5 | 8 |
| Free plan | 2.5 | 3.4 | 10 |
| Price for 3 senders | 4.3 | 5.6 | 9.1 |
| Legal standing and evidence | 9 | 9 | 10 |
| Compliance and team security | 9 | 8 | 8 |
| API and templates | 10 | 9 | 10 |
| Overall | 6.6 | 6.7 | 9.2 |
DocuSign and Dropbox Sign lose most on the free plan and the scenario price, and each loses 2 on pricing clarity because larger plans are priced by sales, plus 1 for each of three gaps in its pages. DocuSign's lead on compliance comes from ISO 27001 and SSO it sells online on IAM Professional. BoldSign loses 2 on pricing clarity for two pairs of figures that disagree, and 2 on compliance because no ISO 27001 certificate is named.
The rubric rewards what a buyer can confirm before signing up. It does not score how long a document takes to be signed or how the signing screens feel.
Also in this category
DocuSeal scores 8.8: an open-source signing app with a US or EU cloud, Pro at $20 per user a month or $200 a year ($50 a month for our scenario) with SAML SSO, its own SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, QES on the EU cloud, and an API at $0.20 per completed document. SignWell scores 6.3: unlimited documents for 3 senders at $30 a month on Business, SOC 2 Type II and a HIPAA BAA from the $10 Light plan, and a per-document API with no monthly minimum, but no SSO listed, simple signatures only under eIDAS and no choice of storage region.
Who should choose which
- Choose BoldSign if you want unlimited sending, SSO and HIPAA on a plan you can buy online, or QES and ID checks at published per-use prices. Look elsewhere if your security review requires ISO 27001 in the vendor's own name.
- Choose Dropbox Sign if two to four people send many agreements a month and you want a flat price per sender, with SOC 2 and ISO 27001 for the signing product itself. Look elsewhere if you need SSO or HIPAA at a published price.
- Choose DocuSign eSignature if your counterparties or auditors expect Docusign, you need its certification list, or you plan to build on its API. Look elsewhere if you want a free plan that sends documents.
Bottom line
From public pages alone, BoldSign gives the most for the money: the lowest scenario price, a 25-envelope free plan, and SSO, HIPAA, four storage regions and per-use QES on a self-serve plan. Check how Growth counts envelopes before you buy. Dropbox Sign is the simplest per-sender model, with compliance reports in its own name and enterprise features behind a quote. DocuSign has the broadest compliance record and is priced per seat with an envelope allowance, so steady volume costs more.
How we checked
We read the vendors' pricing and API pricing pages, plan FAQs, security, trust and legal pages, help-center articles and developer docs on Oct 15, 2026. Docusign's default pricing URL showed another currency for our location, so its prices come from its own US storefront (/en-US/), in US dollars. Dropbox Sign's pages fill in prices by script; we read the USD price feeds they load, which match the Internet Archive's copy served to a US visitor on Oct 9, 2026. We did not sign up, start a trial, send a document or call an API. Facts the pages did not state, such as Dropbox Sign's minimum contract value for HIPAA or Docusign's API overage price, are left out rather than guessed. Every figure is on the vendors' pages as of that date or, where marked, computed from them.
