E-signature, and the chain that proves it
The signing page is where the money is earned or lost. The person arrives from your email, on an address that is not yours to them yet, so the page carries your brand, and everything that happens on it is written down.
- An append-only chain: each entry carries the hash of the one before it
- A protocol sheet travels with the document
- The signing page shows the account's logo, not a platform shell
- Opening, reading and signing are all recorded, with a shortened IP
The tools were never the problem
To get one document signed you sent the data out so the service could build it, had it signed over there, and then carried the fact that it was signed back in. Three handovers for one signature, and each of them a place where it can stop without anybody noticing.
We ran a lead generation business on six of them. This is the part that cost us the most and showed up on no invoice.
- You pay per seam
- Every tool in the chain has its own subscription, and the one feature you actually needed is usually one price tier up.
- A field is not one change
- Add it in one place and it has to be added in the others. Miss one and nothing fails loudly: it fails the next time somebody filters on it.
- Someone else's release is your outage
- An API changes, a mapping stops matching, a webhook starts returning something new. You hear about it from the person who was waiting.
Signed, and the next thing becomes possible
The request is a step in a flow, at the point where the record is ready for it. The template fills itself from the record's fields, the signer enters what they are asked to, and what they entered lands back in those fields. Signed, declined and deadline passed are three triggers, so it carries on without anybody watching.
- The template fills itself. The same document templates that generate_document builds from.
- What the signer types comes back. Input values land in fields, not only in the PDF.
- Done is a trigger, not a status to check. Change the stage, hand it on, start the invoice.
- Three handovers fewer. It never leaves the account the record already lives in.
- Automationrequest_signature
- Signaturesigned, with evidence
- CRMstage: Partner signed
- Distributionpartner can take leads
- Record
- Marie Kerner
- Documents
- Agreement, Power of attorney
- Link
- signed, bound to the account, expires in 14 days
One link, one person, one document set
A signing session is created against a record and carries the documents that belong to it. The link is signed and bound to the account, so it cannot be guessed and cannot be reused for a different case.
- Your logo on the page. Or your name when none is stored, the same rule the outgoing mail follows.
- Generated from your templates. The document is filled from the record's fields.
- No account for the signer. They came from an email; a login would end the session there.
- States that survive a reload. Opened, signed, declined, expired, each with its own page.
A chain, not a log file
Every step appends an entry that carries the hash of the entry before it. Changing anything in the middle breaks every hash after it, which is the whole point: the record is not “trust our database”, it is arithmetic.
- Hash chain. Each entry sealed against the previous one.
- Protocol sheet. Attached to the finished document, readable without our software.
- Shortened IP in the document. Enough to place the signature, not enough to track a person.
- Time, user agent, document hash. The four things a dispute actually asks about.
- requested24 Sep, 08:153f9c…1a20
- opened24 Sep, 11:42a17e…44b1
- signed24 Sep, 11:48c802…9de5
- delivered24 Sep, 11:487b31…0cf4
Change one entry and every hash after it stops matching. That is the whole trick, and it is the reason the protocol sheet is worth anything.
Which signature this is
A simple electronic signature under Article 25 eIDAS. The evidence comes from the protocol, not from a certificate, which is why the protocol is the main thing here and not a by-product.
What this is not
- Not a qualified signature. No trust service provider, and no qualified timestamp. Where the law demands a QES, this is the wrong tool and we would rather you knew that now.
- Whoever has the link can sign. That is inherent at this level. It is limited by a short validity, by sending only to the address on the record, and by recording IP and device. An SMS code is planned and not built.
- The signature image is never stored for reuse. It exists in the finished PDF and nowhere else. A stored signature you could apply again is a different legal situation and a different risk.
- Signed documents are kept for ten years in their own retention area. Anonymising a record redacts the request and leaves the document.
This is a description of what the product does, not legal advice. Whether a given declaration needs more than this depends on the rule that governs it and on your business, not on the tool.
Five articles on getting a document signed
Setting up the send, placing the fields, the signing page as the signer sees it, and what the proof actually proves.
5 articles, written against the product and shown inside it too.
What Signatures costs
You pay per signing request, not per document. One request can carry several documents that are signed in one go, so a power of attorney and an agreement together count as one, not two.
- 20 requests a month
- Chain of evidence and protocol sheet
- Your brand on the page
- 100 requests a month
- Chain of evidence and protocol sheet
- Your brand on the page
- 500 requests a month
- Chain of evidence and protocol sheet
- Your brand on the page
Questions people ask
If the answer you need is not here, the help center has the long version.
- Is this a qualified electronic signature?
- No. This is a simple electronic signature with an evidence chain: who signed, when, from where, and against which exact document. It is the right tool for a mandate or an agreement where a court would weigh evidence. It is not a replacement for a qualified signature where the law demands one.
- Can the signer see what they are signing before they sign?
- Yes, the full document, and the fact that they opened it is part of the record. A signature on a document nobody opened is worth very little.
- What does the signer see if they open the link twice?
- Whether it is already signed, declined or expired, on a page that carries the same brand as the first visit. The second opening is recorded too.
Bring the month you would rather not talk about
Set up your own entity, your own fields and one routing rule, and see what it does with a record you put through it.