By Claire Edicson
1. eSignatures Aren’t a Feature — They’re a Workflow Backbone
Many companies adopted electronic signatures as a checkbox — a convenient layer on top of existing approval workflows. But today’s business environment demands much more than convenience.
eSignatures are now core to how teams handle sales contracts, onboarding paperwork, vendor agreements, NDAs, and compliance documentation. When digital signing isn’t natively integrated into these flows, delays pile up.
That’s the challenge with many first-gen solutions. They offered a solid start, but now feel bolted-on, rigid, or dependent on workarounds. You’ve probably felt it — the PDF downloads, the manual routing, the API constraints.
Modern teams aren’t looking for just a “sign button.” They want a complete, intelligent workflow layer. That’s why platforms like Certinal are gaining traction as top-tier eSingature platform that are purpose-built for scale.
2. Hidden Costs Are Draining Budgets
It’s not just about user experience — cost matters too. Many teams are surprised when they audit their current eSignature spend. What looked affordable in year one often balloons as usage scales.
Common culprits include:
- Per-envelope pricing that punishes growth
- User-based licenses that don’t reflect real consumption
- Add-on fees for basic capabilities like templates, bulk sending, or integrations
When comparing pricing of Docusign, these hidden costs become even more visible. Organizations end up paying more for less — while essential features sit behind paywalls.
Certinal, on the other hand, offers flat, transparent pricing that aligns with real usage and enterprise expectations. No billing shocks. No forced upgrades. Just predictable ROI.
3. Legacy Platforms Don’t Handle Scale Well
As your business grows, so do your workflows. But traditional eSign platforms weren’t built to handle the document volume, file sizes, or automation needs of a modern enterprise.
Let’s say you’re sending 500 onboarding forms a day, or working with contracts that include high-resolution brand assets or CAD files. Most platforms hit a limit — whether it’s performance lag, file size caps, or brittle workflow logic.
This is where Certinal emerges out to be better than legacy placers or Best Adobe Sign Alternative set themselves apart. With support for up to 100MB file uploads, bulk send, and workflow orchestration, Certinal is engineered for high-volume use cases.
Enterprise growth shouldn’t require compromise. Your eSignature platform should evolve with you — not hold you back.
4. Compliance Can’t Be an Afterthought
From GDPR to HIPAA to SOC 2, today’s regulatory environment is non-negotiable. Yet too many eSign solutions treat compliance like a plugin — something to configure, not something that’s built-in.
Certinal was designed with compliance at its core. Every document, signer, timestamp, and action is logged, encrypted, and auditable — without requiring manual effort. The result? Frictionless signing with full traceability.
For industries like healthcare, finance, and legal, where data governance is critical, this distinction matters. It’s not just about signing a document — it’s about creating a defensible, end-to-end record of approval.
5. One Platform, Multiple Workflows
Most legacy eSign tools were built to support basic document signing — and it shows. When your use cases expand beyond single signers and static PDFs, cracks begin to appear.
Modern organizations don’t operate in silos. HR teams need to automate offer letters and onboarding paperwork. Legal needs to manage NDAs, MSAs, and compliance approvals. Procurement needs multi-party vendor contracts routed across finance, legal, and stakeholders. And customer service? They’re sending release forms and policy updates every day.
If your eSign platform treats all of these as one-size-fits-all, your teams are wasting time configuring, reformatting, and double-checking.
Certinal is designed to handle multi-flow complexity — from conditional routing to parallel approvals and delegated signatures. It’s not just a DocuSign vs Adobe Sign comparison. It’s about choosing a platform that grows with your processes, not one that forces workarounds.
6. Control and Customization Built for Enterprise IT
For IT leaders, an eSign solution isn’t just a tool — it’s an ecosystem component. It must integrate with existing infrastructure, enforce role-based access, and offer full control over data, users, and workflows.
With many older platforms, customization often requires expensive consulting hours or premium-tier pricing. Custom branding, SSO enforcement, or data residency controls are often gated — if they’re available at all.
Certinal flips that model. You get:
- Granular permissions and access control
- Enterprise SSO & SAML integration
- Region-specific data storage options
- Audit logs, role hierarchies, and delegated administration
This level of control gives IT and security teams the governance they need — without slowing down business users.
7. The User Experience Isn’t Just for Signers
Most eSign vendors focus on the signer interface — and that’s important. But the daily users of these platforms aren’t always external customers. They’re your internal teams.
That’s where usability matters. If your HR team struggles to send a pre-filled offer letter, or legal can’t modify a routing path mid-process, the tool becomes a bottleneck — not a solution.
Certinal prioritizes both sides of the experience:
- For signers: mobile-optimized, frictionless, no-login signing
- For senders: intelligent templates, drag-and-drop workflows, real-time status tracking
- For admins: full visibility into usage, delivery, and audit trails
This end-to-end usability is why many forward-looking companies are choosing DocuSign alternatives like Certinal — platforms that empower everyone involved in the approval cycle, not just the final signer.
8. The ROI Isn’t Just in Licensing
When evaluating eSign tools, many teams stop at licensing cost. But real ROI lives in what happens after adoption:
- How many manual steps are eliminated?
- How much faster are your turnarounds?
- How many contracts, hires, or deals were saved from delay?
With Certinal, enterprises often realize savings of up to 50% compared to traditional tools — not just because of simpler pricing, but because the platform automates what legacy tools can’t. Bulk sends, parallel routing, multi-language templates, and embedded signing save hours daily across departments.
Ready to see it in action?
Book a demo and experience how Certinal transforms eSigning from a single step to a strategic advantage.
About the Author: Claire is a technology journalist with extensive experience covering emerging tech trends, AI developments, and the evolving digital landscape. Her experience helps readers understand complex technological advancements, and how they can be implemented in their everyday lives.
