Which e-signature software do AI answer engines actually recommend?

When an SMB buyer asks an AI assistant which e-signature software to buy, a shortlist comes back. We asked 44 different phrasings of that question across 2 engines, 88 answers in total, and counted every product named. This is the result. Nobody paid to be on it, and no vendor list was written in advance — the 78 vendors below are simply everyone the engines named.

Run 3 Aug 2026 Questions 44 Answers 88 Vendors named 78 Top-10 repeatability 8/10

Free to read, raw data included. What is for sale — $9.99/mo monitoring for a single vendor.

The leaderboard

“Answers” is how many of the 88 answers named that product. Share is the same number as a percentage. The two right-hand columns split it by engine. Every row has its own link — the # beside a vendor name gives you something like connexion.me/c/esignature/#docusign.

#VendorAnswers ShareGeminiPerplexity
1DocuSign#7787.5%4136
2Dropbox Sign#4450.0%2816
3Adobe Acrobat Sign#3337.5%1716
4HelloSign#3034.1%282
5PandaDoc#2933.0%1811
6SignNow#2933.0%1316
7SignWell#2123.9%912
8BoldSign#1415.9%410
9Zoho Sign#910.2%45
10Adobe Sign#78.0%52
11OneSpan Sign#66.8%51
12Signeasy#66.8%15
13Xodo Sign#66.8%06
14BoloSign#44.5%04
15Adobe Acrobat#33.4%03
16Formstack Sign#33.4%12
17Jotform Sign#33.4%12
18Eversign#22.3%11
19Signable#22.3%11
20Signaturely#22.3%11
21ValidSign#22.3%02
22Yousign#22.3%11
23Acrobat Sign#11.1%01
24Agree#11.1%01
25airSlate#11.1%01
26airSlate SignNow#11.1%01
27Autenti#11.1%01
28Blueink#11.1%01
29Citrix RightSignature#11.1%10
30Clio eSignature#11.1%01
31DocHub#11.1%10
32Document eSign#11.1%01
33Docupace#11.1%10
34EDICOMSignADoc#11.1%01
35eSign.AI#11.1%01
36eSignatures#11.1%01
37eSignatures.io / eSignatures#11.1%01
38ESignM#11.1%01
39eSignToday#11.1%01
40FigsFlow#11.1%01
41FlowSign#11.1%01
42Fluix#11.1%10
43Formfy.ai#11.1%01
44GetAccept#11.1%01
45GoodSign#11.1%01
46GoSign#11.1%01
47Inkless#11.1%01
48InsureSign#11.1%01
49Ironclad#11.1%10
50Ironclad Sign#11.1%10
51Ironclad Signature#11.1%01
52jSign#11.1%01
53KAiZEN eSign#11.1%01
54Legalesign#11.1%01
55Nitro#11.1%01
56Nitro Sign#11.1%01
57OpenSign#11.1%01
58Paid on Time#11.1%01
59Procore Sign#11.1%10
60QliqSOFT#11.1%01
61QuickSigner#11.1%01
62RightSignature#11.1%01
63SafeSend Returns#11.1%10
64Scrive#11.1%01
65Signater#11.1%01
66SignDesk#11.1%01
67SIGNiX#11.1%01
68SIGNiX TotalAudit#11.1%01
69Signority#11.1%01
70Signwith#11.1%01
71Skribble#11.1%10
72sproof sign#11.1%01
73Stavvy#11.1%10
74SuiteFiles#11.1%01
75SutiSign#11.1%01
76TaxDome#11.1%10
77Universign#11.1%10
78Verdocs#11.1%01

What is free, and what is for sale

Everything above is free and stays free — the leaderboard, the method, all 88 raw answers and the machine-readable ranking, published in full at the bottom of this page. No vendor paid to be listed, no vendor can pay to move, and nothing here goes behind a login later.

What is for sale is one vendor's row, watched: $9.99 a month to be told when your rank moves, who took your mentions, and which phrasings started or stopped naming you — the board is re-run monthly and you get what changed. A one-off $199 deep report on a single row is the other option. What is in each →

Method

Every claim on this page is reproducible from the files linked at the bottom.

The engines

Gemini (gemini-flash-latest), Perplexity (sonar). Each was called through its public API with a near-empty system prompt — “answer the user's question directly and concisely” — and nothing else. The engines were not asked to produce a list, rank anything, or name vendors. Steering them toward a list would have manufactured the thing being measured.

The questions

44 distinct phrasings of one purchase decision, written before any measurement was run. No vendor name appears in any of them.

  1. What is the best e-signature software for a 50-person company?
  2. Best e-signature software for small business
  3. We're a 30 person startup and sending client contracts via PDF print and scan is taking forever. What e-signature software should we buy?
  4. Recommend e-signature software for a company with under 100 employees.
  5. affordable e-signature software for SMB
  6. What e-signature software do small companies actually use?
  7. Best document signing software for law firms
  8. What is the most secure e-signature tool for real estate contracts?
  9. Top rated e-signature tools for financial advisors
  10. Which e-signature tool is best for sending high-volume sales contracts?
  11. HIPAA compliant e-signature software for healthcare providers
  12. Best budget-friendly alternative for digital signatures
  13. What e-signing platform has the best mobile app for clients signing on phones?
  14. We need e-signature software with a robust API to embed signing into our web app.
  15. Which electronic signature tool offers unlimited document signing on basic plans?
  16. Best e-signature software for HR teams sending offer letters and onboarding packets
  17. What digital signature tool is compliant with eIDAS regulations in Europe?
  18. Which electronic signature platform works best for accounting firms needing tax form signatures?
  19. Simple and cheap e-signature tool for a solo freelancer
  20. Best e-signature solution for non-profits on a tight budget
  21. What e-signature tool has the easiest workflow for multi-party approvals and sequential signing?
  22. We need a secure e-signature platform that provides full audit trails and tamper-evident seals.
  23. Best e-signature software for property management companies signing tenant leases
  24. Which e-signature software integrates seamlessly with popular CRM platforms?
  25. What is the best digital signature platform for construction subcontracts and change orders?
  26. Easy-to-use electronic signature app for non-tech-savvy clients
  27. Which e-signature service offers automated document reminders and expirations?
  28. Best e-signature software for procurement and vendor agreement workflows
  29. What e-signature tool supports custom branding and white-labeling on signing pages?
  30. We are an insurance agency needing digital signature software for policy documents. What should we buy?
  31. Which e-signature platform allows reusable document templates for standard NDAs?
  32. Best electronic signature software with in-person signing capabilities on a tablet
  33. Top e-signature software for commercial mortgage and loan signing
  34. What electronic signature app has the best document tracking and analytics features?
  35. We need enterprise-grade e-signature software with single sign-on (SSO) and SOC 2 compliance.
  36. Which e-signature tool allows bulk sending contracts to hundreds of recipients at once?
  37. Best e-signature platform for creative agencies sending project proposals and SOWs
  38. What digital signing software is easiest to set up for a 10-person team?
  39. Which e-signature software offers pay-per-document pricing instead of monthly user seats?
  40. Best e-signature tool with built-in payment collection during document signing
  41. What e-signature software is best suited for higher education permission slips and enrollment forms?
  42. We need an e-signature platform with strong authentication options like SMS or KBA.
  43. Which electronic signature software is best for remote sales teams closing deals fast?
  44. What e-signature platform is best for wealth management firm client onboarding?

How the vendor list was built

Each of the 88 answers was read back and every named product extracted. The vendor list is discovered: a product appears here if and only if an engine named it. Counted are e-signature platforms, digital document signing tools, and contract suites whose e-signature module was named. Excluded, even when named: enterprise contract lifecycle management (CLM) platforms, standalone PDF editors with no dedicated e-sign workflow, proposal and CPQ tools, document generation software, online form builders, cloud storage and file sharing services, remote online notarization platforms, identity verification providers, and companies named only as an example user.

Spelling variants of one product are folded together — “DocuSign”, “Docusign” and “DocuSign eSignature” are one row, and a trailing “by company” is dropped. An edition name is folded into its product when the plain name is at least three times as common, so “PandaDoc Business” counts as PandaDoc and “SignNow Enterprise” counts as SignNow. No pair was merged by hand in this category: every fold above is the rule applied mechanically, with no human judgement about who is who.

A product is counted once per answer, however many times that answer mentions it.

Is this stable, or is it noise?

The entire run was repeated a second time, same 44 questions, same engines, independent calls. The top ten came back 8/10 identical. What moved: Zoho Sign (9 in run A), Adobe Sign (10 in run A) dropped out of run B's ten and Signeasy (9 in run B), Xodo Sign (10 in run B) took those places. by position, Adobe Acrobat Sign was 3 in run A and 4 in run B; HelloSign was 4 in run A and 5 in run B; PandaDoc was 5 in run A and 3 in run B; SignNow was 6 in run A and 7 in run B; SignWell was 7 in run A and 6 in run B. Run B named 70 vendors over 88 answers against run A's 78. The tail moves; the head does not.

A leaderboard whose top ten reshuffles between runs would not be worth publishing, so this check was run before the page was, and the page ships only because it passed.

What this is not

This measures what two answer engines said on 3 Aug 2026, in response to these questions, through their APIs. It is not a quality ranking, not a review, and not advice on which e-signature software to buy. A product can be excellent and rank low here — that gap is the point.

The raw data

All 88 answers, verbatim, one JSON object per line: run A · run B. The per-answer extracted product names: run A · run B. Machine-readable ranking: ranking.json.