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 August 2026 Questions 44 Answers 88 Vendors named 78 Top-10 repeatability 8/10

Free to read, raw data included.

Is one of these e-signature tools yours?

The board is re-measured every month. For $9.99 a month you get one email when your own row moves — your rank and answer count, who took the mentions you were absent from, and which of the 44 questions started or stopped naming you. Leave your address and I reply by hand with what your row reads today. What is in it, and the $29.99 one-off report →

Nothing is charged and nothing starts — I reply by email. Your address is used to answer you and to set up billing; it does not go on a list.

Two conditions on every number below

These 44 questions are one family of phrasings — e-signature software — and every number below is conditional on them. A differently worded family about the same products — a different size of buyer, a different budget, a different constraint — is a different measurement and can come back naming a different set of products. All 44 questions are printed in full below, so you can see exactly what was asked before you read what came back. We have measured how big that can get, on two of our own boards: SuiteCRM is named in 83 of the 132 answers on /c/crmctx/ and in none of the 132 on /c/crm/ — same products, same day, same extraction, asked differently.
The engine columns below are not one instrument. Perplexity (sonar) searches the web while it answers and returned the sources used beside every one of those 44 answers — that column is what gets retrieved. Gemini (gemini-flash-latest) was called through its API with no tools and the near-empty system prompt quoted in the method below, so it answers out of the model’s own weights — not one of those 44 answers came back with a source. That column is what the model already remembers. Both are worth counting and they are not the same measurement: a product can be named often by what the models remember and rarely by what they retrieve, or the reverse, and the totals in the Answers column add the two together.

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. Click a vendor's name to see which of the 44 questions named them, and click one of those to read the answer it was counted from, word for word.

#VendorAnswers ShareGeminiPerplexity
1DocuSign#7787.5%4136
2Dropbox Sign#
Named together with HelloSign in 29 of the 45 answers that name either. Gemini’s answer to question 2 writes the two as one product renamed: “Dropbox Sign (formerly HelloSign)”. Counted as separate rows — how names are counted.
4450.0%2816
3Adobe Acrobat Sign#3337.5%1716
4HelloSign#
Named together with Dropbox Sign in 29 of the 45 answers that name either. Gemini’s answer to question 2 writes the two as one product renamed: “Dropbox Sign (formerly HelloSign)”. Counted as separate rows — how names are counted.
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#
Named together with Eversign in 1 of the 7 answers that name either. Perplexity’s answer to question 22 writes the two as one product renamed: “**Xodo Sign (formerly eversign)**”. Counted as separate rows — how names are counted.
66.8%06
14BoloSign#44.5%04
15Adobe Acrobat#33.4%03
16Formstack Sign#33.4%12
17Jotform Sign#33.4%12
18Eversign#
Named together with Xodo Sign in 1 of the 7 answers that name either. Perplexity’s answer to question 22 writes the two as one product renamed: “**Xodo Sign (formerly eversign)**”. Counted as separate rows — how names are counted.
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 $29.99 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.

These 44 questions are one phrasing family, not every way this market gets asked about. The family is e-signature software — that is the wording they were written from, and it is counted back against them here: 31 of them contain “e-signature”; 21 of them contain “software”, and 36 of the 44 contain at least one. A different family about the same products — a different size of buyer, a different budget, a different constraint, different words — is a different measurement, and it can come back naming a different set of vendors. This board is this family, measured. It is not the whole market.
  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, and a trailing “by company” is dropped. This run collapsed 12 spellings onto 6 of the rows below: “DocuSign” and “Docusign” are one row — the one the table prints as DocuSign. An edition name is folded into its product when it is that product’s name followed by a further word, and the plain name is at least three times as common. This run folded 6 such names, among them “DocuSign Rooms for Real Estate” counts as DocuSign and “Dropbox Sign/HelloSign” counts as Dropbox Sign. A name that merely begins with the same letters is a different product and keeps its own row. 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.

Beyond those folds a product is counted as the engines spelled it, and two rows in the table are never merged into one. When a product has been renamed or acquired and the engines still answer with both names, both names keep their own row: this page carries no hand-maintained list of who is now who, because that list would be a human claim about a mechanical count and nothing here could check it. What it has instead is the answers. Where an answer itself writes two of the rows below as one product renamed — the construction “X (formerly Y)” — the line beside those rows quotes that sentence and gives the overlap and the total, so the union is on the page. Nothing else produces that line. Two rows being named in the same answers does not, however often: the engines answer in shortlists, so the leaders of a category are named together whatever they are called. 2 pairs of rows below carry that line in this run: Dropbox Sign and HelloSign, Xodo Sign and Eversign. What each one quotes is what an engine wrote, not a judgement of ours about who owns what.

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 is stable to within one place.

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 August 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.

What Perplexity was reading. It is the only one of these engines that returns a source list, and the markers in its answers above — [1], [2] — point into it. Every URL it cited, with the title, date and the excerpt it actually retrieved, one JSON object per answer: run A · run B. Join on index to the answers file, and read [n] as citations[n-1]. Perplexity returned a source list on 44 of its 44 answers. Gemini returned no sources at all — no citation, grounding or search-result field of any kind appears anywhere in its API response, on any of the 44 answers it gave. That is a fact about the engine, not a gap in this page.

The sources behind the answers

Run A's 44 Perplexity answers cited 858 URLs across 224 distinct domains. Below are the 60 that were cited in three or more separate answers. Citations counts every URL from that domain, so a domain cited three times in one answer counts three times; Answers is how many of the 44 answers cited it at all.

DomainCitationsAnswers
reddit.com6134
docusign.com4531
pandadoc.com4530
boldsign.com3425
zapier.com3231
signwell.com3125
getaccept.com2929
eversign.com2318
gartner.com2222
youtube.com2117
g2.com1716
jotform.com1714
techradar.com1616
signeasy.com1513
blueink.com1414
getapp.com1212
adobe.com1111
proposify.com1111
learn.g2.com1110
boloforms.com99
zignt.com99
esign.ai88
sirion.ai77
gitnux.org66
verdocs.com66
esignly.com65
guideflow.com65
play.google.com65
f6s.com55
fillhq.com55
geeksforgeeks.org55
hackceleration.com55
signix.com55
viasocket.com55
youtrust.com55
authsignature.com54
esignglobal.com54
resources.signnow.com54
ustechautomations.com54
docupilot.com44
formfy.ai44
signnow.com44
thedigitalprojectmanager.com44
turbodocx.com44
worldmetrics.org44
formstack.com43
onespan.com43
zoho.com43
autenti.com33
blog.hubspot.com33
esevosign.com33
facebook.com33
gonitro.com33
securedsigning.com33
sign.dropbox.com33
signable.com33
trustradius.com33
wesignature.com33
wifitalents.com33
worksbuddy.ai33

A domain missing from this table was cited in fewer than three answers, or was never cited at all — the run A file linked above is the complete list either way, and it is the only way to tell those two apart. Cited is not endorsed: a page the engine retrieved is not a page that recommended anyone, and this counts what was read, not what it said.

The answer a vendor panel shows you is read straight out of the run A file linked above — the page fetches the one line it needs and displays it unaltered, so what you read there and what you get by downloading the file are the same bytes.

What one line of each file holds, and the terms you may re-use them under — the raw answers may be re-used in any medium, commercially and inside open-source software, with attribution.