PandaDoc the Perfect Fit

Jumping From RightSignature to PandaDocs

We were previously paying RighSignature somewhere around $600/yr to essentially send around 4 documents per month via API to Podio. I took a deep breath and looked at that renewal cost during a pandemic and decided to look for options. It boiled down to SignNow or PandaDoc. When I saw PandaDocs free tier, I made the jump and haven't looked back. We did lose the automation functionality in the process, but the $600/yr savings makes up for it. We simply uploaded the NDA and Agreements we use and we "duplicate" them when we need to send a new one. The process takes 3 minutes at the most to setup, send and sign. If you're a small business getting started and need free e-Signing, PandaDoc is a winner.

Pros

They provide a free tier for smaller companies to fulfill their e-signing requirements. If that wasn't enough, their free tier does not have any major, missing components that would cripple the software. It just works beautifully at the wonderful cost of "zero".

Cons

I'm not in a place to complain when I'm using e-Signature software for free. However, it would be really, really nice if they could provide some limited API or Zapier functionality with the free tier. I don't expect that to happen, but it would be lovely if they did it.

If only it integrated with other products!

Excellent overall - form creation, editing, distribution, and management were all very easy.

Pros

We used this software to process employment related forms for contractors and employees at the college and it was mostly great. The text boxes could be a little simpler for editing (you can't highlight text and change it, you have to use arrow keys to move to the text like you're working at a DOS prompt). But for document tracking, signatures, and security it's fantastic. If you don't have the need to integrate with enterprise systems you can't find a better document/workflow management software.

Cons

It doesn't integrate with much in the way of enterprise software. As time passed and our other software was updated it became more difficult to track some things because Panda didn't integrate with any of our critical systems. As a result we used Panda less because most of the new ERP systems (and HRIS, and Finance) include workflows, forms, and signatures today.

Does the job but improvements needed

Easy to learn and use. PandaDoc support team does seem willing to listen and interested in suggestions. They say they will forward suggestions to the development team. Overall PandaDoc feels like it's still very young and needs its developers to pay more attention to some smaller details to improve user experience and polish some existing features.

Pros

Quick and easy to learn and train staff. PandaDoc support team is responsive, even if they don't have all the answers. Does some jobs well. If you just need to get a simple signature on a simple form, this is easy peasy.

Cons

No conditional logic on forms. For example a W-9 form requires either a SSN or EIN and only one check-box must be checked. No way to make conditional requirements like this. The editor is tedious when designing forms from scratch: making the slightest edit to a section that has many checkboxes, for example, will skew the whole document out of alignment. While viewing "Completed" documents, after opening a document to view it, then returning back to the list again, there's no indicator showing which document was last opened, so it's hard to know where you left off on the list of docs. This seems like such an obvious and simple feature. Published forms (forms embedded as code on on website) have the following issue: If a signature is needed from us (originator) and signer (website visitor), then signer must enter OUR email address before they can fill out the form. If we leave off our signature (as a workaround) then the signer will receive notification emails normally intended for originator (Your form has been viewed, etc) and there's no way to turn off those notifications. PandaDoc chat support staff was stumped on that one. There's no way to enable notification to another team member. This is a problem for teams that divide work. Example: team member #1 creates/modifies forms, team member #2 works with signed documents. Team member #2 can't be notified of newly arrived docs. Why limit who can be notified? Things like that. Improvements are needed.

Easy to use, growing product!

Really great! User friendly and I also like how much progress the product makes! It is fun to see new features.

Pros

I really like how easy it is to organize documents and collect signatures. I like assigning signers and others who are responsible for filling in certain information.

Cons

Sometimes importing documents from word can lose their formatting, and I am very particular about that. I just plan for more time for inputting new documents.