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Docuseal: Open-source DocuSign alternative

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Re: Docuseal: Open-source DocuSign alternative

#121

Post by FpUser »

somery wrote: post #11

Hi everyone, my name is Alex and I'm the creator of DocuSeal. I was not happy with the existing mainstream document signing solutions so I decided to create an open-source alternative. I've been working on this project since the middle of May and here is what the tool can do so far: - PDF form fields builder - 10 field types available (Signature/Date/File/Checkbox etc) - Multiple submitters per document - Automated e…

Thanks for nice work. Will be checking it out and most likely using IRL if works as advertised.

Re: Docuseal: Open-source DocuSign alternative

#122

Post by mc32 »

lesuorac wrote: post #109
mc32 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The support person should not have that kind of access without auditability and traceability. Even Sundar should not be able to log into a console and read your emails either.

Sure but that's a different argument than the one presented above.

Someone implied that counterfeiting a sig or altering one, etc. was just as easy in Docusign as it would be with on on-site one-party controlled system. It just isn't.

Re: Docuseal: Open-source DocuSign alternative

#123

Post by bob1029 »

tiffanyh wrote: post #111

These projects never realize that eSign tech is a commodity, the actual business you are in is creating market level Trust for your platform. Eg if you’re a CFO, would you being willing to take the risk just to save a couple of bucks on a no-name eSign service for all your sensitive legal & vendor agreements, or use the worldwide Trusted eSign platform of DocuSign - which has gained acceptance by regulators as being…

> eSign tech is a commodity

We learned this pretty quickly with our banking products. Having your own bundled, first-party e-sign features can help differentiate your product from other vendors, but if the only thing you are selling is e-sign, they probably won't look at you. We do have an in-house e-sign feature in our product now. We evaluated integration with Adobe & DocuSign, but their APIs were so far away from what we needed that we decided to DIY.

Consider this - what is a bank going to do with raw access to something approximating docusign APIs? They outsource everything. Their vendors are the ones who would be consuming something like this and then reselling it. Getting onto the QVL for a US financial institution (and staying there) is usually a monster battle if you are a new kid on the block.

If you still wanted to market this solution towards US financial institutions, I'd start with the vendors of those institutions. Companies like Jack Henry & Associates, FiServ, CSi, FIS, Harland Clarke, et. al.

Re: Docuseal: Open-source DocuSign alternative

#124

Post by somery »

bob1029 wrote: post #123
tiffanyh wrote: post #111

These projects never realize that eSign tech is a commodity, the actual business you are in is creating market level Trust for your platform. Eg if you’re a CFO, would you being willing to take the risk just to save a couple of bucks on a no-name eSign service for all your sensitive legal & vendor agreements, or use the worldwide Trusted eSign platform of DocuSign - which has gained acceptance by regulators as being…

> eSign tech is a commodity We learned this pretty quickly with our banking products. Having your own bundled, first-party e-sign features can help differentiate your product from other vendors, but if the only thing you are selling is e-sign, they probably won't look at you. We do have an in-house e-sign feature in our product now. We evaluated integration with Adobe & DocuSign, but their APIs were so far away from…

That's interesting that you ended up developing an in-house document e-signing feature for your product. I'm curious, would it be possible for you to choose a self-hosted and open-source solution like Docuseal, integrated with your product to outsource the complexity and speed up the development? (if such an option existed back then?)

Re: Docuseal: Open-source DocuSign alternative

#125

Post by gamblor956 »

FpUser wrote: post #117
tiffanyh wrote: post #111

These projects never realize that eSign tech is a commodity, the actual business you are in is creating market level Trust for your platform. Eg if you’re a CFO, would you being willing to take the risk just to save a couple of bucks on a no-name eSign service for all your sensitive legal & vendor agreements, or use the worldwide Trusted eSign platform of DocuSign - which has gained acceptance by regulators as being…

>"Eg if you’re a CFO, would you being willing to take the risk just to save a couple of bucks " Typical FUD preached by many online companies to lure customers. Even verbal contracts are enforceable (with the caveats of course). These will be fine for the most boring cases. The others are signed with lawyers anyways.

"take the risk"

This is the important part you're ignoring. Yes, verbal contracts between businesses are binding, but only to the extent you can actually prove the terms in a court of law.

Using DocuSign (or similar) is about risk mitigation, specifically about being able to prove the the contents of the contract in legal proceedings.

The risk with being a business that allows for verbal contracts is that one of your vendors may be unscrupulous and truly screw you over. And that's a matter of when, not if.

Re: Docuseal: Open-source DocuSign alternative

#126

Post by judge2020 »

saqadri wrote: post #116
judge2020 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DocuSign is free for 3 signatures a month - did you need more or were you using more advanced features?

There was a free trial period that expired, and there was no free option for additional documents that required multiple signers.

I think you just got hit by their marketing page that hides the fact that there's a free plan. I'm on the free plan and I was able to send out a document with three signers. https://rr.judge.sh/Screenshot%202023-07-20%20at%201.03.45%E...

Re: Docuseal: Open-source DocuSign alternative

#127

Post by [deleted] »

tiffanyh wrote: post #111

These projects never realize that eSign tech is a commodity, the actual business you are in is creating market level Trust for your platform. Eg if you’re a CFO, would you being willing to take the risk just to save a couple of bucks on a no-name eSign service for all your sensitive legal & vendor agreements, or use the worldwide Trusted eSign platform of DocuSign - which has gained acceptance by regulators as being…

[deleted]

Re: Docuseal: Open-source DocuSign alternative

#128

Post by gamblor956 »

somery wrote: post #11

Hi everyone, my name is Alex and I'm the creator of DocuSeal. I was not happy with the existing mainstream document signing solutions so I decided to create an open-source alternative. I've been working on this project since the middle of May and here is what the tool can do so far: - PDF form fields builder - 10 field types available (Signature/Date/File/Checkbox etc) - Multiple submitters per document - Automated e…

can be self-hosted on-premises

This kills it as a viable alternative to DocuSign. The point of Docusign is that it is an independent third party that maintains custody of the signed contract and proof of acceptance (i.e., digital signatures) by all parties to the contract.

A self-hosted digital signature system isn't worth anything in court; the other parties will simply reject the authenticity of any data held within it and the amount you'd have to spend to get that data into evidence would probably pay for several centuries of DocuSign's enterprise edition.

That being said, the cloud-hosted option seems viable as a competitor for Docusign if it's offered by you/your organization as a service, and could provide financial support for continued development.

Re: Docuseal: Open-source DocuSign alternative

#129

Post by supermatt »

dtx1 wrote: post #44
supermatt wrote: post #33

The way a system like docusign works is that it is a (trusted) independent third party that will verify that the owner of email address X is the one that "signed" the specific version of an agreement. By self-hosting, you have access to the infrastructure and can manipulate it to your will. There is no proof that the counterparty signed anything - you could just manipulate it to say they did. This potential for misus…

Not entirely true, cryptographic signatures exist. For example the EU eIDAS Law allows Advanced Cryptographic Signatures to basically just be PGP Signed Emails

Yeah, we use them here in Lithuania - but I have never seen them used for private contracts.

I'm not even sure how i can use my signature outside the AWFUL experience that is the government esig portal.

I dont think they are accessible for non-resident entities either - i.e. i can only get lithuanian signatures through the lithuanian portal.

This likely explains why they arent used b2b as you would need a separate contract process for foreign and domestic.

Re: Docuseal: Open-source DocuSign alternative

#130

Post by bob1029 »

somery wrote: post #124
bob1029 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> eSign tech is a commodity We learned this pretty quickly with our banking products. Having your own bundled, first-party e-sign features can help differentiate your product from other vendors, but if the only thing you are selling is e-sign, they probably won't look at you. We do have an in-house e-sign feature in our product now. We evaluated integration with Adobe & DocuSign, but their APIs were so far away from…

That's interesting that you ended up developing an in-house document e-signing feature for your product. I'm curious, would it be possible for you to choose a self-hosted and open-source solution like Docuseal, integrated with your product to outsource the complexity and speed up the development? (if such an option existed back then?)

> outsource the complexity

Honestly the bulk of complexity seemed to emerge from the mismatch between what we thought would be a good e-sign API and what APIs were actually available.

The way our product works, we need to have access to the raw signature specimen at various stages of the signing process because we have a document generation feature that dynamically inserts the specimens into the appropriate fields. Put differently, we don't show the documents until we first have a signature (and initials) specimen collected from the e-sign participant. This is basically the exact opposite of how most vendors work, but our customers really like it this way.

We also needed a way to in-line bank-specific e-sign consent documents into the experience, giving the e-signer a way to decline consent and have this decline kick off an appropriate back-office workflow. The other reason we went in house is we wanted to completely close the loop. After the last e-signer completes their piece, our product detects this condition and submits all final documents to the institution's long-term cold storage system. Getting this to work with a 3rd party API looked like a total non-starter to me - We can't just send the docs right away. There are time-of-day constraints on when those systems will be available throughout the week.

Our e-sign solution ultimately turned into a workflow-style experience with 6-7 steps.

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