For most companies, a signature folder is still an essential part of the final decision-making process today: documents and contracts are printed out and placed in a folder for management approval. Sustainability? It's nowhere to be found in this workflow — after all, digitally received documents are printed once, only to be scanned back in and sent by email. In the 21st century, there's only one answer to this inefficiency: DIGITISATION! And a powerful tool for this transformation is Zoho Sign. Discover how it works in this blog post — we guarantee that afterwards, you'll be ready to throw your signature folder out the window and switch to state-of-the-art technology.
What Is Zoho Sign?
Document management on point — that's the promise of Zoho Sign! This software lets you sign documents digitally, offering a secure and legally binding solution for electronic signatures. With Zoho Sign, you can not only sign documents digitally but also manage them effortlessly, saving valuable time for you and your team.
Zoho Sign is part of the Zoho ecosystem: founded in India in 1996, Zoho Corporation set out to digitise every area of business — and succeeded. Today, the company offers over 45 applications for sales, marketing, human resources, accounting and more, serving over 100 million users worldwide.
Why Should You Use Zoho Sign?
Zoho Sign is a leading digital signature solution that simplifies signing, sending and managing documents. Not only does it help you operate more sustainably, it also cuts costs and boosts productivity.
If you have concerns about security, rest assured: Zoho Sign ensures comprehensive data protection through data encryption. It also complies with international standards such as eIDAS (EU), the ESIGN Act (USA) and UETA, along with 2FA and blockchain-based timestamps for tamper protection.
You can fully customise the entire application and create templates with your own logo. Another practical feature is the ability to collect signatures from multiple recipients at once. Thanks to detailed audit trails, changes in the signature process — both internal and external — can be tracked throughout.
Key Features of Zoho Sign
Just triggering digital signatures? No — Zoho Sign does so much more, and takes a lot of work off your hands. Above all thanks to notifications, alerts and reminders for documents awaiting signature, which help ensure digital, automated workflows. Documents can also be automatically translated into multiple languages and sent as custom templates. Working across several systems? Zoho Sign lets you import documents from external applications quickly and easily — and the reverse holds too, since Zoho Sign integrates seamlessly with numerous external apps such as Google Drive or Gmail.
For logging and analysis, audit trails let you trace changes, and you can generate custom reports on activity and completions directly on the platform. And you don't need to be chained to your desktop to use any of this: Zoho Sign's mobile app lets you send, sign and manage documents on the go.
What Does Zoho Sign Cost?
Zoho Sign is available in three pricing plans — Standard, Professional and Enterprise — plus a free edition.
With a single user, you can use the free plan and have up to 5 documents signed per month. Alongside signing workflows, an email authentication code for signatories and USB-token signing for DSC, it includes notifications, document and folder management, document import and export, and the mobile app.
The Standard edition, at €12 per user per month, expands the package with 20 additional documents processed per month, configuration of your company's email alias, additional integrations with Zoho apps, and basic integrations with third-party apps such as Microsoft 365.
For €20 per user per month, the Professional edition lets you process an unlimited number of documents, plus shared templates, report generation, Zoho Forms integration and access to multilingual support.
In the Enterprise edition, at €28 per user per month, you get everything in Professional plus document approval, a personal signature, bulk signing and sending, blockchain timestamps, an API interface and much more.
What Is a Digital Signature?
Digital signatures can be likened to electronic fingerprints: they securely link a signatory to a document. The standard format used to guarantee the highest level of security is Public Key Infrastructure, or PKI — a specialised technology for electronic signatures that provides a secure framework using digital certificates and cryptographic keys to enable secure communication and identity authentication on the internet.
PKI relies on a mathematical algorithm to generate long keys: one public, one private. When a user digitally signs a document, a signature is created using the signatory's private key, which the signatory keeps secret. The algorithm generates data from the document and encrypts it, ultimately producing the digital signature, which is then given a timestamp. As a result, any changes made to the document after signing automatically invalidate it.
What Are Digital Signatures Used For?
First and foremost, digital signatures are used for legally binding electronic contracts and documents such as purchase agreements, tax forms and approvals. They're also widely used in finance and banking for online banking and transactions. Another major application area is healthcare, for electronic patient records, prescriptions and consent for medical treatment.
Is Zoho Sign GDPR Compliant?
Zoho is GDPR-compliant by design, placing a strong emphasis on adhering to data protection regulations. Alongside EU server locations, end-to-end encryption, and data minimisation and control, Zoho Sign meets European standards for electronic signatures through eIDAS and UETA compliance.
