Adobe Acrobat Sign vs. Dropbox Sign

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Acrobat Sign
Score 8.5 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Acrobat Sign is an e-signature solution that combines simple and secure e-signatures with Adobe Acrobat. With Acrobat Sign, the user can create, sign, send for signature, manage, and track documents from one Adobe platform. The user can create signing experiences for customers and teams by enabling them to sign documents on any device or browser – anytime, anywhere. No additional software download or accounts are needed. As Microsoft’s e-signature solution, Acrobat Sign…
$14.99
per month license
Dropbox Sign
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
HelloSign is an electronic signature software offering acquired by Dropbox in early 2019. It includes features such as customization for businesses of any size and bank-level security.
$0
Pricing
Adobe Acrobat SignDropbox Sign
Editions & Modules
Acrobat Standard DC for teams
$14.99
per month license
Acrobat Pro DC with advanced e-sign
$16.99
per month license
Acrobat Sign Solutions
Call 800-685-4192 for pricing
Free
$0
Essentials
$15
per month
Standard
$17.5
per month starting at two users, per user
Essentials API
$75
per month Starting at 50 signature requests / mo.
Standard API
$250
per month Starting at 100 signature requests / mo.
Premium
Custom
Custom
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe Acrobat SignDropbox Sign
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup Fee$34.99 license per monthOptional
Additional DetailsAdditional pricing available for HelloWorks and HelloFax
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe Acrobat SignDropbox Sign
Considered Both Products
Adobe Acrobat Sign
Chose Adobe Acrobat Sign
Even though we are happy with Adobe Sign, we gave HelloSign a try because their interface seems to have a fresher, more modern look, and we thought maybe it would have more features and a better mobile app than Adobe Sign. It turned out HelloSign had far less features than …
Chose Adobe Acrobat Sign
HelloSign is a similar product to Adobe Sign; however, I found it lacking in some features that are present in Adobe Sign. Usability is similar, [but] I believe that Adobe Sign has a slight edge and I found it nicer to use [with a] better layout and design to be honest.
Chose Adobe Acrobat Sign
Other e-sign programs like DocuSign and HelloSign offer comparable services to Adobe Sign. Ultimately, we went with Adobe Sign because there was a sale price, and their package (# transactions/documents included for the price) had better value. HelloSign is a great option for …
Chose Adobe Acrobat Sign
DocuSign is a per-email pricing structure, which is extremely inconvenient for us as we send out thousands of emails a day - and also MUCH more technical in setup. Adobe Sign most certainly meets our needs and expectations. HelloSign is great for a Non-Profit type tool, but …
Chose Adobe Acrobat Sign
I have prior experience at a previous company with DocuSign, and while that platform may provide a smaller set of features & functionality, it is also more intuitive for first-time users.
Chose Adobe Acrobat Sign
We felt Adobe's branding and trustworthiness as a great fit for what we do, considering we deal with many sets of sensitive information. We also use other Adobe products, so it was a natural fit with the rest of our mix of tools. We also felt the advanced functionality would be …
Chose Adobe Acrobat Sign
Adobe Sign has the brand-name edge on the other products. It is towards the upper end of the price range, with features comparable to the others. It would be a stronger contender if it had support and if logging in wasn't such a challenge. Not my first choice, but not a bad …
Dropbox Sign
Chose Dropbox Sign
Great software, however the integration of the Dropbox cloud in tandem with this is amazing and simpler than this great competitor for an all in one solution.
Chose Dropbox Sign
Dropbox seemed easier to use and cheaper than the others. It was just as functional.
Chose Dropbox Sign
It stacks up pretty well, I do think some of the templates I've seen are a bit lacking with Dropbox sign.
Chose Dropbox Sign
It is less expensive and assists nonprofits. That was the biggest factor for us, especially when it came to the integration with Salesforce and SharePoint. Although we do not use it now, we plan on using it other applications were way out of our price range, and DocuSign was …
Chose Dropbox Sign
Less features simpler to use though
Chose Dropbox Sign
Cost and interface were the main factors, as well as DocuSign has issue with IRS tax forms deleting all the prefilled fields upon upload.
Chose Dropbox Sign
I selected Dropbox Sign because it was very easy to use, started with a free plan, and I knew that if I needed a professional plan, it would be reasonably priced. DocuSign was too expensive, and Adobe products are always hard to use and integrate with.
Chose Dropbox Sign
Dropbox sign stacks up positively against other signature programs in ease of use and cost.
Chose Dropbox Sign
While the options above are viable, they don't seem to have the cost structures set up appropriately to capture the longtail of users that my company and I exist in. Even if they are cheaper, they entangle you in a mesh that basically leaves you stuck in their ecosystem. …
Chose Dropbox Sign
We've been using HelloSign for so long that we are sticking with Dropbox Sign. I find Adobe's proprietary nonsense to be frustrating and annoying; I'm happy with Dropbox as a company and don't want to learn a new tool.
Chose Dropbox Sign
Very similar to the others, except this is tightly integrated within the dropbox file/cloud storage, which our company already uses, so that makes it that much more convenient you don't have to go to another platform. You can access it directly within the dropbox ecosystem.
Chose Dropbox Sign
Dropbox Sign stacks up very comparably, but I think the mobile UE on DocuSign is better.
Chose Dropbox Sign
I used HelloSign because I read good reviews. I had no time to look for other competitors during the lockdown period. Now, we are evaluating other e-signature systems and I will spend more time to compare them with HelloSign. I don't know if other solutions are as focused as …
Chose Dropbox Sign
We trialed HelloSign, Adobe Sign, DocuSign, and Instanet. We chose HelloSign because it was the most user-friendly for us and for our signers. The customization was unmatched and met all of our needs fully. The other platforms felt bulky or not intuitive, where HelloSign was …
Chose Dropbox Sign
HelloSign and DocuSign offer similar features. I prefer to recommend HelloSign to freelancers and smaller businesses because they can get started on the free plan and only upgrade when they are ready. DocuSign doesn't offer a free plan. Adobe Sign isn't very intuitive so I'm …
Chose Dropbox Sign
We chose to use HelloSign due to ease and flexibility of their API as compared to competitive solutions in the market. Cost was a secondary factor, but our primary driver was the control that we had in integrating the e-sign step in our onboarding.
Chose Dropbox Sign
From a functional perspective, HelloSign is similar. However, I prefer HelloSign's pricing model.
Best Alternatives
Adobe Acrobat SignDropbox Sign
Small Businesses
Foxit eSign
Foxit eSign
Score 9.8 out of 10
Foxit eSign
Foxit eSign
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
MSB Docs
MSB Docs
Score 9.4 out of 10
MSB Docs
MSB Docs
Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises
DocuSign
DocuSign
Score 8.3 out of 10
DocuSign
DocuSign
Score 8.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe Acrobat SignDropbox Sign
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.4
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(0 ratings)
9.8
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.3
(0 ratings)
1.7
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe Acrobat SignDropbox Sign
Likelihood to Recommend
Organizations with heavy usage inside Adobe product suites will find adoption seamless. However as it is driven on Adobe's platform some users may face challenges but as a whole the same business philosophy drives this as other Adobe platforms - they want your business - all of your business and it presents challenges if you don't agree. Product inculturation has been successful for organizations like Apple and even BMW, but with the global economy it can provide an appearance of elitism, often duly earned, or present unnecessary hurdles for integration which always impacts adoption timing and usage. While I understand and agree (for the most part) with revenue driven product layering, I believe that easier integration and full product availability definitely affect both acquisition and retention numbers. Adobe has a mighty and well deserved pedigree, and if you are aware of and prepared for the challenges I listed - you will probably love this software. If you need to have an easier and larger adoption and rollout, there are other options that will be a better fit especially if one of your data points is monitoring the impact and efficacy of the software on your team's time, conversion metrics and the impact on your clients. Adobe doesn't appear fond of self report analytics. On a side note, Adobe is a HUGE corporation and I have managed several of their enterprise platforms and they are awesome at allowing access to and support of legacy products, but identifying direct support was moderately to extremely difficult and requires a patience and tenacity above what one might expect for a company with whom you contribute significant income for their products. In a time when a new software pops up by the minute, having the heritage of Adobe is rock solid but a little more flexibility would make this product more attractive. I would still recommend the product albeit with awareness and acceptance of aforementioned challenges
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Cross functionally this product is great and the reminders/ email notifications are super helpful. Also signers who are not familiar with Dropbox sign have no problem using the tool. I find it super user friendly. I have found its a little harder to use when a signer has an agent (not a party signing the doc) and the agent wants to review prior to the person signing.
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Pros
  • Adobe Acrobat Sign tracks whether or not a signer has viewed a document
  • Adobe Acrobat Sign tracks when a signer has signed, and the document has been sent to the next signer
  • Adobe Acrobat Sign sends you confirmation emails and progress update emails along the way
  • Adobe Acrobat Sign provides a "confirmation of signing" page at the end of the document package you put together, to prove the signatures are authentic
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  • Allows customization for each client.
  • Gives us all the room we need to create a thorough contract.
  • Allows us to save each executed contract as a PDF.
  • Looks like a pricey, professionally drawn-up contract.
  • The ability to send a new customer a professional-looking contract like this makes us look "bigger" than we are.
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Cons
  • I've noticed if I am sent a link to sign through Adobe Acrobat Sign and I have several Acrobat windows open (especially if there is a prior sign window still open) the program freezes when it tries to open the new signature link (my firm uses Macs, so not sure how or if that is related to the glitch).
  • I have had times when one of the parties in the email string sent to gather signatures either encountered issues or are unable to sign and the integrated help menus don't seem to be sufficient to walk a novice through the process.
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  • It would be nice to be able to build a template for just the location of the signature boxes that would allow me to upload a document, and the boxes could be basically replaced. I have the exact same doc for each of my clients, but there are small changes here and there, and I have to fill in their personal info through another program, so it would be nice to be able to do a template this way instead of just tying a template to one document.
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Likelihood to Renew
EchoSign has without a doubt helped our company to become more economic and time efficient. We can provide our customers with an entire documentation packet filled with all of the required paperwork they will ever need to sign in one quick email. The return time is at least four times quicker than sending through traditional mail methods, and is just as easy to instruct as flagging a hard copy. Our company is in the renewable energy industry, and it's great to know that there's a product like this that can help reduce waste. EchoSign diligently secures all documents and signatures, and provides an audit trail that is integral to keeping our customers' information private
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It's a great software and we will continue to use it. It's a great time and money saver when it comes to legal contracts and makes the process easy for both sides who need to sign or add information to a document or contract. We definitely need our contracts to be legally binding and HelloSign provides this for us
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Usability
I've had very little trouble with it in all my uses with it. I do wish the text boxes you add wouldn't cut off the text if you entered too many words and that it would adjust it's size to fit within the space you've provided. However, that just takes a little refining in the initial set up of the document before you send it out.
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It works well for it's intended use, I feel like some of the features can improve a bit and it's recently received a bit of a face lift but over all it's been a really easy tool to utilize and implement and we've used it since we've opened.
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Reliability and Availability
I would have rated this a 9 or greater had they not had had such critical outages. They have taken steps to resolve this so I may come in and revise this
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I have not encountered this because it was so easy to use however just seeing how they created a community is great and shows that they are here for their users. I am going to say I am sure they are available and ready to assist when needed. The fact that we have not yet experienced an outage and issues says a lot though :)
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Performance
The Adobe Acrobat Sign's performance are excellent.
When we send electronic document by email for signature all the customers receive it regularly, nobody has any issue to open it and the signature phase was very easy. The user-friendly aspect of this product reduce or reset the call for IT support
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Again I cannot say it is enough this app is simple. We are preparing to be able to integrate with Salesforce and Sharepoint at a very small cost per user (these are the platforms we use) and it is great that they have the option to integrate these apps. We love this app
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Support Rating
It is a great tool to get signatures from the client and has reduced a lot of overhead that was caused before resulting in very long delays. With the integration of Adobe Acrobat Sign, we have reduced this delay making the process much smoother and more efficient.
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Support is limited to email only (for our subscription level), which might be OK for a e-signing platform if support was relatively rapid. This is not the case with HelloSign. Since the issues first arose a week ago, we have made no discernible progress in solving the problem. No matter how quickly I respond to a follow-up email, we receive only 1 email a day from the support. The other issue, which is a true edge case situation, is their insistence on receiving email from the same email account as the HelloSign registration. We changed our organizational email recently, and I was still logging into HS using our old email address. This became a hard stop on further support, which doesn't make sense on a practical level. Why would someone write in for support with specific issues if they weren't a customer? And if they did, wouldn't that be a miniscule proportion of the support requests? So if you adopt a policy that stops providing support to anyone who isn't verified, regardless of the situation, isn't that using a blunt instrument to solve a very rare issue? Reflects the overall organizational values, in my opinion, which is not to value the small customer.
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Online Training
The best types of training are well integrated into the product and Echosign does this well. As mentioned earlier in my review - there are some areas of functionality that can be difficult to understand ("only I sign") for the novice user. Other areas such as macro usage, bulk signature and so on were easily learned and understood via the online tools.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Our IT team implemented and the implementation was fine. The only lesson learned is that the integration with Salesforce.com is great, but if you use the product for something other than sales orders (e.g. timesheets, client correspondence etc.), you need to plan with that in mind. They have a very good web based interface for that
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I can not say it enough - this was the easiest implementation we have had with an application. I became an admin, I added the person who would be the back up admin, we moved forward with adding accounts and that was it. All the users we have were self sufficient enough to move forward with very little guidance and the guidance they received was in house.
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Alternatives Considered
DocuSign is a little more user-friendly and more updated that Adobe Acrobat Sign. Ultimately, we made the switch to Adobe due to their product offerings. By choosing Adobe, we can utilize other platforms within the suite that allow us to further edit documents. Which provides capabilities beyond what DocuSign offers
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PandaDoc has an interface that isn't as simple but once you get used to it, it's really not bad. The biggest con is that I've had issues when using it where it glitches or just isn't loading. I think it's been issues on the back end that required ticketing. In the end, I didn't find it as reliable. We've never had an issue with Dropbox Sign and we still use it daily.
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Scalability
At the beginning we assigned Adobe Acrobat Sign just to Purchase Office Department because at that moment we needed a tool that supported us to avoid manual signature and was compliance with remote working.
Now we are using it also in other situation because it help us with time and we can also reduce cost
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Between the easy to use app, the pricing, and the team at dropbox. This app is hands down great! Easy to use. Anyone can start using it and if not I am sure the team at dropbox will guide you to implement. The cost especially for us as a nonprofit is sustainable which is great.
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Return on Investment
  • Significantly reduced the time required for document signing processes reducing wasted time and effort
  • Cost savings since there is no longer any need to print and post/scan traditional signed paper-based documents
  • Faster decision-making since time-sensitive decisions and approvals can now be processed much more quickly by using e-signatures.
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  • Faster time to contract signature-less overthinking because they sign with their finger on the phone with the sales rep.
  • Reduction of paper waste and organization.
  • Ease for sales reps to quickly choose and alter any agreement they need while on a call.
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ScreenShots

Adobe Acrobat Sign Screenshots

Screenshot of Send, sign, manage and archive documents with 100% legal e-signatures. Collecting e-signatures is as easy as swipe and tap with Adobe Sign. Sign from any device. Legally binding. Works with multiple apps. extremely cost-effective.Screenshot of Easily send e-signature requests to multiple recipients using Send in bulk feature.  Send a document to multiple people with one click, and every recipient gets their own personalized form ready to sign.Screenshot of Track and manage signatures with Adobe Acrobat Sign.  Get real-time visibility for every document out for signature, and receive notifications when documents have been signed.Screenshot of Create an online web form with Acrobat Sign.  It allows your recipients – whether they’re your employees or customers – to quickly access, complete, and sign critical documents without printing or mailing anything.  You will also get immediate access to the data and signatures.

Dropbox Sign Screenshots

Screenshot of drag and drop fields for any document to create an e-signature documentScreenshot of signer settings that can be used to distribute agreementsScreenshot of Notifications of completed signaturesScreenshot of uploading a documentScreenshot of Admin homepageScreenshot of template creation