Verdict · Verified 18 August 2026
Sign.Plus — unlimited signature requests at $19.99/month
From $9.99/mo · unlimited requests at $19.99/mo
The pricing model matters more than any individual feature for a research office. Envelope metering is what makes e-signature painful when grant deadlines cluster and paperwork arrives in bursts — people start rationing sends to protect an allowance. Sign.Plus removes the meter entirely from Professional at $19.99/month, and puts audit trails and eIDAS support on every tier including the free one, which is unusual in this category.
Try Sign.Plus free Opens on the vendor’s site · CASRAI referral link
Need HIPAA? That is Enterprise at $49.99/month → — And if you are in FDA 21 CFR Part 11 scope, no general e-signature product is the answer — see the boundary section below.
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In summary
- Free (3 requests total), Personal $9.99/mo (10/mo), Professional $19.99/mo (unlimited), Business $29.99/mo, Enterprise $49.99/mo (HIPAA + BAA). Verified 18 August 2026.
- Audit trails and eIDAS support are on every tier, including free — most competitors gate the audit trail.
- Annual billing works out at roughly two months free across the paid tiers.
- HIPAA with a BAA is Enterprise-only. No lower tier is suitable for documents containing PHI.
- Not a 21 CFR Part 11 system, and not an eConsent system. Both are separate purchases.
Every Sign.Plus plan
Verified from the vendor pricing page, 18 August 2026
| Dimension | Free | Personal | Professional | Business | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price / month | $0 | $9.99 | $19.99 | $29.99 | $49.99 |
| Price / year | — | $119.99 | $239.99 | $359.99 | $599.99 |
| Signature requests | 3 total | 10/mo | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Templates | 1 | 5 | 10 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Audit trails | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| eIDAS support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| HIPAA + BAA | No | No | No | No | Yes |
21 CFR Part 11 is not advertised on any tier. For general research contracting that is not the relevant question — see below.
Audit trails on the free tier
The detail that distinguishes Sign.Plus in this market is easy to miss: audit trails and eIDAS support are on every tier, including the free one. Most competitors treat the audit trail as a paid feature, and several put it several tiers up.
That matters because the audit trail is not a nice-to-have — it is the substance of what makes an electronic signature evidentially useful. A signature image proves very little. What carries weight in a dispute is the record around it: timestamps for each event, the signer’s IP address, email verification, a document hash proving the record has not been altered since, and the full sequence of send, view and sign.
The practical consequence for a research office is that you can run a genuine evaluation without paying. Three free signature requests with a complete audit trail is enough to put a real MTA in front of a real counterparty and see both whether they can sign it easily and whether the resulting certificate of completion is something you would be content to hand an auditor.
Check one thing during that evaluation: that you can export the certificate yourself, without contacting the vendor, and that you can still retrieve it for an older document rather than only a fresh one.
Unlimited requests versus envelope allowances
Most enterprise e-signature pricing meters transactions, and a research office’s volume is lumpy in precisely the wrong way. Grant deadlines cluster, so subawards, consortium agreements, MTAs and data-sharing agreements arrive in bursts. An allowance sized for average monthly volume runs out in the busy month — which is the month you least want to be raising a procurement request.
The financial cost of overage is usually the smaller problem. The behavioural cost is larger and invisible: people start batching documents, delaying sends and rationing the allowance, which slows the office down in a way no one records or reports.
Unlimited requests from Professional at $19.99/month removes that dynamic entirely. For an office that signs unpredictably, the right comparison is not headline price against headline price but cost per useful send — and an unlimited plan frequently beats a cheaper metered one on that basis while also removing the rationing behaviour.
Note the template limits alongside it: Professional includes 10 templates, Business unlimited. An office sending the same MTA form fifty times a year gets more day-to-day value from templates than from almost any other feature, so count your recurring document types when choosing between those two tiers.
Three things it is not
It is not HIPAA-covered below Enterprise. HIPAA compliance with a signed Business Associate Agreement is on the Enterprise tier at $49.99/month. If a document you are sending for signature contains protected health information, that is the tier — encryption on a lower plan does not substitute for a BAA. In research contracting this arises less often than people assume (a business associate agreement that names no individuals is not itself PHI), but medical records releases and some site-level trial documents are.
It is not a 21 CFR Part 11 system. Part 11 applies to records required by an FDA predicate rule — regulated clinical trial documentation, GxP records, submissions subject to FDA inspection. Where it applies you need a system your quality function has validated for its intended use, with documented evidence and maintained validation state, because Part 11 compliance is a property of your implementation rather than of the software. Sign.Plus does not advertise Part 11 support, and for subawards, MTAs, NDAs and internal approvals the question does not arise — none of those are FDA-regulated records.
It is not an eConsent system. Electronic informed consent for clinical trials is a regulated process covering comprehension, the opportunity to ask questions, re-consent when protocols change, accommodation of impaired participants and legally authorised representatives, and inspection-ready records. A general e-signature tool puts a signature block on a PDF and does none of that. Using one for trial consent because it is already licensed and the study is behind schedule is the most consequential mistake in this area.
Who it suits, and who it does not
Good fit: a research office or grants team signing subawards, consortium agreements, MTAs, NDAs, consultancy contracts, data-sharing agreements and internal approvals, at unpredictable volume, without an enterprise budget. Also good for a small institute or centre that needs proper audit trails but cannot justify enterprise licensing.
Poor fit: organisations in FDA-regulated clinical operations needing validated systems; anyone whose real requirement is eConsent; and institutions with heavy enterprise procurement requirements — SSO, detailed security questionnaires, negotiated data-processing terms — where you should expect a longer conversation than a self-serve subscription.
Practical cautions. Confirm external signers do not need to create an account, by testing with a genuine external counterparty rather than a colleague on your own domain — this is the most common source of delay in e-signature adoption. Settle data residency and the sub-processor list with your DPO before rollout if you are in the UK or EU. And ask what happens to signed documents if you stop paying, because research agreements carry retention periods measured in years and sometimes decades.
Run a real MTA through the free tier
Three signature requests with full audit trails is enough to test the thing that actually decides adoption — whether your counterparties can sign without friction, and whether the certificate of completion satisfies you.
From $9.99/mo · unlimited requests at $19.99/mo
Try Sign.Plus free Opens on the vendor’s site · CASRAI referral link
Frequently asked questions
How much does Sign.Plus cost?
Free for 3 signature requests, Personal $9.99/month for 10 a month, Professional $19.99/month for unlimited, Business $29.99/month, and Enterprise $49.99/month with HIPAA and a BAA. Annual billing is roughly two months free. Verified 18 August 2026.
Is Sign.Plus HIPAA compliant?
On the Enterprise plan at $49.99/month, which includes a Business Associate Agreement. The Free, Personal, Professional and Business tiers do not, so any document containing protected health information requires Enterprise — encryption on a lower tier does not substitute for a BAA.
Are Sign.Plus signatures legally binding?
Yes, on the same basis as any compliant e-signature: the US ESIGN Act and UETA, and the EU/UK eIDAS Regulation, establish that a signature is not invalid merely because it is electronic. What carries evidential weight is the audit trail — timestamps, IP address, email verification and a document hash — which Sign.Plus includes on every tier including free.
Is Sign.Plus 21 CFR Part 11 compliant?
It does not advertise Part 11 support, and for general research contracting that is not the relevant question — subawards, MTAs, NDAs and internal approvals are not records required by an FDA predicate rule. If you are genuinely in Part 11 scope you need a system your quality function has validated, because compliance there is a property of your implementation rather than of the software.
Can we use it for clinical trial informed consent?
No. eConsent is a regulated process covering comprehension, the ability to ask questions, re-consent when protocols change and inspection-ready records — not just a signature block on a PDF. Use a purpose-built eConsent system and take it through ethics review as part of the protocol.
Which tier should a research office choose?
Professional at $19.99/month for most, because unlimited requests remove the rationing behaviour that envelope allowances create when grant deadlines cluster. Move to Business at $29.99/month if you need unlimited templates — an office sending the same MTA form repeatedly gets more day-to-day value from templates than from anything else.
