You Don't Need DocuSign

A web developer's case for building your own electronic signature flow — and why it'll hold up in court just fine.

Published February 7, 2026 ET
web developmentbusinessengineering

I run a service company. Contracts go out, contracts come back signed. For years I assumed this meant I needed DocuSign. Everybody uses DocuSign. It's what serious businesses do.

Then I looked at what DocuSign actually does and realized: I can build this in a weekend.

What DocuSign Actually Is

Strip away the branding and the enterprise sales pitch and DocuSign is a web app that does four things:

  1. Lets you upload a document
  2. Lets someone draw or type a signature on it
  3. Generates a signed PDF
  4. Emails it to everyone involved

That's it. There's some audit trail logging and a tamper-evident seal, but the core product is a glorified form submission that outputs a PDF. For a web developer, this is not exactly rocket science.

And they charge you for the privilege. The Personal plan is $10/month for five envelopes. The Standard plan is $25/user/month for 100 envelopes per year. Business Pro is $40/user/month. A small team of five on Business Pro is paying $200+/month — over $2,400 a year — to do something your tech stack already knows how to do.

Oh, and they bump rates 5–7% on renewal. And voided or incomplete envelopes still count against your allotment. Nice.

The DIY Version

Here's what a home-rolled solution looks like for a service company:

The agreement page. A dynamic page on your site that constructs the contract from your terms, the client's name, the scope of work, the price — whatever your template needs. The client sees exactly what they're agreeing to, rendered cleanly in the browser. No PDF viewer struggling to render on mobile. No "download to view" nonsense.

The signature capture. A canvas element where the client draws their signature, or a typed-name field if you prefer. Libraries like react-signature-canvas handle this in about 50 lines of code.

The audit trail. When they click "I agree and sign," you log everything: their name, email, IP address, timestamp, user agent, and a hash of the agreement content. Store it in your database.

The PDF. Generate it server-side with something like pdf-lib or Puppeteer. Embed the signature image, the agreement text, and the audit metadata. Done.

The email. Send the signed PDF to both parties. Your existing email service handles this — SendGrid, Resend, Postmark, whatever you're already using.

Total cost: $0 in additional SaaS fees. Maybe a few hours of development if you've never done it before.

"But Will It Hold Up in Court?"

This is the real question, and the answer is: yes. Unambiguously yes.

The legal framework here is the ESIGN Act (Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, 2000) at the federal level, and UETA (Uniform Electronic Transactions Act) at the state level. Together they cover all 50 states, DC, and U.S. territories.

The ESIGN Act says, word for word, that a signature or contract "may not be denied legal effect, validity, or enforceability solely because it is in electronic form."

And here's the part that matters for the DIY argument: the law is technology-neutral. Neither ESIGN nor UETA requires you to use any specific vendor, platform, or technology. A typed name in an email can be a valid electronic signature. A Canadian court in 2023 ruled that a thumbs-up emoji constitutes a valid electronic signature. A thumbs-up emoji.

Your custom-built signature page with a drawn signature, a comprehensive audit trail, and a generated PDF is miles ahead of a thumbs-up emoji.

What the Law Actually Requires

Four things. That's it.

1. Intent to sign. The signer must demonstrate clear intention to sign the document. A signature pad with an "I agree and sign this agreement" button handles this. Same as DocuSign.

2. Consent to electronic process. The parties must agree to do business electronically. A checkbox or statement on the page acknowledging consent. Trivial to implement.

3. Attribution. You need to be able to connect the signature to the person who signed. This means capturing identifying information — email address, IP address, timestamps. Your audit trail covers this.

4. Record retention. Both parties need access to an accurate copy of the signed document. You email them the PDF. Done.

That's the entire legal bar. DocuSign meets it. Your DIY solution meets it. A wet signature on paper meets it. The law doesn't care how you satisfy these requirements, only that you do.

The Audit Trail Is Everything

If your contract ever gets challenged in court, the audit trail is what wins or loses the case. Federal Rule of Evidence 901 requires the party relying on the signature to "produce evidence sufficient to support a finding that the item is what the proponent claims it is."

Here's what your audit trail should capture:

  • Signer's full name and email address
  • IP address at time of signing
  • Timestamp (use UTC, store it precisely)
  • User agent (browser and device info)
  • A cryptographic hash of the agreement content (proves the document wasn't altered after signing)
  • The sequence of events: when the agreement was sent/viewed/signed
  • Any identity verification steps performed (email confirmation, SMS code, etc.)

In IO Moonwalkers, Inc. v. Bank of America, the court noted that the electronic audit trail actually provided more credible evidence than a traditional wet signature, because it captured information "that wasn't available before the digital age." An electronic trail of when a document was sent, received, viewed, and signed is more reliable than someone swearing under oath that they put a letter in the mail.

Your DIY system can — and should — capture all of this. And when it does, it's at least as defensible as DocuSign. Maybe more so, because you control exactly what gets logged.

DocuSign Has Lost in Court Too

Here's something DocuSign won't put on their marketing site. In a California bankruptcy case, Judge Robert Bardwil ruled that DocuSign's basic click-to-sign approach was not a sufficient replacement for original signatures on certain legal documents. The problem? DocuSign's signature is generated by just clicking a button. There's no guarantee who actually clicked it. The declared name is just a placeholder that anyone can fill in.

The point isn't that DocuSign is bad. The point is that no electronic signature platform is inherently bulletproof. The legal enforceability depends on your process — the identity verification, the audit trail, the consent capture — not on which SaaS product you're paying for.

In Parish Transport LLC v. Jordan Carriers Inc. (2021), the Mississippi Supreme Court laid out the standard clearly: a valid e-signature requires (1) a sound, symbol, or process executed with the intent to sign, and (2) that it's attached to or logically associated with the record. Notice what's not in that standard: "must use DocuSign."

When You Might Actually Need DocuSign

Fair's fair. There are a few scenarios where a third-party platform earns its keep:

Regulated industries. Healthcare, financial services, government contracts — some of these have compliance requirements that go beyond ESIGN/UETA. If you're in one of these, you might need the compliance certifications that come with an established platform. But if you're a web developer running a service company, you're probably not in this category.

Multi-party complex workflows. If you're routing a document through six signers with conditional logic and parallel signing paths, a purpose-built tool saves real time. But again — for a service company sending out straightforward agreements? You have one signer: the client.

You genuinely don't want to build it. Totally valid. Not everyone wants to maintain their own signature infrastructure. If the cost doesn't bother you and you'd rather spend your time on other things, DocuSign works fine. No shame in it.

But if you're a web developer who's already building the client-facing app, bolting on a signature flow is trivial compared to the rest of what you're doing.

How to Make It Bulletproof

If you're going to build your own, do it right. Here's the checklist:

Hash the agreement content. When the agreement is presented to the signer, compute a SHA-256 hash of the full text. Store it. Embed it in the PDF. This proves the document wasn't modified after signing. If someone claims the terms were different, you can verify the hash against the original.

Log everything. IP, timestamp, user agent, email, the hash, the signature image. Store these in your database and embed them in the PDF metadata.

Send the PDF immediately. Both parties get a copy the moment the signature is captured. If you ever need to prove the agreement was delivered, you have email delivery logs.

Add identity verification if the stakes warrant it. For a standard service agreement, email-based verification (they clicked a unique link sent to their email) is plenty. For high-value contracts, add SMS verification or require them to type the last four of their SSN. Scale your verification to your risk.

Use HTTPS. Obviously. But worth saying: the entire signing flow should be over TLS so the connection itself is encrypted.

Keep records indefinitely. Or at least for as long as your local statute of limitations requires. Don't let old audit logs get cleaned up by an overzealous cron job.

The Bottom Line

The law is clear: electronic signatures are valid regardless of the technology used. DocuSign's value proposition is convenience, not legality. If you can build a web form (you can), generate a PDF (you can), send an email (you can), and log an audit trail (you can), then you can build a legally enforceable electronic signature system.

For a web developer running a service company, paying $300+/year for DocuSign is like paying someone to send your emails. You already have the tools. You already have the skills. And your home-rolled solution, done right, will hold up in court exactly as well as DocuSign's — because the law doesn't care about the logo on the signature page. It cares about intent, consent, attribution, and record retention.

Build the damn thing.