“Everyone has to sign documents, and it’s done in a really poor way right now, which is what we’re trying to fix,” Joseph Walla, CEO of HelloSign
Documents can be signed and securely returned to their sender from both the web and the company’s new iPhone application. Unlike some similar services and apps that are already out there, digital signatures using the service are free and unlimited so you can send and receive just a few documents or all the contracts for your business with the service at no cost.
On the iPhone application, you sign a document with your finger on the screen. Once you’re done signing, the signature is brought back into your document, then you can place it where you want it to go. The same experience can be done on your home computer using a mouse.
When you send documents to be signed with HelloSign you can also track those documents with read receipts and audit trails, so you know exactly what’s going on with the document every step of the way.
Walla says that, while digital signatures have been legal in the U.S. for any document that can be signed with a pen for the past 12 years, many companies are still using pen and paper to get the job done. He sees the service as being invaluable to companies and businesses that are faced with delays waiting on paperwork to be signed.
“What we found out is that the only reason people fax things is that the vast majority of these documents are being signed,” Walla said when we spoke to him about HelloFax earlier this year. “What we’ve found is a lot of people joined us for faxing, and now they’ve converted to electronic signatures. We have a lot users who were fax users and now they don’t fax at all.”
With HelloSign, contracts and the like can be handled almost instantly, saving everyone involved in the process valuable time. The only type of document the service can’t handle is one that requires a notary.
