SurveyingE-signature—

Cairn Sign

E-signature software sends documents out for legally-binding signatures — fields, signing order, audit trails. Cairn Sign gives you that signing flow as software you own, so your contracts and their signers stay on your own infrastructure.

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What you get

A complete app, yours to keep.

Every Cairn Trail ships as a complete, AI-native application — full source in your own repository, a native MCP server, and a first-class CLI. Here’s what Cairn Sign includes out of the box.

Drag-and-drop fields on any PDF
Ordered, multi-party signing flows
Reusable templates for documents you send often
Audit trail and completion certificates
Email delivery and reminders
Native MCP server and CLI so agents can prepare and send documents

Built onKotlinSpring BootPostgresTypeScriptReact

Know your options

Every way to get e-signature.

We’d rather you saw the whole map than a sales pitch. Here are the tools teams actually evaluate — what each is good at, said plainly. Cairn is one option among them.

Commercial

Hosted, polished, rented — your data lives on their cloud.

DocuSignThe category incumbent and safest default; deepest integrations and compliance, but priced accordingly and sold by envelope volume.Adobe Acrobat SignAdobe's e-signature, tightly tied to Acrobat and PDF workflows; the natural pick if you already live in the Adobe ecosystem.Dropbox Sign (formerly HelloSign)Clean, developer-friendly signing with a solid API; now a Dropbox product, best for straightforward send-and-sign rather than heavy workflows.PandaDocDocument creation plus e-signature; strong for sales proposals and quotes, more than you need if you only want bare signing.SignNowairSlate's affordable, no-frills signing aimed at SMBs; templates and bulk send without enterprise pricing, lighter on advanced features.OneSpan SignEnterprise, security-first signing for banks and regulated industries; strong compliance and white-labeling, but heavier and sales-led to adopt.YousignEuropean e-signature built around eIDAS compliance; a strong fit for EU businesses, with less reach outside Europe.Zoho SignAffordable signing that shines if you already run Zoho; tightly integrated with the suite, weaker as a standalone tool.

Open source

Self-hostable and yours to run — read each license closely.

DocumensoAGPL-3.0The leading open-source DocuSign alternative; modern TypeScript codebase and polished UI, but a younger project with a thinner feature set.DocuSealAGPL-3.0The most feature-complete open-source option; PDF form builder and signing, self-host or cloud, with extra terms layered on the AGPL.OpenSignAGPL-3.0Lightweight, self-host-friendly signing that runs on modest hardware; capable, but a smaller community than Documenso or DocuSeal.LibreSignAGPL-3.0Document signing inside Nextcloud; great if you already run Nextcloud, but it needs that platform and isn't a standalone app.SignServer (Community)LGPL-2.1A server-side signing and timestamping engine, not a send-and-sign UI; for centralized document or code signing, not signature-request flows.

// where Cairn fits

So why Cairn?

DocuSign is the safe default — and it bills by envelope volume, with every signed contract passing through its cloud. The open-source field is small but real: Documenso and DocuSeal lead, and notably every active option is AGPL. Cairn Sign aims for a clean, self-hosted signing flow as code you own — no per-envelope meter, your audit trail on your servers, and the freedom to wire signing into your own systems.

Yours, for good

However you get there, Cairn Sign is software you own — full source in your GitHub repository, running in your own cloud. No phone-home, no license server, no kill switch. Export your data any time; Cairn could disappear tomorrow and your software would keep working.

Other Trails

Cairn CRMCRM Cairn ChatTeam chat Cairn Help DeskHelp desk Cairn IdentityIdentity & SSO Cairn WikiKnowledge base Cairn AnalyticsProduct analytics Cairn DAMDigital asset management Cairn ProjectsProject management Cairn RoomsData rooms

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