What an electronic signature actually is
An electronic signature is an electronic sound, symbol or process attached to a record and adopted by somebody with the intent to sign it. That definition comes from the United States ESIGN Act, and the equivalent in UETA is close to identical.
Two things follow from it that surprise people. The mark itself barely matters — a typed name is as much a signature as a drawn one. And intent and attribution are what carry the weight: that a particular person meant to sign, and that you can show it later.
Which is why the useful question about e-signature software is not “does it let people sign?” Everything does. It is what can you show about how they signed, months later, to somebody who was not there.
How signing works in SignaCore
- Upload the PDF you already useSignaCore reads its existing form fields. When a document is flat it examines the page layout for the likely places to sign, initial and type, so your team starts from a draft rather than a blank page.
- Check the fields, and fill in your ownNothing is sent until somebody has looked at what was found. The parts of an agreement that are yours — the dates, the amounts, your own signature — you answer before it goes out, and the recipient cannot change them.
- Send itEach recipient gets a link to their own copy. You can add a note. For a document that warrants it, you can require a code emailed to them before it will open.
- They sign, and everybody gets the resultTheir answers are flattened onto the PDF itself. They are emailed their completed copy immediately; you are told as each person finishes; the file is kept encrypted in your archive.
What the software does that matters
It reads the document
Most e-signature products start from a blank overlay and ask you to drag boxes onto a page. SignaCore reads the page first — native PDF form fields where they exist, and the printed structure where they do not — and proposes the fields. You correct it rather than build it.
Everybody gets their own completed copy
Send one form to twenty people and twenty filled documents come back, one per person, rather than one page carrying twenty sets of answers. Each copy is produced the moment that person signs, so nobody waits on anybody else.
The evidence travels with the document
Every completed copy has a certificate of completion appended to it: who signed, the address their verification went to, when they signed, the addresses each step came from, and a SHA-256 fingerprint of the document as uploaded. It is part of the file, not a separate download that gets lost.
Nobody you send to pays, or registers
A plan covers the organization that sends. Recipients are never charged, never counted as a seat, and never asked to create anything. See pricing.
What SignaCore does not do
Worth saying plainly, because a feature list that only lists features is not useful when you are choosing.
- No identity verification beyond email. There is no photo ID check, no SMS code and no knowledge-based authentication. Identity rests on control of the email address the document was sent to.
- No qualified or advanced electronic signatures. Under eIDAS, what SignaCore produces is a simple electronic signature. That is admissible in the EU but it is the base tier.
- No AI. Field detection is geometry and text layout, not a model. Nothing you upload is used for training. The detail.
- No public API yet. There is no embedded signing and no webhooks for developers today.
Questions people ask
What is an electronic signature?+
An electronic signature is any electronic sound, symbol or process attached to a record and adopted by a person with the intent to sign it. In practice that means a typed name, a drawn signature, or a ticked box — what gives it weight is not how it looks but the evidence that a particular person adopted it deliberately.
Is an electronic signature the same as a digital signature?+
No. An electronic signature is the legal act of signing. A digital signature is a specific cryptographic technique, sometimes used to seal a document afterwards. Most business agreements are signed electronically without one; the two terms are often used interchangeably and should not be.
Do the people I send to need an account?+
No, and there is no signer account in SignaCore to create. They open the link, sign in the browser they already have, and receive their own completed copy by email.
What file types can I send?+
PDF. You can upload one you already use, or write the document in SignaCore and it becomes a PDF. A DOCX can be imported and converted.
How do I know a document was signed?+
You are emailed when somebody signs, the workspace shows where every recipient stands, and each completed copy carries a certificate of completion recording who signed, when, and from what address.