What the statutes actually say
The ESIGN Act (2000) is federal. The Uniform Electronic Transactions Act is state law, adopted in nearly every state. Both do the same central thing: a record or signature cannot be denied legal effect, validity or enforceability solely because it is in electronic form.
Both also define a signature broadly — an electronic sound, symbol or process attached to a record and adopted with the intent to sign. Two consequences:
- The mark does not have to look like handwriting. A typed name or a ticked box can be a signature.
- Intent is the substance. The question in a dispute is almost never what the mark looked like. It is whether that person made it, and meant to.
Some things cannot be signed electronically
ESIGN carves out exceptions, which vary and are worth checking for your own documents. Commonly excluded are wills and testamentary trusts, certain family law matters, some court documents, and some notices about utilities, insurance, eviction and foreclosure. Requirements for notarisation and witnessing are also separate questions that an electronic signature does not answer by itself.
Consumer disclosures have extra requirements
Where a law requires that information be given to a consumer in writing, ESIGN section 101(c) sets conditions before an electronic record will satisfy it, including affirmative consent and specific disclosures about hardware and software. If you are sending consumer disclosures rather than ordinary business agreements, that is a conversation to have with a lawyer, not a feature checklist.
What a signature needs to survive a dispute
“Legally binding” is not a setting. When an agreement is actually argued over, four questions get asked, and a signed PDF on its own answers none of them well.
- Who signed it? Not whose name is on it — what connects a person to the act.
- Did they mean to sign? Was it presented as an agreement, and did they take a deliberate action.
- Has the document changed since? Can you show the file in front of the court is the file that was signed.
- Can you prove any of this later? Months on, to somebody who was not there, without asking them to take your word for it.
This is the only part of “legally binding” that software decides. The law is the same whichever product you use; what differs is what you can demonstrate afterwards.
What SignaCore records
Every completed copy carries a certificate of completion as part of the PDF, not as a separate file that gets separated from it. On it:
- Who signed — their name and the email address the document was sent to.
- How they were identified — either that they opened the link emailed to that address, or that they confirmed a one-time code sent to it. It states which actually happened, never the stronger of the two.
- Every step, with its own time and address— sent, opened, code sent, verified, signed, copy delivered. Each one carries the IP address the request reached us from, and the times are taken by our servers rather than the signer’s device.
- A SHA-256 fingerprint of the document as uploaded — so anybody holding a copy can run
shasum -a 256on it and compare, rather than taking our word that it is unchanged. - Reopenings — if a document was reopened after being signed, the trail says so, by whom, and that an earlier signature was discarded. The earlier signed copy is kept rather than deleted.
Documents, signature images and the values recipients enter are encrypted at rest and decrypted only to do the work you asked for. The full security boundary.
What SignaCore does not do
Said plainly, because a page about legal defensibility that only lists strengths is not one you should trust.
- Identity rests on email. There is no photo ID check, no SMS, no knowledge-based authentication. What is established is control of an email address — which is what most business agreements rely on, and is not the same as proving who a person is.
- Simple electronic signatures only. Under eIDAS, SignaCore does not produce advanced or qualified electronic signatures. Those need certificate-based identity we do not issue.
- No certifications. No SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO or PCI. We do not hold them and will not imply otherwise.
- No consumer-disclosure consent flow. There is no built-in ESIGN 101(c) consent step, so SignaCore is not the right tool on its own for disclosures a statute requires to be given in writing to a consumer.
- No notarisation or witnessing.
Questions people ask
Are electronic signatures legally binding in the United States?+
Under the ESIGN Act and UETA a signature cannot be denied legal effect solely because it is electronic. That is not the same as every electronic signature being enforceable — the agreement still has to be one the law will enforce, and a party disputing it can still argue they did not sign. What the statutes remove is the objection that it was electronic.
What makes one electronic signature stronger than another?+
Evidence. Who signed, that they meant to, that the document has not changed since, and that you can show all of it later to somebody who was not there. Two products can both produce a signed PDF and differ enormously in what they can demonstrate about it afterwards.
Does SignaCore make my agreement enforceable?+
No product can. Enforceability depends on the document, the parties and the law that applies to it. What SignaCore does is record what it observed, in a form you can hand to somebody else — which is the part software can actually affect.
Is SignaCore compliant with eIDAS?+
SignaCore produces what eIDAS calls a simple electronic signature. That is admissible in EU courts and cannot be refused legal effect for being electronic, but it is the base tier — it is not an advanced or qualified electronic signature, which require certificate-based identity we do not issue.
Does SignaCore hold SOC 2, HIPAA or ISO certification?+
No. SignaCore holds none of those certifications and does not claim them. Documents, signature images and the values recipients enter are encrypted at rest and decrypted only to do the work you asked for, which is a statement about how the service is built rather than an accreditation.
This page is information, not legal advice
It describes general principles and what SignaCore records. It is not advice about your documents, your jurisdiction or your situation, and we are not lawyers. For anything that matters, ask one.
Last reviewed 11 October 2026, against what the product does on that date. Something here look wrong or out of date? Tell us and we will correct it.