Doc E Sign — Terms of Service

Effective date: 26 July 2026 Version: v1.2 URL: doc-e-sign.com/terms

v1.2 (2026-07-26): adds Section 9 (Agent-initiated signing and mandates), covering the agent-initiated signing feature shipped on feat/agent-mandate-design-a. Sections 9–13 renumbered to 10–14. Drafted from internal/legal/agent-mandates-document-changes.md item 1.

v1.1 (2026-07-09): removed a stale "Provisional — do not publish" label left over from drafting; these Terms have been live since v1.0 (2026-07-07). The signer-obligation open question tracked internally (tort/statute/quasi-contract) remains unresolved and does not block publication of the Terms themselves.

1. About these Terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern the agreement between Doc E Sign ("we", "us", "our") and the sender — the person or organisation that creates a Doc E Sign account to send documents for signature ("you", "your").

These Terms do not apply to signers. Individuals who receive a signing request through Doc E Sign are not bound by these Terms. Their relationship with Doc E Sign is governed solely by the Privacy Notice and the Signing Disclaimer displayed on the signing page.

This agreement is intended for business customers. If you are a consumer (an individual acting outside the course of a business or trade), different rights may apply to you under the UK Consumer Rights Act 2015, the EU Consumer Rights Directive, or equivalent applicable law. Contact us via doc-e-sign.com/contact before using Doc E Sign if you are unsure whether this applies to you.

By creating a Doc E Sign account, you confirm that you have read and agree to these Terms and our Data Processing Agreement.

2. Eligibility and account

Age: You must be at least 18 years old to create a Doc E Sign account.

Authority: If you are using Doc E Sign on behalf of an organisation, you confirm that you have authority to bind that organisation to these Terms.

Account security: You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. Notify us immediately via the support form in your dashboard or at [email protected] if you suspect unauthorised access to your account.

One account per person: Accounts are not transferable. You may not share your account with others or allow others to use your credentials.

3. The Doc E Sign service

Doc E Sign provides an electronic document signing service. The service includes:

Upload of a PDF document and specification of signers
Email delivery of a signing link to each signer via Lettermint or Nuntly
A browser-based signing page where signers authenticate and complete placed fields
Generation of a tamper-evident cryptographic audit trail embedded in the completed PDF
Email delivery of the completed signed PDF to both sender and signer; the PDF remains in your dashboard for a brief retrieval window before deletion (see Section 7)
A public verification page at doc-e-sign.com/verify

The service is described in full in the documentation at docs.doc-e-sign.com. The documentation forms part of these Terms to the extent that it describes the scope and behaviour of the service.

Doc E Sign is a signing ceremony service, not a document archive service. Long-term retention of signed documents is your responsibility.

4. Free trial and billing

Free trial: New accounts begin with a one-month free trial. No payment method is required at signup. You have access to the full feature set and full envelope allocation of your chosen plan during the trial.

Trial end: At the end of your trial month, you must add a payment method to continue using Doc E Sign. If no payment method is added, your dashboard access is suspended and no new envelopes can be sent. Documents you have already signed remain valid and self-verifying regardless of account status.

Subscription: Once a payment method is added and your subscription activates, your payment method is charged at the applicable monthly rate. Your subscription renews automatically each month unless you cancel. You will be charged on the same date each month.

Cancellation: You may cancel your subscription at any time from your account settings or via the billing portal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period. There are no refunds for partial billing periods. Cancellation has no effect on document retention — signed documents are already deleted within 48 hours of signing regardless of subscription status (see Section 7).

Payment failure: If a payment fails, we will attempt to retry the charge on a configured schedule. If payment cannot be collected, we may suspend access to new envelope sends after a 7-day grace period.

Plan limits: Free includes 10 envelopes per month at no cost, with no card required. Pro ($19/month) includes 1,000 envelopes per month. Business ($49/month) has no monthly envelope limit. There are no overage purchases — when you reach your plan's monthly limit, you are prompted to upgrade to the next tier; your monthly allocation resets at the start of your next billing period (or, on the Free plan, at the start of the next calendar month from signup).

Account model: An account is defined by your email domain. All users sharing the same verified organisational domain (e.g. @example.com) are part of the same account and share the same envelope allocation. Personal email domains (such as @gmail.com and @outlook.com) are treated as individual accounts. Domain ownership is verified at account creation.

Pricing changes: We may change our pricing with 30 days' notice by email. Continued use after the effective date of a price change constitutes acceptance of the new pricing.

5. What Doc E Sign warrants

Doc E Sign warrants that it will:

Perform the signing ceremony as described in the documentation at docs.doc-e-sign.com
Generate and store the cryptographic audit records as described in the documentation
Maintain the integrity of the hash-chain audit trail during the signing process

Doc E Sign makes no other warranties, express or implied. In particular, Doc E Sign does not warrant:

That a document signed through Doc E Sign is legally valid for your specific purpose or in your jurisdiction
That the underlying agreement between the parties to a signed document is enforceable
That Doc E Sign is an appropriate tool for any particular document type
That the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or available at any specific time

The Signing Disclaimer displayed on the signing page sets out the document types for which Doc E Sign's electronic signatures are and are not suitable. You are responsible for ensuring that your use of Doc E Sign is appropriate for the document type and jurisdiction in question. For full guidance, review our signature requirements page at /signature-requirements.

All implied warranties, conditions, and terms — including those relating to satisfactory quality, fitness for purpose, and reasonable care and skill — are excluded to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law.

6. Limitation of liability

6.1 Aggregate liability cap

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Doc E Sign's total aggregate liability to you arising out of or in connection with these Terms or your use of the service — whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise — shall not exceed the higher of:

(a) the total fees paid by you to Doc E Sign in the 12 months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim; or

(b) £500 (five hundred pounds sterling), or the equivalent in the currency in which you pay.

6.2 Exclusion of consequential loss

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Doc E Sign shall not be liable to you for any:

Loss of profits
Loss of revenue or anticipated savings
Loss of business or business opportunity
Loss of contracts
Loss of goodwill or reputation
Loss of data (other than personal data losses governed by applicable data protection law)
Indirect or consequential loss of any kind

This exclusion applies even if Doc E Sign has been advised of the possibility of such losses.

6.3 Statutory carve-outs

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes Doc E Sign's liability for:

Death or personal injury caused by Doc E Sign's negligence
Fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation by Doc E Sign
Any liability that cannot be limited or excluded under applicable law

6.4 Platform availability

Doc E Sign does not guarantee any specific level of availability or uptime. Liability for platform unavailability or document delivery failure is subject to the aggregate cap in clause 6.1. Doc E Sign's completion of the signing ceremony and generation of the audit trail are the services warranted — not uninterrupted availability of the dashboard.

7. Document storage and deletion

All plans: Signed documents are retained for 48 hours after the signing ceremony completes, then permanently deleted from Doc E Sign's servers. This applies uniformly regardless of plan or subscription status — there is no per-plan or cancellation-linked differentiation. Both parties (sender and signer) receive a copy of the signed PDF by email at the time of signing. Doc E Sign is a signing service, not a document repository: the 48-hour window exists solely to guarantee email delivery, not to provide document storage.

Audit trail retention: The cryptographic audit trail (the hash-chain record of each signing ceremony) is retained for 7 years from the date of signing, regardless of your subscription status or plan. This means Doc E Sign can confirm that a signing ceremony occurred during this period, but if you have not retained a copy of the signed PDF, neither you nor Doc E Sign will be able to produce the document content.

Doc E Sign's document storage is not an archiving service. Long-term document retention is your responsibility from the moment you receive the signed PDF by email. Doc E Sign accepts no liability for loss of access to signed documents after the 48-hour window.

Deletion on erasure request: A signer's GDPR erasure request affects their audit and account data, not the signed PDF specifically — the signed PDF is, in almost every case, already deleted under the 48-hour policy above by the time such a request could be made. See our Privacy Notice for details.

8. Acceptable use

You agree not to use Doc E Sign:

To execute documents for which an electronic signature of this type has no legal standing (as described in the Signing Disclaimer)
To facilitate fraud, misrepresentation, or any unlawful purpose
To obtain signatures under duress or without the signer's informed agreement
To circumvent the signer identity verification mechanisms
To send unsolicited signing requests to individuals who have not consented to receive them
In any way that would make Doc E Sign a party to a criminal or tortious act
To impersonate any person or organisation
In any way that interferes with or disrupts the Doc E Sign service

We may suspend or terminate your account immediately if we have reasonable grounds to believe you are in breach of this clause.

9. Agent-initiated signing and mandates

9.1 Doc E Sign's API allows you to enable an automated agent to initiate signing workflows on your behalf ("agent-initiated signing"). This clause applies whenever agent-initiated signing is used through your account.

9.2 You warrant that, before enabling any agent to initiate a signing workflow, you have established a valid mandate authorising that agent to act, and that each agent-initiated signature created through your account falls within the scope of that mandate.

9.3 You agree that every agent-initiated signature created through your account is attributed to you as principal and is binding on you and your organisation to the same extent as if you had initiated it directly.

9.4 Doc E Sign records the delegation-chain information supplied by you or your agent in the document's audit trail. Doc E Sign does not independently verify the identity of any authorising person, that person's authority to grant a mandate or to bind your or any other organisation, or that any agent is acting within the scope of its mandate.

9.5 You will indemnify Doc E Sign against any claim, loss, liability, cost or expense arising out of or in connection with (a) any mandate granted, or purportedly granted, by or on behalf of your organisation; (b) any agent-initiated signature created through your account; or (c) any breach of the warranty in clause 9.2.

9.6 Nothing in the agent-initiated signing feature constitutes verification, certification, or attestation by Doc E Sign of any person's identity or authority, and Doc E Sign gives no warranty — to you or to any third party — to that effect.

10. Intellectual property

Doc E Sign's IP: Doc E Sign owns all intellectual property rights in the Doc E Sign platform, including the signing ceremony infrastructure, the audit chain algorithm, and the documentation. These Terms do not grant you any rights in Doc E Sign's intellectual property other than the right to use the service as described.

Your IP: You retain all ownership of the documents you upload and the signed PDFs produced by the service. Doc E Sign does not claim any rights in the content of your documents. Doc E Sign holds your documents solely to provide the service and in accordance with these Terms and the Data Processing Agreement.

Feedback: If you provide feedback or suggestions about Doc E Sign, we may use that feedback without any obligation to you.

11. Data processing

Doc E Sign processes personal data in connection with providing the service. Our obligations are set out in full in:

Privacy Notice — how Doc E Sign handles personal data as both a controller (for audit data) and a processor (for sender-provided signer data)
Data Processing Agreement — the Article 28 GDPR processor agreement governing Doc E Sign's processing of personal data on your behalf
Joint Controller Arrangement — the Article 26 GDPR arrangement governing processing activities for which Doc E Sign and you are joint controllers

By accepting these Terms, you accept the Data Processing Agreement and Joint Controller Arrangement.

12. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. For material changes — changes that affect your rights or obligations — we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email before the change takes effect. Your continued use of Doc E Sign after the effective date of any change constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.

We will not make changes to these Terms that retroactively alter your rights with respect to services already performed.

13. Suspension and termination

By you: You may close your account at any time from your account settings. Closure takes effect at the end of your current billing period.

By Doc E Sign: We may suspend your access immediately if you breach these Terms (including the acceptable use clause), if your payment fails and is not resolved within our dunning period, or if we are required to do so by law. We will notify you of any suspension by email.

On termination: Account closure has no effect on document retention — signed documents are already deleted within 48 hours of signing regardless of account status (see Section 7). Signing ceremonies already completed remain valid — the audit trail for completed envelopes is retained for 7 years regardless of account status. The verify page at doc-e-sign.com/verify remains publicly accessible regardless of your account status.

14. General

Entire agreement: These Terms, together with the Data Processing Agreement, Joint Controller Arrangement, Privacy Notice, and any applicable plan terms, constitute the entire agreement between you and Doc E Sign regarding your use of the service.

Severability: If any provision of these Terms is found to be unenforceable, that provision will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, and the remaining provisions will continue in full force.

No waiver: Our failure to enforce any provision of these Terms at any time does not constitute a waiver of our right to enforce it in the future.

Assignment: You may not assign your rights under these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign our rights to a successor entity in the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of substantially all of our assets, provided that the successor entity agrees to be bound by these Terms.

Notices: Notices to Doc E Sign should be sent to [email protected]. Notices to you will be sent to the email address associated with your account.

Governing law: These Terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. Any dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales, without prejudice to either party's right to seek urgent interim relief in any competent jurisdiction.

Consumer rights: If you are a consumer, nothing in these Terms affects your statutory rights under applicable consumer protection law. Contact us via doc-e-sign.com/contact if you are unsure whether consumer protections apply to you.