Doc E Sign — Terms of Service
Effective date: Provisional — pending legal sign-off on open question in internal/legal/tos-brief.md (signer obligations in tort/statute/quasi-contract); do not publish until lawyer has answered and any required changes to the Signing Disclaimer are made and seeded
Version: 1.0 (draft)
URL: doc-e-sign.com/terms
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 privacy@doc-e-sign.com 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 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
- Storage of completed signed PDFs in your dashboard for the duration of your active subscription
- 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. Before cancellation, you will be shown a notice to download your signed documents — documents stored in Doc E Sign are deleted 30 days after your subscription ends.
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. Existing signed documents remain accessible during any payment grace period.
Plan limits and overage: Each plan includes a monthly envelope allocation (Standard: 1,000; Pro: 12,500). When you exceed your allocation, you may purchase additional envelope blocks at $10 per block (Standard: 1,000 envelopes per block; Pro: 5,000 envelopes per block). Overage blocks expire at the end of the billing period — unused envelopes in an overage block do not roll over.
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
Free plan: Signed documents are retained for 30 days after the signing ceremony completes, then permanently deleted. Both parties (sender and signer) receive a copy of the signed PDF by email at the time of signing. Doc E Sign's storage on the free plan is a brief retrieval window, not an archive — retain your own copy.
Pro and Business plans — active subscription: Completed signed documents are stored in your dashboard for the duration of your active subscription.
Pro and Business plans — after cancellation: If you cancel your subscription, your signed documents remain accessible for 30 days after your subscription ends. After that 30-day window, your signed documents are permanently deleted from Doc E Sign's servers. We strongly recommend downloading all signed documents before cancelling your subscription.
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 a convenience layer, not an archiving service. Long-term document retention is your responsibility. Doc E Sign accepts no liability for loss of access to signed documents where you did not retain your own copy or did not export documents within the applicable deletion window.
Deletion on erasure request: If a signer makes a valid data erasure request under GDPR, we will notify you before deleting any stored signed PDF, giving you a window to download your copy. 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. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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: You have 30 days from the date your account closes to download your signed documents before they are permanently deleted. 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.
13. 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 privacy@doc-e-sign.com. 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.