One think that I think they provide (as opposed to the self hosted version) is just the fact of being a relatively neutral third party.
If there’s a dispute over the veracity of a signature, it’s probably helpful to have a third party say “according to our server logs and software stack, this was signed by johndoe@example.com at 12:41pm on August 3rd, from the IP address XX.XXX.XXX.XX, and they authenticated with their email and password”. If I’m self-hosting, it’s marginally less convincing when I’m before a court if I say *my* software stack says that, since I have more direct control over it.
So, I agree DocuSign doesn’t have a special status, other than being a relatively neutral third party to that dispute. But if a signature’s validity is being questioned, that third party status is probably somewhat helpful.
Late to the party here, but I deal in this space all day. You are 100% correct.
Disputes over eSignatures come up allllll the time. And if you mention that it was "DocuSigned"... although you have done nothing aside from name-dropping... it will essentially end the dispute. Not saying that it should. Just saying that it does.
I think that could totally be possible for your hosted offering, but my point is largely that I don’t see how the self-hosted offering could ever get there, unless there was some technical measure that could prevent the operator of the system from tampering with the logs/database/etc
Edited to add: mild disclosure, I’m working on a product that has e-sign as a feature. It’s not really the main thrust of the application, but probably worth mentioning here.
If there’s a dispute over the veracity of a signature, it’s probably helpful to have a third party say “according to our server logs and software stack, this was signed by johndoe@example.com at 12:41pm on August 3rd, from the IP address XX.XXX.XXX.XX, and they authenticated with their email and password”. If I’m self-hosting, it’s marginally less convincing when I’m before a court if I say *my* software stack says that, since I have more direct control over it.
So, I agree DocuSign doesn’t have a special status, other than being a relatively neutral third party to that dispute. But if a signature’s validity is being questioned, that third party status is probably somewhat helpful.