What e-signature send limits actually cost

Almost every e-signature platform sells a seat and then limits what that seat may send. The limit is rarely the headline number on the pricing page, it is usually annual rather than monthly, and the price of exceeding it is often on a different page again — or, in one case here, on no page at all. That gap between the advertised price and the billed price is the single most common complaint about this category, and it is entirely avoidable if you know where the figures are kept.

The mechanics are worth understanding before the numbers, because the counting rules decide whether a limit binds. A send is almost always counted when it leaves, not when it completes: an envelope nobody signs still spends your allowance. Bulk sending counts per recipient rather than per upload, so one CSV can spend hundreds of an annual allowance at once. Reusable public links can count per use. And allowances quoted per user per year do not reset monthly, which is why teams tend to discover the cap in month two rather than month twelve.

The prices for going over vary more than anything else in this category — from under a dollar a document to nearly eight. That range matters more than the subscription difference between vendors, because at real volume the overage is the larger number. It is also the figure most often misquoted by comparison articles, including by vendors describing each other, so each number in these guides is cited to the page it was read from and dated.

The guides below take each platform in turn — what is included, what counts, what the excess costs and where the vendor states it — plus one on getting your completed documents out before you switch, which is the step most people leave until they have already cancelled.