How to validate a signature in PDF online for free.
In this quick guide, we’re going to show you how to validate a digital signature in a PDF document online.
We’ll walk you through the steps, and explain what each one means so that you can make sure your documents are secure.
How To Validate Signature In Pdf Online Free
As businesses start to migrate their work to the cloud, digital signing is becoming a common practice in the workplace.
Digital signing is a cryptographic process: A timestamp and a unique number are always assigned to a document, once signed.
If you have recently used our eSign tool or any other digital singing product—here’s how you can check for the validity of the signature. And although many PDF readers have this standard function, we’ll stick with one of the most common (free) one: Adobe Reader.
How to Validate a Digital Signature in a PDF Document
- Open the signed PDF file (with Adobe).
- Choose the ‘Signatures’ option on the left-hand panel (the fountain pen).
- Click the gray caret to open up a drop-down menu.
- Here, you can check the validity of the signature, along with other signature properties: the time of signing, the validity of the signer’s signature, and whether it’s been modified since the signature was applied.
How to validate any digital signature using a free PDF reader.
If a signature has not been validated, you can click ‘Validate All’ to start the process. Be warned; this may take a while for larger documents that contain multiple signatures.
Great! How Can I Sign a Document Digitally?
Smallpdf has one of the most potent PDF signing tools on the Internet. It’s free for anyone to create an electronic signature—and those with a premium account will have access to digital signing.Create Digital Signature
You may test the product out for free—see if you like the workflow, the signature quality, and the overall usability of our product. And if you are then tempted to upgrade the signatures to ‘digital,’ we always offer a seven-day free trial for you to get started—at no cost!
The process is relatively straightforward: Upload a document, create a signature, sign, and download!
Create a digital signature with Smallpdf, in less than a few seconds.
If you need to request a signature, it’s just one additional click to add a signer’s email and send them the document. In this case, we will notify you and the signer when you send out the request, when they sign the PDF, and when it’s near its deletion date (14-days).
Once you sign your documents digitally, you can go back to your Adobe Reader to validate the PDF’s digital signature, as illustrated above. Remember to always check in with your local laws on the legality of digital and electronic signatures in your country.
Is Smallpdf eSign Service Secure?
As secure as it can be!
Smallpdf caters to over 30 million trusted users every month. We remove files after one hour of processing and use SSL encryption for all file transfers. Our business is also ISO 27001 certified and GDPR compliant.
To make things even more practical, we prolong the period that we keep files online to 14 days—when you share files or request a signature.
There are also a few additional perks for Pro users. For instance, we will keep your signatures saved within the tool for a more streamlined signing experience.
If a signer has completed the signing process and does not want to keep the document online for the two-week period, you can go back to the main tool page, scroll further down, and full tracking of all signed documents. There is an X icon that you can click to remove individual signatures.
And better yet—we also offer file storage! Those who work on-the-go frequently can always access their documents, 24/7, whenever they are online. And with our suite of PDF tools, feel free to convert, compress, and modify your PDFs before signing them digitally.
digital signature verification app
hether you’re looking for a way to electronically sign a document that you’ve just received or want to send documents out to be digitally signed by contractors and other business partners, we’ve got recommendations for the right apps to use. I considered and tested almost 40 electronic signature apps, and these are the eight best—for everyone on both sides of the paperwork.
The best eSignature software
- DocuSign for businesses that sign lots of things
- HelloSign for integration with cloud storage
- Preview for occasionally signing documents on a Mac
- Adobe Acrobat Reader for occasionally signing documents on a PC
- eSignatures.io for a pay-as-you-go option
- SignWell for a free eSign app
- PandaDoc for collecting payments when people sign
- signNow for small teams
Digital signature vs. electronic signature
As with all things legal, definitions matter. Electronic signatures and digital signatures are slightly different things. An electronic signature is just your typed, drawn, or otherwise computer-added signature on a document. You can make one with almost any app, from Microsoft Word to Adobe Photoshop. It’s still legally binding, but because anyone could easily forge it, you might have a harder time in a contentious court case.
A digital signature is a special kind of electronic signature that uses cryptography to protect the document and also embeds details like email addresses, when and where people signed any documents, and the serial number and identifying details of the device they use to do it. This creates both a “fingerprint” that makes the document unique and a paper trail that can be independently verified. If there ever was a court case, it would be a lot harder for anyone to claim they weren’t the one to actually sign the document. For official purposes, digital signatures are a lot more secure and legally recognized around the world—and you need a dedicated eSign app to add them.
We use the terms interchangeably—in common usage, they basically are—but it’s worth keeping that distinction in mind as you do your research.
What makes a great electronic signature app?
How we evaluate and test apps
All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who’ve spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it’s intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We’re never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.
The problem with business app categories like this is that often the people paying for the app (or deciding which one to get) aren’t the ones who have to use it every day. And while there are lots of eSignature apps out there, a lot of them are awful to use.
To make this list, an eSignature app had to be nice to use but also provide all the features that businesses need. Any good eSignature app has to meet a few criteria:
- The ability to add an electronic (or digital) signature to any document. Signing things is the whole point of these apps. But the simpler and easier it is to do, the more different kinds of documents and devices that are supported, and the deeper the integrations with other apps and software platforms, the better. While almost any app can simply add a signature or typed name, we were looking for ones that were great to use and could fit into a lot of different workflows.
- The ability to send a document to someone else to have them sign it. This is a really important feature for a dedicated eSign app and, like when signing a document yourself, we wanted it to be easy and pleasant for the recipient. (Seriously, I’ve had to sign a lot of documents with awful apps.) The recipient also had to be able to do it without being forced to sign up for an account or install any apps.
- Accessibility for small to mid-sized businesses. You can find plenty of eSign apps with expensive plans, crazy contract lock-ins, and a focus on enterprise clients—but not on this list.
- Security. Although we weren’t looking for a specific set of features, any app that could store sensitive documents like contracts needed to address it in some way. Things like encrypted or password-protected documents, U.S. or EU government compliance, and digital signature support were all enough to make the grade. (With that said, make sure that any app you use meets the compliance standards of your country or industry. They can vary quite a lot.)
- A free trial (or free plan). This is a field crammed with different competitors, and telling the good from the bad just from their websites is nearly impossible (trust me, I know). A decent free trial—or better yet, a free plan—was needed to make this list. Priority was also given to apps that didn’t collect credit card details. They’re just not necessary.
I started out with a list of almost 40 eSignature apps. That was too many to meaningfully test, so I cut it down by checking out their websites and excluding any that obviously didn’t meet our criteria, were clearly aimed at enterprise clients, had generally poor user reviews, or otherwise didn’t look like a good fit.
For the remaining apps (which I’ve now tested twice over the past two years), I created an account, uploaded a Super Important Contract as a Word file, and sent it to a second email address. I then signed the contract both as the sender and the recipient, which gave me a good sense of the overall workflow. Most apps that didn’t make the list were cut at this stage, as the process for either the sender or the recipient wasn’t up to our standards.
For those apps that passed, I spent more time exploring the interface, trying any headline features they claimed to have, and making sure they met the rest of our criteria. Based on all that, here are the eight best eSign apps.
Best electronic signature software for businesses that sign lots of things
DocuSign (Web, iOS, Android, Windows)
DocuSign is one of the most popular electronic signature apps available, and for good reason. It’s great to use and hits all the features most people need in an eSignature app. Getting started with DocuSign is pretty straightforward: sign up for a free trial, and almost immediately, it’s prompting you to upload a document, prepare it for signatures, and send it to recipients.
DocuSign is set up so that it’s easy to keep track of lots of different documents at different stages in the signing process. In the Manage dashboard, there’s a sidebar with an Inbox for any documents or “envelopes” you’ve received, a Sent box for the ones you’ve sent, and a Drafts tab for ones you’re working on. There are also Quick View options, so you can, well, quickly see any documents that you need to do something to, the ones you’re waiting on, any that are due to expire soon or where the recipient failed to sign, and all your completed documents.
DocuSign also has powerful templates and reporting features. If you’re sending the same contracts over and over again, you can set up a template in the Templates dashboard. Simply upload a file (or use one you’ve already sent as a base), add all the signature and information fields, and save it—it’s much the same process as sending out an individual document and really speeds things up.
If you’re only sending a couple of envelopes a month, the report features aren’t going to be much use—you know who has and hasn’t signed their contract. But if you’re managing dozens of contractors or freelancers, or require all your clients to sign contracts, then they can give you a useful overview of where your business stands. Click on the Reports tab, and you’ll see things like how many envelopes you’ve sent, how quickly people sign them, and the number that are still unsigned.
DocuSign also integrates with Zapier, so you can do things like automatically send a contract to someone who fills in a Typeform or let your team on Slack know when one has been signed. Send Slack channel messages for signed DocuSign envelopesDocuSign + SlackUse this ZapCreate DocuSign signature requests for new entries in TypeformDocuSign + TypeformUse this Zap
DocuSign price: From $15/month for a Personal plan with up to 5 envelopes sent per month. Unlimited documents with automatic reminders are available on the Standard plan at $45/user/month.
DocuSign isn’t the only solid eSign app for businesses that need to handle a lot of documents. Both SignEasy (from $15/month) and HelloSign (from $20/month) are great DocuSign alternatives—it just eked them out on a few specifics.
Best electronic signature app for cloud users
HelloSign (Web, iOS, Android)
HelloSign, now owned by Dropbox, is one of the best alternatives to DocuSign. It’s one of simplest-to-use electronic signature apps around, has a great free plan, and offers unlimited signature requests per month on its starting paid plan. As soon as you log in, you’re presented with two options: send or sign something, or create a template (as long as you’re on a paid plan). The things you’re going to want to do aren’t hidden away in deep sub-menus.
The simplicity of the user interface, however, hides some pretty powerful features. Of all the apps we tested, HelloSign has the best integrations with cloud storage platforms. While you’d expect it to play nice with Dropbox, it also works well with Google Drive, Box, Evernote, and OneDrive.
To sign a file in your Dropbox, for example, you can head to HelloSign, click Sign or Send, then click on the Dropbox icon to bring up a file browser. Navigate to the file you want to sign, and click Choose to import it into HelloSign. Alternatively, you could open the file in Dropbox, select it, click on the Share dropdown, then click Send for Signatures. You’ve got similar options with Google Drive too. You can upload a file directly from HelloSign or, with the Chrome add-on, sign files through the Google Drive app.
And all this file handling works both ways. When someone signs a document and sends it back to you, it can get saved back to your cloud storage platform of choice.
HelloSign doesn’t hold back on the other features, either. It supports custom templates, and, on higher plans, custom branding, multiple users, and advanced team management. If you want to integrate HelloSign with non-cloud storage apps, you can do it with Zapier. That way, you can do things like automatically send a contract when someone fills in a Typeform or get an SMS when someone signs.Request signatures with HelloSign for new Typeform entriesHelloSign + TypeformUse this ZapSend SMS messages for new HelloSign signature requestsHelloSign + SMS by ZapierUse this Zap
HelloSign price: Free for 3 documents/month with one user; from $20/month for the Essentials plan with unlimited documents.
Best electronic signature app for occasionally signing documents on a Mac
Preview (macOS)
If you’ve been sent a document to sign and nobody needs all the alarm bells and security whistles that come with one of our other picks, you have options. If you have a Mac, you don’t need to worry about installing any software or signing up for any services. You can sign things straight from Preview.
Open the document you want to sign in Preview, go to Tools > Annotate > Signature > Manage Signatures, and click Create Signature. You can then create a signature using your trackpad, your iPhone, or by signing a piece of paper and holding it up to the camera.
Click Done, and then you can drag your new signature to where it needs to be. Save the document, send it back, and you’re good to go. And your signature stays saved in Preview for future use.
Preview price: Included free with all Macs
Conclusion
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