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The dance of printing a document, taking a pen and signing it, then scanning and emailing it to a banker or client is one I think we’ve all done. It’s also extremely inefficient, not to mention annoying.
The Mac’s handy-dandy Preview app makes it possible to fill out and digitally sign a document, but it’s just as easy to sign from an iOS device, and of course there is no shortage of apps for that. I’ve whittled that selection down to these five that cover all the bases, letting you sign, fill out forms, connect to your cloud storage accounts, and use’s iOS 8’s share extension, among other features. The differences between them boil down to aesthetics, workflow, and pricing—which means one of them is probably just right for you.
SignNow
SignNow offers a free app for both the iPhone and iPad. If you only need to sign five documents (or fewer!) per month, the free tier will cover you. Anything over that requires a monthly service plan, which aren’t cheap—a Pro account purchased in-app is $25/month or $180/year.
Of all the apps, I found SignNow to be the most visually appealing. Not to mention the quality of the signature placed onto the document was top-notch. The process of sending a document to someone else for him or her to sign allows for you to place buttons on the document, designating what information is needed where, and from who.
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SignEasy
SignEasy is free, but limits you to signing three documents. Total. After you’ve reached the limit, you can purchase an additional allotment of 10 documents for $5, or a year of unlimited signatures for $40.
Also hidden behind the additional fees is the ability to unlock the app with Touch ID or passcode. If you ask me, securing my account should be free. SignEasy could also benefit from a clearly defined method for requesting signatures from someone else.
DocuSign
DocuSign has long been my go-to document signing app, only for its availability across multiple platforms, including web). The app is free to sign as many documents as you need to, with a limit on the number of sent docs. Plans for sending documents start at $10 per month (paid annually) for five docs per month.
My only reservation with DocuSign is that the signature and text placed onto a document doesn’t look near as crisp and refined as SignNow and SignEasy. But admittedly, I’m nitpicking. The app and service do the job with little fuss.
PDFpen 2
PDFpen 2 is the only app on this list you need to pay for up front—but then you’ll never pay again, no matter how much you use it. The $20 price tag may be considered steep by some, but with no subscription fees or usage limits, it becomes a value.
Adding a signature isn’t completely obvious the first time you use the app, since it’s geared more toward editing and working with PDFs. It auto-detects fields in PDF forms, making it easy to go from one field to the next, filling in your information along the way. To sign a document, you need to draw your signature on the line. After that you can save your signature for future reference. Once a signature is saved, a couple of taps is all that’s required to sign another document.
PDF Reader
PDF Reader is completely free, with no restrictions on the number of documents you can sign. The only downside is having to deal with ads. For someone who doesn’t sign a lot of documents, though, it’s a solid choice.
Similar to PDFpen 2, PDF Reader is designed to be a PDF editor first and document signing app second. Features for highlighting text, scribbling notes on top of a document and the like are found throughout.
Digitally signing documents and forms might be nowhere near as personal as putting an old-fashioned pen onto a piece of old-fashioned paper and scribbling your John Hancock. But it wins on speed and convenience every day of the week.
Powerful PDF Editing On Your Mac
Add signatures, text, and images. Make changes and correct typos. OCR scanned docs. Fill out and create forms. Export to Microsoft® Word, Excel, PowerPoint.
PDFpenPro v12 Now Available
All-Purpose PDF Editing Tool
With PDFpenPro, you can add text and signatures, make corrections, OCR scanned docs and more, just like PDFpen. But PDFpenPro goes beyond, with more powerful features.
Make interactive PDF forms for both Mac and Windows
Make a scanned form come alive with PDFpenPro! Build interactive forms with text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, interactive signature fields and submit buttons!
Export in Excel, PowerPoint and PDF Archive Format
Export your PDFs not just in .docx format for the Microsoft® Word users in your life, but also .xlsx for Excel, .pptx for PowerPoint, and PDF/A for archival PDFs.
Put the Web in your PDFs
Whether it’s a single Web page or a whole site, make it into a PDF complete with clickable links.
Store PDFs in the Cloud
Now you can edit your PDFs wherever you are. Use iCloud or Dropbox for seamless editing with PDFpen for iPad & iPhone.
Make a portfolio package of your PDFs
Have a collection of PDFs to manage? Create a portfolio to combine your PDFs into a single manageable package for easy sharing and distribution.
Features
Draw, Highlight, Scribble, Correct Text
- Mark up documents with highlighting, underscoring and strikethrough
- Add text, images and signatures to PDF
- Correct text in original PDF with editable text blocks
- Move, resize, copy and delete images in original PDF
- Copy and paste rich text; retain fonts and formatting when copying from PDFs, including columns
- Add, edit, preview and extract file attachments and annotations
- Record and playback audio annotations
- Add notes, comments, and cloud annotations
- Snap objects in place with guides
- Add page numbers, bookmarks, headers and footers, line numbers and watermarks
Scan & OCR — Preview Text
- Perform OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on scanned documents singly or in batch OCR
- Edit OCR text from your scanned pages
- Scan directly from Image Capture or any Mac-compatible scanner
- Adjust resolution, color depth and contrast, skew, and size of an image or scanned document
- Context-sensitive popup-menus enable quick edits
- Automate PDF manipulations with AppleScript and JavaScript Automation
- Compress PDF documents for smaller file sizes
Redact Personal Information
- Redact or erase text, including OCR text
- Password protect a document with up to 256-bit AES encryption
- Edit document permissions to restrict saving, printing, copying, etc.
- Full screen mode, as well as zoom to document width and zoom to actual document size
- Print notes and comments with or without the original text
- Print a list of all annotations along with the document
- Add (and print) notes and comments
Sign & Fill Forms
- Validate digital signatures for authenticity and trust of digitally signed documents
- Digitally sign documents using AATL or create a self-signed certificate
- Fill out interactive PDF forms and sign them
- Apply business-related and sign here stamps via the Library
- Save frequently-used images, signatures, objects and text in the Library
- Sync Library items with PDFpen for iPad & iPhone via iCloud
- Use iCloud or Dropbox for seamless editing with PDFpen for iPad & iPhone
- Save PDFs directly to Evernote
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Auto-generate Fillable Form Fields
- Convert websites to multi-page PDFs, complete with hyperlinks
- Create and edit cross-platform fillable PDF forms
- Send documents for signature with DocuSign®
- Export PDFs to Microsoft® Word (.docx) while offline, and to Microsoft® Excel (.xlsx), Microsoft® PowerPoint (.pptx), and PDF Archive (PDF/A) formats with an Internet connection
- Create form fields automatically in a non-interactive form
- Create and edit document Table of Contents
- Create Portfolio documents, combining related files together
“PDFpenPro is the crème de la crème of PDF editing and annotating applications.”
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Macworld, Jeffery Battersby