The two products at a glance
| Product | Who it fits | Who should skip it | Published entry price | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dropbox Sign | Small and product teams evaluating approachable signing and embedded workflows | The organization requires a broader agreement-management operating model | $15/monthEssentials plan$180 billed yearly; a lower first-year promotion was shownVendor pricing page, checked Oct 27, 2026 ↗ | 3 signature requests/month; unlimited self-signing |
| airSlate SignNow | Teams comparing repeatable signing workflows, team administration, and API options | The buyer wants a document-creation suite centered on rich sales proposals | Not yet verified on the vendor’s own page | Not verified |
Prices are the entry list prices each vendor publishes on its own US pricing page, read on Oct 27, 2026. They exclude taxes, payment processing unless stated, hardware, add-ons and negotiated discounts; a promotion appears only in the notes, labeled as one. Prices change. No vendor paid for a place or a price in this table.
Verdict: Dropbox Sign for anyone who sends regularly; airSlate SignNow only if each user's yearly sends stay inside its allowance.
Both are simple signing tools for small teams, and on features they overlap: templates, reminders, team plans, an API. The difference that changes the bill is how sending is metered. Dropbox's help center states that on Essentials, Standard and Premium "you can sign or request signatures on an unlimited number of documents" on the web. SignNow's help center states that paid plans include an annual allowance of 100 signature invites per user, or 10 a month on monthly billing, with unused invites not rolling over and each extra invite billed. Both help articles and Dropbox's pricing page were read on October 28, 2026; SignNow's pricing page loads its prices by script and could not be read, so its plan prices are not quoted here.
How each one meters sending
| Dropbox Sign | airSlate SignNow | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | 3 signature requests a month | No free plan stated in the articles we read |
| Requests on paid web plans | Unlimited on Essentials, Standard and Premium | 100 invites per user a year (annual billing) or 10 a month (monthly) |
| Extra sends | Not applicable | $0.96 per invite on Business, $1.80 on Business Premium, $3.60 on Enterprise |
| Templates | 5 on Essentials, 15 on Standard, unlimited on Premium | Not compared here |
| Entry price | Essentials, $15 a month billed monthly, one user | Not readable on SignNow's pricing page |
| Team plan | Standard, $25 per user a month billed monthly or $17.50 billed yearly | Not readable |
Why Dropbox Sign takes the verdict
A hundred invites a year is about two a week per user. An office manager sending onboarding packets, a landlord renewing leases or a salesperson closing small deals will pass that in a busy month, and every invite past it is billed: 50 extra invites on SignNow Business cost $48 on top of the subscription. Dropbox Sign's paid web plans remove that arithmetic entirely, which makes the yearly cost predictable.
When SignNow is the better fit
If each person who sends does so rarely, say a few contracts a month at most, the allowance never bites, and the decision moves to the rest of the product: SignNow's workflow and team administration features, or a price your team negotiates. Check its allowance against last year's sends per user before you sign, and remember the allowance resets with the billing cycle rather than carrying over.
The deciding number
How SignNow counts depends on your seats. Its help article says that on a subscription with several seats, usage is shared across all seats when the extra seats are free seats, and tracked individually per seat on legacy paid seats. On shared seats, compare the whole account's sends with its allowance; on individually tracked seats, check each sender, because a heavy sender can pay overage while a light one leaves invites unused. Either way, use the period that matches your billing: 100 a year on annual billing, 10 a month on monthly. If your sends would regularly run past the allowance that applies, choose Dropbox Sign. If they stay below it, compare SignNow's quoted price with Dropbox Sign's published one. If you send fewer than three a month in total, start with the free plans compared.
Traceable evidence
Sources for this decision
- vendorDropbox Sign official product siteDropbox Sign · checked Aug 5, 2026 · supports: Vendor-published product scope used to verify capabilities relevant to this buyer context: Small and product teams evaluating approachable signing and embedded workflows. It does not prove the guide's fit verdict, configured performance, current pricing or compliance.Open source ↗
- vendorairSlate SignNow official product siteairSlate SignNow · checked Aug 5, 2026 · supports: Vendor-published product scope used to verify capabilities relevant to this buyer context: Teams comparing repeatable signing workflows, team administration, and API options. It does not prove the guide's fit verdict, configured performance, current pricing or compliance.Open source ↗
- vendorDropbox help center, downgrading a Dropbox Sign accountDropbox · checked Oct 28, 2026 · supports: Dropbox help article (updated December 4, 2025) stating that the Free plan allows signing or requesting signatures on 3 documents a month without templates, that Essentials, Standard and Premium allow an unlimited number of documents on the web, that Essentials has 5 templates, Standard 15 and Premium unlimited, that teams are available only on Standard and Premium, and that API plans start at 50 or 100 signature requests; it does not state prices.Open source ↗
- vendorDropbox Sign pricing page, plan pricesDropbox · checked Oct 28, 2026 · supports: Dropbox Sign's pricing page as read on October 28, 2026: Essentials for one user at $15 a month billed monthly, Standard for two or more users at $25 per user a month billed monthly or $17.50 per user a month billed yearly, Premium by custom quote, with a promotional yearly Essentials price shown; it does not publish API prices on that page and does not prove a buyer's total cost.Open source ↗
- vendorCan I use Dropbox Sign for free?Dropbox · checked Oct 27, 2026 · supports: Dropbox help article stating that the Dropbox Sign Free plan allows three signature requests per month, renewing every 30 days from sign-up, unlimited self-signing that does not count toward the limit, documents sent together counting as one request, an audit trail with completed requests and no bulk send; it does not list every Free plan limit or paid prices.Open source ↗
- vendorairSlate SignNow help center, invite limits, rollovers and extra invite feesairSlate SignNow · checked Oct 28, 2026 · supports: SignNow help article (updated September 14, 2026) stating that paid plans include an annual allowance of 100 signature invites per user or a monthly allowance of 10, resetting with the billing cycle without rollover, usage shared across all seats when additional seats are free seats and tracked individually per seat on legacy paid seats, and extra invites at $0.96 on Business, $1.80 on Business Premium and $3.60 on Enterprise; it does not state plan subscription prices or invite pack sizes.Open source ↗