Sending and signing order
A document goes out once, to everyone at the right moment, and comes back signed with its evidence attached. This page is the whole of that path.
What a document is
A document is one or more files read as a single run of pages, plus the people it goes to and the fields they fill. Upload a PDF, a photo or scan (JPEG, PNG, WebP, TIFF, HEIC, GIF), or a Word, OpenDocument, RTF, text or HTML file; anything that is not a PDF is turned into one on upload, before you place a field, so you approve exactly what the signer will see. A contract and its schedules can be one document of several files: the signer sees one continuous document, and the certificate names every original.
| Files in a document | Up to 10 |
|---|---|
| Size | 25 MB a file, 50 MB in all, 500 pages |
| Recipients | No limit. One person per email address on a document. |
| Fields | Signature, initials, date, text, checkbox. Each belongs to one signer and is required unless you say otherwise. |
The editor reads the document’s own text and suggests fields where it finds a place to sign, a date line or a name line; clicking a suggestion makes it a field. A field is placed as a fraction of its page, so it lands in the same spot whatever the page size, rotation or crop.
Try it first
An empty workspace offers a sample: one page addressed to you, with its fields already placed, sent to you alone. You sign it on your own signing page and get back a completed PDF with its certificate, which is the whole product in under a minute. It emails nobody and does not count against your plan.
Before you have a workspace at all, sharesign.co/try does the same with no account and no email address: type your name, sign the sample on the real signing page, and download the signed PDF with its certificate. It is removed 24 hours after it is made.
Signing order
Every signer has an order number. Signers with the same number are emailed at the same time; the next number is emailed only when everyone before it has signed. Leave every signer at 1 and they all sign at once. People who receive a copy are told when the document is sent and again when it is complete, whatever the order. A signer who is not yet due sees nothing until their turn: no email, no link.
What the signer sees
An email from you, through ShareSign, with your message and one link. The link opens the document in the browser with no account, download or app. Their fields are marked; they draw or type a signature, and a signer who is signed in to a ShareSign account under that email is offered the signature they saved there. Before anything is recorded they confirm, in a sentence they can read, that the electronic signature has the effect of a handwritten one, and they are told what is recorded to prove it.
A signer can also decline with a reason, pass the document to the person who should really sign it if you allow that, or report it if it looks like fraud. What each of those does is on copies, hand-offs and declines.
Reminders
You choose when signers are reminded, in the last step before sending: after 3 days and again after 7 (the default), every 2 days, every 3 days, every week, or never. The API takes any list of up to ten days. While the document is out for signature you can change it from the document page, which also says when the next reminder goes.
| When the clock starts | When each signer's turn starts, not when the document was sent. The second signer of a document that sat with the first for a week gets their first reminder three days after it reaches them. |
|---|---|
| Who is reminded | Only a signer whose turn it is and who has not signed. A reminder is a fresh copy of the signing email, and the trail records it. |
| Never twice in a day | Schedules, a last call and a reopening can land close together. Nobody hears from us twice within 20 hours. |
| Changing it after sending | Change, beside the reminders on the document page. The new days count from when each signer's turn began, as the first ones did, and days already past are skipped rather than sent late. Choosing never stops the reminders; the last call still goes the day before it closes. |
| From code | One API call gives a sent document new reminder days, under the same rules, with a key that is allowed to send: { "reminder_days": [2, 4, 6] }, []for none, or nullfor the usual 3 and 7. |
| Sending a link again | From the document page, for any signer who is still waiting. The old link stops working and a new one is emailed, so a forwarded or leaked link cannot be used later. |
The deadline
A document stays open for 30 days unless you choose 7, 14, 60 or 90; the API takes anything from 1 to 365. Signers are told the date in their email and on the signing page, so nobody has to guess how long they have.
| The last call | A day before it closes, whoever is still waiting is reminded once more, and you are told who has and has not signed, in time to do something about it. |
|---|---|
| Moving it | From the document page, at any time while it is out for signature: a week, two weeks, a month, or a date you pick, up to a year from sending. The same links keep working, and the reminders follow the new date: every 2 days runs on to it, and reminders the old date cut off come back. |
| Reopening | A document that expired can be opened again the same way. The same links work, whoever was waiting is emailed, and anyone who had signed does not sign again. |
| From code | One API call moves the deadline or reopens an expired document, under the same rules. It takes a time with its zone, such as 2026-10-31T17:00:00Z, and a key that is allowed to send. Your webhooks hear document.deadline_changedand document.reopened. |
| When it closes | A document nobody has finished is marked expired and its links stop working. One whose last signer has signed is never closed underneath its completion. |
When everyone has signed
The moment the last signature lands, every value is drawn into the PDF, any fillable form fields in the original are flattened so nobody can type over what was signed, and a certificate of completion is appended as the final page. Every signer and every copied person is emailed a link to the signed PDF that works for seven days; you receive the same email unless you turn that off in your profile. The signed PDF and the full activity trail stay on the document page for as long as you keep the document. What the certificate contains and why it can be trusted is on how a signature holds up.
In your name and colours
Every email already comes from you by name. On the Business plan the emails and the signing page also carry your logo and accent colour in place of ours, a sender name of your choosing, and a reply-to address for the whole workspace, used once you have confirmed it from that mailbox. The settings survive a downgrade and apply again when the plan does.
Changing your mind
A draft or sent document can be voided with a reason. Nobody can sign it afterwards: a signer who opens their link sees that the sender voided it, and the reason is kept in the trail. A completed document cannot be voided, only deleted: what was signed stays signed. Deleting is covered on data and regions.
From code, or by an agent
Everything above can be done by an API call, a Zapier zap, or an agent connected over MCP, with the same limits and the same trail. Sending is the one step that stays with a person by default: an agent prepares the document and the person presses Send. The API reference has the details.
Last changed 19 September 2026. Something wrong here? Say so on the support page.