Which documents suit DrakonSign?
DrakonSign produces a simple electronic signature with a tamper-evident evidence record around it. It may suit a great deal of everyday business paperwork in England and Wales. It does not suit everything, and this page is a product-scope list rather than legal advice.
This is general information about how the product works, not legal advice. You choose what to send and how to sign it, and you remain responsible for meeting whatever formalities your document requires. If a document matters, take advice on whether an electronic signature suits it before you send it.
Commonly suited: ordinary, low-risk agreements
These are common examples that may suit a simple electronic-signature workflow. Whether a particular document belongs here depends on its formalities and governing law; obtain independent advice where the answer matters.
| Document | Why it usually works |
|---|---|
| NDAs and confidentiality agreements | A common pilot use case when the agreement and governing law do not prescribe another signing method. The audit trail records which recipient record was served which version and when each signature landed. |
| Supplier, customer and reseller terms; purchase orders; quotations accepted in writing | A common high-volume workflow when the parties have not prescribed another signing method. |
| Consultancy and contractor agreements, statements of work, change notes | May suit when the document is an ordinary agreement. If it is drafted as a deed or prescribes another method, it moves to the excluded list below. |
| Employment offer letters and contracts of employment | A common onboarding workflow, subject to the document's own requirements. Settlement agreements are different and are on the take-advice list. |
| Licences to occupy and short serviced-office agreements not granted by deed | This is the workflow DrakonSign was built for and the one Drakon Systems runs itself. Use it only when an adviser has confirmed the document is not granted as a deed. |
| Internal approvals: policy acknowledgements, expense and change sign-offs, board paper acknowledgements | Internal records where the requirement is a dated, tamper-evident record of who submitted the approval rather than a prescribed legal ceremony. |
| Software licence terms and subscription order forms | A routine commercial workflow when neither the terms nor governing law prescribes another method; the API makes it easy to issue from your own system. |
Not suitable: do not use DrakonSign for these
Each of these has a formality DrakonSign does not perform. This is not a caution to read past — the signature will not do what the document needs it to do.
| Excluded | The formality we do not meet |
|---|---|
| Deeds — and anything a party chooses to execute as a deed | DrakonSign does not provide the execution, witnessing or attestation ceremony a deed may require. Product policy excludes every document marked or intended to be executed as a deed. |
| Conveyancing, and HM Land Registry transfers and dispositions (TR1, TP1, charges) | Land Registry accepts electronic signatures only on its own specific terms, and DrakonSign has not been assessed against them. Use the process your conveyancer specifies. |
| Wills and codicils | Product policy excludes wills and codicils. DrakonSign does not provide a joint physical witnessing ceremony or determine whether testamentary formalities are met. |
| Lasting powers of attorney and enduring powers of attorney | Product policy excludes these forms. DrakonSign has not implemented or been assessed for their prescribed execution and witnessing sequence. |
| Statutory declarations, affidavits, and anything sworn or affirmed before an authorised person | DrakonSign provides no authorised-person, oath or affirmation ceremony and has not been assessed for these documents, so product policy excludes them. |
| Anything required in wet ink, or as an advanced (AES) or qualified (QES) electronic signature | DrakonSign produces a simple electronic signature. We do not sell it as an AES or a QES, and the sealing certificate is self-issued rather than reader-trusted. If a statute, regulator, counterparty, funder or insurer specifies wet ink, AES or QES, this does not meet it. |
| Documents that must be witnessed or attested | DrakonSign has a Witness routing label. It is a label — see below. There is no attestation that a witness was physically present. |
| Court documents and filings with prescribed signature requirements | DrakonSign has not been assessed against court or tribunal filing rules. Follow the process specified by the relevant court or tribunal. |
Take independent advice first
Not excluded outright, but not something to decide from a supplier’s website either.
| Situation | Why to ask first |
|---|---|
| Regulated or high-value transactions | Consumer credit agreements, insurance contracts, financial promotions, healthcare consent, and anything where a regulator specifies how a signature is captured. Do not use DrakonSign for one of these unless you have independent advice that a simple electronic signature is acceptable for that document. |
| Employment settlement agreements | These need an independent adviser's certificate and specific statutory conditions. The signing method is the smaller half of the problem. |
| Documents governed by law outside England and Wales | This product guide is scoped to England and Wales. Scotland, Northern Ireland and other jurisdictions have different rules; take local advice before choosing a signing method. |
| Anything a counterparty, funder, insurer or auditor has told you how to sign | Their requirement governs, whatever the general law allows. Ask before you send. |
Witness and Approver are routing labels, not legal roles
When you add a recipient you pick a role: Signer, Witness, Approver or CC. Today Witness and Approver control routing and wording only. The label is stored on the recipient record, used to order the envelope, and printed next to that recipient on the certificate of completion. It changes nothing else.
- A Witness or Approver recipient goes through exactly the same ceremony as a Signer: the same one-time code to confirm inbox control, the same consent wording, the same fields to complete.
- There is no statutory witnessing. Nothing checks or records that a witness was physically present when someone else signed, because nothing could — everyone completes the ceremony separately, from wherever they are.
- There is no role-specific consent text and no separate approval ceremony. An Approver is a signer whose label says Approver.
- CC is the one role that behaves differently: CC recipients do not sign and are not emailed. They are recorded on the certificate of completion.
So if your document needs a witness in the legal sense — someone physically present who attests the signature — this label does not provide it, and the document belongs on the excluded list above.
What DrakonSign does, and what it does not
What it does
- Append-only, hash-chained audit trail — every event linked to the last by SHA-256, re-verifiable on demand from the dashboard or the API.
- SHA-256 fingerprints of the original and the completed file, recorded in that chain.
- A certificate of completion as a separate PDF, for every envelope that completes.
- An independent RFC 3161 timestamp over the completion event when the authority answers, and an immutable record of the degradation when it does not.
- A detached evidence bundle whose externally timestamped tiers can be checked against trust anchors the recipient supplies; issuer-asserted fields remain Drakon assertions.
- Signing pages that set no cookies, run no analytics and make no third-party requests.
- The application and database in London, and live documents in a separate single-region London bucket. Encrypted nightly backups are held for 30 days in a different, globally distributed bucket.
- A REST API covering the whole signing workflow — upload, place fields, send, remind, track, and download the evidence. Billing, API-key management and account security are deliberately dashboard-only, so a leaked API key cannot reach them.
What it does not do
- Check anybody's passport, driving licence or company records.
- Perform statutory witnessing, attestation, or anything a deed requires.
- Issue an advanced (AES) or qualified (QES) electronic signature.
- Ship a reader-trusted (AATL) sealing certificate — ours is self-issued, so readers show an untrusted issuer.
- Tell you whether your document is enforceable, or give legal advice of any kind.
- Put one email address in several workspaces: each person belongs to exactly one workspace today.
The full technical account, including every seal state the product can record and what each one means, is on the Security page.
Questions people actually ask
- Does DrakonSign guarantee a legal result?
- No. Whether a particular document is enforceable depends on its own formalities and governing law. DrakonSign preserves evidence designed to support authenticity and attribution; it does not decide whether a document is legally effective, and nothing here is legal advice.
- Does DrakonSign produce an advanced or qualified electronic signature?
- No. It produces a simple electronic signature with a tamper-evident evidence record around it. The sealing certificate is self-issued rather than issued by a reader-trusted authority, so PDF readers report the signature as coming from an untrusted issuer. A reader-trusted (AATL) certificate and a qualified signature through a Qualified Trust Service Provider are not shipped, and each is a real piece of engineering rather than a setting we could switch on. Do not plan around them.
- How do you confirm the signer is who they say they are?
- We confirm control of the email inbox the envelope was addressed to, using a one-time code, before the protected PDF is served. That supports attribution. It does not confirm that a particular human was at the keyboard, and we do not check government-issued documents.
- What does a completed envelope leave behind?
- A hash-chained audit trail, SHA-256 fingerprints of the original and the signed file, a separate certificate of completion, and — when the timestamp authority answers — an independent RFC 3161 anchor over the completion event. The seal state is measured on the file that was produced and recorded as it was found; that record is authoritative. The Security page lists every state it can record.
- Can I use it for a lease?
- Only if an independent adviser has confirmed the document is suitable for a simple electronic signature and is not granted or executed as a deed. Product policy excludes every deed.
- Our counterparty's lawyer wants a wet signature. Can I persuade them with the audit trail?
- Send them the Security page and the evidence bundle by all means, but their requirement governs. If they want wet ink, print it.
- Who is responsible for getting this right?
- You are. You choose the document, the signers and the method; we record what happened. That is the honest division, and it is written into the terms of service.
Who uses it today
DrakonSign is built and operated by Drakon Systems Ltd, which signs its own serviced-office paperwork with it — the product’s first and longest-running user, and the reason it exists. It is available to buy today, at founding-customer pricing.
There are no customer logos, testimonials or usage figures on this page, because we do not have any we could stand behind yet. When customers are willing to be named, they will be named here and nowhere before.
Still not sure?
If your document is not obviously in the first table, treat it as one for the third: ask somebody qualified before you send it. If you want to know what the product records so you can put that question properly, read the Security page and the terms of service, or email support@drakonsystems.com and we will tell you what DrakonSign does — not whether your document is enforceable, which is not ours to say.