With Certyneo, your contracts, quotes, mandates, forms and administrative documents can be sent, signed and tracked online in minutes.
Free offer: 5 envelopes per month for 14 days, then 2 per month. No credit card, no commitment.
No complex setup. Easy to use. Built for businesses.
Reduce signing delays and eliminate printing, scanning, postal delivery and manual follow-ups.
See which documents are sent, opened, signed or pending.
Your clients can sign remotely from a computer, tablet or mobile.
Find your finalised documents easily, with a clear history of the signing process.
Import your document
Add a contract, quote, mandate or PDF to be signed.
Add signatories
Enter the details of the people who need to sign.
Send and track signing
Certyneo sends the request and lets you monitor progress.
The question always comes first, so might as well answer it here rather than three clicks further down. Three ways to sign with Certyneo, depending on what you need to have signed.
Free
0 €
Simple signature (SES) with audit trail and proof PDF. 5 envelopes per month for 14 days, then 2 per month, 1 user, 1 reusable template. No credit card to enter, and the offer does not stop at the end of the trial.
Plans
from €9 to €99/month
Advanced signature (AES) with SMS authentication, templates, automatic reminders, REST API and webhooks from €19/month. Billing applies to the workspace, not to the number of users: the Standard plan includes ten.
Qualified per document
€14.90 per signature
Qualified signature (QES) is paid per act, with no dedicated subscription, from any plan — including the free offer. It's the level to choose when a text requires it, not the one to choose by default.
Prices excluding taxes, as of 2026-09-10. The complete pricing table, SMS quotas and annual plans are on the Pricing page.
Three structural differences, not a feature list. All three products sign PDFs; what sets them apart is the billing mode, hosting location and the jurisdiction the publisher is subject to.
| Criterion | Certyneo | DocuSign | Yousign |
|---|---|---|---|
| Permanent free offer | Yes — 2 envelopes/month after trial | No — no permanent free plan | Yes — 2 signing invitations/month |
| Billing mode | Per workspace — 10 users included from €19/month | Per user, with annual envelope quota | Per user beyond the One plan |
| Default hosting | European Union (IONOS) — no non-EU option | Global regions (US/EU/AU); EU only as paid option | France (OVHcloud) |
| Exposure to US CLOUD Act | No — French entity, EU infrastructure | Yes — publisher domiciled in the United States | No — publisher domiciled in France |
| Qualified signature (QES) | €14.90 per signature, per act, from all plans | Optional, from €10 per recipient | According to the grid published by the publisher |
Collected from public grids: DocuSign on 2026-09-02, Yousign on 2026-09-03. A competitor's pricing changes without warning — the detailed comparison pages below bear the date and source of each figure.
The eIDAS regulation defines three levels. This is not a quality scale where the highest would always be the best choice: it is an identification requirement scale, and each step costs time for the signatory. Taking a level above what the document requires is simply causing signatories to drop out for nothing.
The signatory is identified by a link received at their email address, sometimes supplemented with a code. The document is sealed and timestamped, each action is recorded in an audit trail.
Quotes, purchase orders, NDAs, standard commercial contracts, internal certificates, internal regulations. Business creation at the Single Window also uses it.
Admissible in court: Article 25.1 of the eIDAS regulation prohibits dismissing an electronic signature solely on the grounds that it is electronic. In case of dispute, it is up to you to demonstrate the reliability of the process — hence the importance of the audit trail.
Added to this is strong authentication of the signatory; at Certyneo, a one-time code sent by SMS to a phone number you have provided. The signature is linked to the signatory in a unique manner and any subsequent modification of the document breaks it.
Employment contracts and amendments, real estate mandates, leases, insurance contracts, account openings, transfer of shares. Anything with financial stakes and a signatory you do not see face-to-face.
Same evidence regime as simple signature, but a far more solid file to produce: the phone number, the timestamp of code sending and its single use trace the identification.
The signatory's identity is verified by a qualified trust service provider as defined by eIDAS, before the issuance of a certificate in their name. This is the only level that requires identity verification beforehand.
Cases where a text requires it: modification or cessation of business at the Single Window, notarial acts at a distance, certain acts subject to a particular form. Rarely useful elsewhere.
It is the only level to benefit from the presumption of reliability under article 1367 of the Civil Code, clarified by decree no. 2017-1416. Article 25.2 of eIDAS gives it the legal effect of a handwritten signature. In practice: the burden of proof is reversed, it is up to whoever contests to demonstrate that the signature is not reliable.
The required level depends on the country and the nature of the act. Pages by sector and by country detail the framework applicable locally.
The most widespread confusion is to believe that the value of an electronic signature lies in the drawing of the handwritten signature reproduced on the PDF. This trace has no legal value of its own — it is decorative. What constitutes proof is the set of technical elements surrounding the act.
Article 1366 of the Civil Code sets out the rule: an electronic document has the same probative force as a paper document subject to two conditions — that the person from whom it emanates can be duly identified, and that the document is established and preserved in conditions likely to guarantee its integrity. Article 1367 adds that the electronic signature must be based on a reliable process of identification guaranteeing its link with the act.
In practice, this means that a dispute does not hinge on the signed document, but on what you are able to produce around it: who received the invitation, at what address, from what IP address, at what time, what authentication code was used, when the document was sealed, and proof that nothing has changed since. At Certyneo, these elements are recorded in a timestamped audit trail and the signed PDF is sealed in PAdES format, a standard verifiable by any compliant PDF reader — without going through us.
This is also why preservation matters as much as signature. A proof file is only of interest if it is still readable and intact when it is requested, which can happen years later: the general limitation period in contractual matters is five years.
Since 2023, all business formalities go through the Single Window operated by the INPI. Creating a company requires only a simple signature, free of charge. Modifying or ceasing an activity requires a qualified signature: a PDF signed at the simple level is rejected, and the file starts from scratch.
The qualified signature requires the signatory to undergo prior identity verification. On a quote of €400, it is the best way to never get the signature back. The right reflex is the opposite: start with the simple level and upgrade only if a text requires it or if the stakes justify it.
A signed PDF without its audit trail is a document whose origin you can no longer demonstrate. The day the signatory contests it, you have the document and nothing else. Keep both together, as long as the act produces effects.
An electronic signature system is the set of components that make it possible to sign a digital document with legal value: signer authentication (unique email link, OTP code, identity verification), the cryptographic engine that seals the document and computes its fingerprint, the timestamp that fixes the signing date, the audit trail that records every action, and the electronic certificate issued by a certification authority. The eIDAS regulation classifies these systems into three levels — simple (SES), advanced (AES) and qualified (QES) — according to how robustly the signer is identified.
In practice, a system like Certyneo handles the whole cycle: document upload, signing order, invitations, OTP authentication, PAdES sealing of the signed PDF, then evidential archiving for 10 years. No installation or hardware required: everything runs in the browser, on desktop and mobile, and integrates with your tools via API and webhooks.
Certyneo helps businesses strengthen signature tracking with a structured approach: signatory identification, action history, timestamping and preservation of evidence linked to the signing process.
The legal validity of an electronic signature depends in particular on the country involved, the signature level used, the identification of the signer and the evidence retained.
Discover our electronic signature solutions tailored to your industry and country.
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