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docusealco/docuseal
Open source DocuSign alternative. Create, fill, and sign digital documents ✍️
DocuSeal is a self-hosted DocuSign replacement built on Rails with a Vue frontend. It handles the full document lifecycle: template creation with a drag-and-drop field builder, multi-party signing flows, and signed PDF generation with verification. Aimed at companies that can't or won't send documents through a SaaS vendor's servers.
The field builder covers 12 field types including signatures, initials, and file uploads — enough to handle most real contracts without gaps. Storage backends are genuinely flexible: local disk, S3, GCS, and Azure Blob are all supported via config, not code changes. The embedded signing components (React, Vue, Angular, plain JS) mean you can drop the signing flow into an existing app without redirecting users away. Single Docker command deployment with SQLite default lowers the bar to try it; swap DATABASE_URL for Postgres or MySQL when you're ready.
The most useful features — conditional fields, bulk send, SSO, embedded builder, HTML/tag-based template API — are all behind a paid Pro license, so the open-source version is a proof of concept more than a production tool for any non-trivial workflow. The AGPL license with Section 7(b) additional terms is a double restriction; that combination will block adoption in any company with a legal team that reads licenses. Audit trail depth isn't clear from the open-source side — regulated industries (healthcare, finance) need tamper-evident logs, and it's not obvious how much of that is in the free tier vs. Pro. Ruby on Rails monolith with Hotwire means the self-hosted ops story is heavier than it looks from the Docker one-liner.