LinkSquares Sign: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- What is LinkSquares Sign?
- How is LinkSquares Sign different from DocuSign or Adobe Sign?
- What do I need to do to start using LinkSquares Sign?
- Are LinkSquares Sign digital signatures legally binding?
- How secure is LinkSquares Sign?
- Can I use LinkSquares Sign without using LinkSquares Finalize?
- Are there File Size requirements
What is LinkSquares Sign?
LinkSquares Sign is the new digital signature application built directly into LinkSquares Finalize. Similar to Adobe Sign, DocuSign, HelloSign, and PandaDoc, LinkSquares Sign allows you to request and apply digital signatures to any Microsoft Word (DOCX), Microsoft Excel (XLSX), or Adobe PDF file.
How is LinkSquares Sign different from DocuSign or Adobe Sign?
Almost any major eSignature tool can generate a compliant digital signature, but LinkSquares Sign is integrated directly into LinkSquares Finalize, which is both safer and more reliable than using any other integrated or standalone signature application.
If you are using a version of DocuSign or Adobe Sign that is not integrated with LinkSquares Finalize, you have to manually download and upload agreements between the two systems. That is a tedious manual process that introduces the possibility of user error.
An integrated Adobe Sign or DocuSign workflow avoids mishandled files but still poses risks. If Adobe Sign or DocuSign changes their integration APIs, suffers a service outage, or locks your account over a security or billing issue, your ability to digitally sign your contracts goes down, too – and LinkSquares cannot fix it.
With LinkSquares Sign, you are dealing with one system, one vendor, and one set of requirements, so your contracts go from request to draft to approval to signature with no risky hand-offs and no integration hassles.
Finally, if something goes wrong with LinkSquares Sign, our world-class customer support staff is there to solve the problem, a promise many other signature vendors cannot make. Put simply, LinkSquares Sign just works.
What do I need to do to start using LinkSquares Sign?
If you are a LinkSquares Finalize user, there is nothing you need to do! You already have Sign at your fingertips. Try your complimentary Signature Requests and, if you like them, contact your Customer Success Manager to purchase more.
Are LinkSquares Sign digital signatures legally binding?
LinkSquares Sign is designed to comply with electronic statutes and standards in all major legal jurisdictions and has the following functionality:
- LinkSquares Sign collects from each signatory their consent to accept electronic signatures as binding before their signing.
- The LinkSquares Sign digital signature can be provably associated with the document it appears on and meets standards requiring that the document has been provably unaltered since the signature was applied.
- The LinkSquares Sign digital signature can be provably associated with a unique individual signatory.
- LinkSquares Sign uses a valid electronic security certificate and public key infrastructure (PKI) to create an encrypted, verifiable signature record.
- LinkSquares Sign uses a secure signature creation device (SSCD) to generate the encrypted, verifiable signature record.
How secure is LinkSquares Sign?
LinkSquare Sign generates digital signatures, which are designed to be far more secure than conventional ink-on-paper “wet” signatures or even simple electronic signatures.
Each person who signs a document with LinkSquares Sign is associated with a unique email address and IP address, both of which are recorded in an exportable audit log. This data is used to confirm the identity of each person who uses LinkSquares Sign to digitally sign a document.
Once a document is signed, LinkSquares Sign uses industry-standard technology to add encrypted metadata to the PDF, proving it has not been altered after the digital signature was applied.
LinkSquares Sign digital signatures and metadata are encrypted using the same protocols employed by Adobe Sign, and can be verified using the built-in signature history tools (specifically, the Signatures panel) in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader or the DocuSign Validator.
The LinkSquares Sign security certificate is provided by Entrust, which is employed by DocuSign, is included on the Adobe Approved Trust List of digital certificate authorities, and is a member of the Cloud Signature Consortium.
The LinkSquares Sign encryption key is housed in an Amazon Web Services Key Management Service instance, which serves as the hardware security module SSCD for eIDAS-compliant digital signature generation.
Additional security details for LinkSquares Sign are available upon request.
Can I use LinkSquares Sign without using LinkSquares Finalize?
Yes! If you are a LinkSquares Analyze user who wants to use LinkSquares Sign without purchasing LinkSquares Finalize, you can enable a limited version of Finalize with only the LinkSquares Sign features active. All your Finalize users will have the Sign-only user role and access to a single Finalize Template: the default Signature-only template.
In this arrangement, you can draft and manage your pre-signature contract workflow outside of LinkSquares, then upload your clean documents into LinkSquares Sign for signature. Once those documents are fully signed, they will be automatically uploaded to LinkSquares Analyze.
Are there file size requirements?
The maximum file size for an agreement uploaded to My Sign Hub is 50 MB.
LinkSquares recommends limiting documents to 25 MB for the best user experience.