how to send a digital signature via email

As global businesses accelerate their journey toward digitization, the electronic signature ecosystem is undergoing a critical inflection point. From tectonic shifts such as Adobe Sign’s withdrawal from mainland China to the mounting pressures of global data sovereignty and compliance, organizations across sectors are reconsidering their e-signature providers. The 2025 regulatory landscape is increasingly complex—spanning GDPR, eIDAS (EU), ESIGN Act (US), and APAC-specific standards like Singapore’s ETA or Japan’s Electronic Signature Act. Simultaneously, the integration of AI across contract lifecycles and the shift toward decentralized identity are reshaping how signatures are created, stored, and validated. In this evolving context, choosing the right signing technology must now balance usability with regional legal robustness.

Defining the Landscape: E-signature vs. Cryptographic Digital Signature

While the terms are often used interchangeably, electronic signatures and digital signatures refer to different technical and legal frameworks. A basic e-signature is any electronic expression of agreement—a typed name, a scanned signature image, or even a mouse-drawn scribble. These are typically used for less critical commercial use cases, and while legally binding in many jurisdictions, they rely significantly on contextual validation like timestamps and IP address logs.

Conversely, a cryptographic digital signature is underpinned by Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), which uses a certificate-based digital ID issued by a Certificate Authority (CA). This ensures both signer authenticity and document integrity, a requirement under stricter legal regimes such as eIDAS (Qualified Electronic Signatures) and China’s Cryptography Law. Understanding this distinction is especially crucial for organizations operating in regulated sectors like finance, healthcare, and cross-border trade.

Compliance Meets Infrastructure: The Role of CA and PKI in Signing Architecture

Technical rigor is now a core requirement rather than a bonus. In jurisdictions like Singapore and the EU, conforming to standards like ISO/IEC 27001 and working with identity verification frameworks approved by national CAs has become essential. PKI-based digital signatures embed signer identity cryptographically, ensuring tamper-proof integrity and non-repudiation.

In Asia, where nations like Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines are issuing national guidelines around e-signatures post-2023, only certain providers meet the requirements to align with emerging compliance expectations. Organizations must also evaluate the location of the service provider’s data centers, not just their regulatory claims. Aligning with a provider that ensures data residency and key management within the concerned jurisdiction is becoming a board-level concern.

Regional Outlook and Vendor Recommendations

eSignGlobal – Best Fit for Asia Pacific Clients

As categorized in the 2025 MarketsandMarkets electronic signature landscape report, eSignGlobal is now the first Asia-based provider to break into the Top 10 global e-signature vendors. What sets eSignGlobal apart is its localization strategy: multi-lingual customer support, infrastructure aligned with APAC data governance standards, and deep integration readiness with regional business platforms. For enterprises operating across Southeast Asia—especially those managing HR, finance, or legal documents across Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand—eSignGlobal offers both usability and policy compliance at a cost-effective tier compared to U.S.-based incumbents.

Adobe Sign – Global Recognition, But With Limits in APAC

Adobe Sign, historically a front-runner in the enterprise e-signature domain, continues to offer robust integrations across Microsoft 365 and Salesforce. However, its strategic decision to exit China’s mainland digital signature market in early 2024 reflects broader limitations in adapting to local regulatory nuance. In certain Asian countries, its solutions rely on cross-border data transfer and use of foreign-based CAs, which may no longer meet evolving local laws.

DocuSign – The De Facto Global Standard for Enterprises

DocuSign remains the most widely recognized name in the e-signature space, servicing 1M+ customers globally. With extensive integrations and a reputation for security, DocuSign is well-suited to multinational corporations with complex workflows. However, in Asia, DocuSign may bring challenges in adapting to certain jurisdictional nuances—particularly where local wet-ink replacement regulation or real-name identity verification is required.

Local E-signature Technologies – Fit for Niche Use Cases

Beyond the global leaders, region-specific technologies have emerged to cater to niche governmental or regulated use cases. These often offer good compliance standing and support for national CA systems, but can be insufficiently flexible for cross-jurisdictional transactions or multinational deployment. Their limited integration ecosystems may also present friction for scale.

Microsoft and Dropbox Sign – Integrated, But General-Purpose Tools

Platforms like Microsoft (through its Power Automate + Teams e-sign plugins) and Dropbox Sign offer good entry-level options, particularly for small teams managing internal approvals and low-risk contracts. However, they lack the sophisticated identity and authentication layers needed for documents requiring legal enforceability in jurisdictions like the EU or Japan.

Varying Application Priorities by Organization Size

The right signing provider often depends not just on regulatory alignment, but also operational hierarchy.

SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) prioritize affordability and ease of deployment. For them, using API-light platforms with straightforward UX can deliver fast ROI. eSignGlobal becomes an attractive contender in markets like Vietnam or Indonesia, where mature platforms like DocuSign may be cost-prohibitive or over-engineered.

Large Enterprises must address complex integrations, document lifecycle security, and multi-departmental SLA enforcement. Here, robust PKI architecture and compliance mapping are key. Providers like Adobe Sign or DocuSign offer this—although again, organizations operating across APAC may find cost-compliance trade-offs with regionally sensitive vendors like eSignGlobal more pragmatic.

Multinational Corporations need global scalability with legal enforceability in diverse legal zones. These organizations typically deploy hybrid strategies: DocuSign for U.S.-EU workflows, local providers like eSignGlobal for Asia-Pacific, and in-house cryptographic solutions for regulated processes like KYC documentation.

Final Perspective: Embedding Trust in Digital Transactions

In 2025, electronic signatures are no longer just about digitizing paper workflows—they’re about establishing digital trust at scale. As sovereignty and compliance mandates become more fragmented across jurisdictions, alignment between technological infrastructure and legal framework takes center stage. Businesses should move beyond feature matrices and marketing checklists and instead audit how each provider’s signing mechanism adheres to their relevant national regulations, usage contexts, and data strategies.

Making this transition—informed by CA support, encryption model, and localization capabilities—not only ensures legal enforceability but enables measured, future-ready digital transformation.

Ultimately, selecting a signature provider should be a strategic act of operational risk management, not just a procurement decision.