Google Docs and Drive get eSignature beta to replace your reliance on DocuSign

Google is transforming the way solopreneurs, small businesses, and individuals like yourself handle document signatures. The company has now launched eSignature as an open beta within Google Docs and Drive. This move will likely make third-party services like DocuSign redundant, with eSignature now natively integrated within Google’s ecosystem for Google Workspace Individual subscribers and select Workspace customers.

With the beta, you’ll now be able to quickly request signatures, monitor pending ones, and find completed contracts all in one place. Signing right from Google Drive without switching apps or tabs and using documents as templates for multiple requests simplifies the whole process. As someone who has to sign a document like, once or twice a year, I can’t tell you how much I hate having to open up DocuSign, so I’m very happy to see this rolling out.

Later this year, Google says on its Workspace Updates Blog that it’s adding an “audit trail” feature to contracts, which will give you the ability to request a signature from multiple users, including anyone without a Gmail account, so they can sign PDF files you’ve got stored in Drive.

If you have an individual Workspace subscription, this should already be available to you, but keep an eye out over the next two weeks. Those with a full on Workspace license, either Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Essentials Plus, Education Plus, and Nonprofits – you’ll be able to apply for the beta and via an application over the next handful of weeks.