No matter how big an organization is, creating, negotiating, and managing contracts is a big part of what they do. Each stage takes time, and it’s easy to make mistakes when entering data at each step. Contract management software, called contract lifecycle management, speeds up the process and reduces financial and audit risks (CLM). Businesses in all fields can see benefits from it. For example, it took FineMark Bank four to five hours to prepare each paper. When the organization started using DocuSign, this time went down to 30 minutes. We looked at more than thirty suppliers using a set of criteria, such as customization and automation, to find the best contract management systems. We looked at pricing strategies, security, compliance controls, and the most popular connectors.
Contract Management Software
Contract Management Software is explained here.
1. DocuSign
DocuSign provides affordable contract management solutions for small businesses, from e-signatures to a full CLM system. This is more of contract management software.
Pros
1 – No credit card is needed for a free 30-day trial of the e-signature solution.
2 – Always-on chat support.
3 – Workflow arrangements that are made up of smaller parts.
Cons
1 – Full CLM solution requires a personalized quote.
2 – The difficulty of setting up the first workflow.
3 – Sometimes, there are problems syncing documents.
DocuSign began as an e-signature company in 2003, but in 2018 it bought SpringCM and added CLM capabilities. DocuSign is often used in business because it is easy for everyone. Even though there are end-to-end solutions for workflows with many contracts, our study found that DocuSign’s e-signature plans are best for small businesses. You can take your contracts wherever you go by using this browser-based software online or DocuSign’s mobile app for Android and iOS. In addition, the e-signature and CLM program offers several features, such as:
1 – Forms that can be used over and over.
2 – Reminders to the recipients.
3 – Getting the payment.
4 – Instant alerts for comments.
5 – Archive of content.
Use smart forms with unique formulas to add your brand and color scheme to your contract emails. DocuSign is connected to more than 350 pre-built connectors, such as Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce. Compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), safe places to store data, and audit trails that can be used in court are important to small business owners. The company has special options for realtors, government organizations, and the healthcare industry to help you meet your regulatory needs. Plans that need an e-signature work well for a lot of small businesses. Well, you can pay once a year or once a month. The following packages are based on payments made every month:
Personal: A single-user subscription costs $10 and can transmit five e-signature papers monthly. It includes the main contract fields.
Standard: Adds automatic email reminders, deadline alerts, personalized branding, and comments. It costs $25 per user per month, up to a maximum of five users.
Business Pro: $40 per month per user, with a maximum of five users. This lets them submit contracts in bulk, use advanced fields, and collect payments.
2. PandaDoc
PandaDoc is an all-in-one, reasonably priced solution with a reliable contract and document management platform.
Pros
1 – Paid plans come with constant help for clients.
2 – You can have as many users, documents, and electronic signatures as you want.
3 – Try it free for 14 days.
Cons
1 – Business or Enterprise plans give you access to the content repository.
2 – Bulk send function to cost.
3 – There aren’t many integrations in the free plan.
PandaDoc, founded in 2011, has easy-to-use software that lets you keep track of your contracts throughout their entire lifespan. This software is the best option overall for businesses of all sizes because it is affordable and has many features. Use this browser-based app or the PandaDoc mobile app for Android and iOS to get up and running quickly. You’ll appreciate its powerful tools, like:
1 – Contract libraries and content libraries.
2 – The contract isn’t clear.
3 – E-signature.
4 – Notifications appear right away.
5 – Taking care of payments.
PandaDoc lets you customize templates and add rich media with a simple drag-and-drop editor. You can also make your workflows, procedures, and rules. Customers like the 15 customer relationship management (CRM) connectors with HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Microsoft Dynamics. This is more of contract management software. This safe solution gives businesses a document audit trail and protects data in its secure cloud storage facilities. Well, if you need a program that complies with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), PandaDoc can help. The PandaDoc CLM software has monthly and annual plans; if you pay for it all at once, you can save up to 34%. Using monthly billing, we can figure out the following package prices:
Free eSign: This lets you accept payments, get an unlimited number of legally binding signatures, and upload documents for free.
Requirements: Each user pays $19 per month for templates, a drag-and-drop editor, pricing tables, and document analysis.
Business: Zapier connectors, custom branding, content libraries, and CRM integrations cost $49 per user per month.
Enterprise: A customized option with an unlimited number of team workspaces, Salesforce integration, and user performance reporting is available.
3. Juro
This end-to-end contract management software has great features in its free plan.
Pros
1 – Free plan for less than 50 contracts per year.
2 – Simple when using.
3 – Native digital signature.
Cons
1 – Paid plans cost a lot of money.
2 – No mobile app.
3 – You can’t transmit the same contract to several recipients simultaneously.
Juro is a 2016 startup that offers a dashboard that looks good and has powerful search tools and AI-powered statistics. Even though the paid plans are expensive, the free app has the perfect mix of basic elements, making it our top choice for the most useful free option. This is more of contract management software. Juro is a platform for managing contracts from start to finish. It gives users templates and an integrated template editor to help them quickly make contracts and ask for approval. It has the best user interface in its class, and its dashboard is easy to understand. With the free plan, you’ll get:
1 – One design.
2 – An editor for templates.
3 – Internal remarks.
4 – External bargaining.
5 – Native digital signature.
6 – Dashboard for Kanban.
If you choose a subscription package, you can get high-level features like AI-powered analytics, redlining, and the ability to update many of your contracts at once. Paid plans also come with Slack, Google Drive, and Salesforce integrations. In addition, Juro follows e-signature laws like other CLM solutions, and it stores data on Amazon Web Services (AWS) servers in secure data centers in the EU zone. Unfortunately, you can’t pay monthly because Juro’s premium plans can only be paid once a year. However, 15% off is given to non-profits. Packages come with:
Free: Up to 50 contracts, one user, and all of the features listed above for the free plan.
Lite: $295 per month for five users and includes 500 contracts and an unlimited number of templates, audit trails, and integrations.
Team: Dedicated customer success manager, AI-powered analytics, ten users, unlimited contracts, $900 per month.
Business: A single sign-on option and a custom solution for bulk imports are good for business.
4. Concord
This is more of contract management software. Concord gives businesses full help getting started and enterprise-level features to deliver an unlimited number of papers.
Pros
1 – Unlimited viewers, electronic signatures, contracts, and storage.
2 – All plans allow you to upload in bulk.
3 – You can try it for free for 14 days without needing a credit card.
Cons
1 – You can’t get money back from a plan.
2 – Specifying versions leads to a lot of data logs.
3 – It’s hard to connect contracts made outside the platform.
Concord was started in 2014, and its simple design makes it easy for businesses to keep track of changes and stay in compliance. Concord is the best option for large businesses because it can handle an unlimited volume of data and has many important integrations. At first glimpse, you’ll notice that Concord looks a lot like Gmail. It can be set up quickly, and all plans include full onboarding help. Whether you use the Concord dashboard or Google Drive, you can work from the app you select best. The best things about CLM are:
1 – Live enhancing.
2 – Underline, chat, and make a comment.
3 – Archiving of templates.
4 – Smart field auto-fills.
5 – Full-text search based on optical character recognition (OCR).
6 – Reminders of important dates.
7 – e-signature feature built in.
Concord gives you much freedom with its customizable approval process, reports, analytics, and user groups. It works with Salesforce, DocuSign, and Dropbox. The business uses safe data centers and encryption that meet the standards of the banking industry. You also benefit from strict versioning rules that create a new log every time a field is added or changed and give you a reliable audit trail. The CLM packages have clear pricing based on the number of users and an annual contract. Choose from plans with three to unlimited users, and decide whether you want to pay per month or year. You’ll save more than 26% if you pay once a year. These packages are billed once a year and are based on five users:
Free: Up to three users, an unlimited number of documents, and an unlimited number of e-signatures. The standard price for bulk-send and change management is $115 per month.
Advantage: All integrations cost $295 per month.
Enterprise: Demand a price for a service level agreement (SLA) with a 99.9% uptime guarantee, personalized branding, and a pre-approved clause library.
5. Outlaw
Using Outlaw CLM software, you can keep track of all important data points.
Pros
1 – e-signatures, storage, and contracts are all free.
2 – Easy to set up.
3 – Help through live chat.
Cons
1 – Not all businesses need this level of security, and only certain individuals are allowed to sign the agreements.
Outlaw is a new member of the organization. It was established in 2017. Outlaw is the best solution we discovered for your reporting needs because it has many options in its dashboard and AI-assisted analytics. In addition, it is a good fit for most organizations because it has unlimited cloud storage, contracts, and e-signatures. This means you don’t have to worry about volume. The best characteristics are:
1 – e-signatures built in.
2 – Redlining based on the clouds.
3 – Stripe processes safe payments.
4 – Notifications appear right away.
5 – Use full-text search.
6 – Forms for self-service.
7 – Contract fields that can change.
You’ll like how its AI analytics lets you make reports about deadlines, contract statuses, and activities that are still going on. Outlaw can be connected to Salesforce, HubSpot, Zapier, Slack, and QuickBooks. Your data is also kept in SOC 2-compliant data centers by the company. There are flexible pay-per-seat options; if you pay annually, you can save 20%. Outlaw has two user roles for payment packages, even though you can’t add collaborators until you have five core users. A monthly billing cycle determines how much this will cost:
Core User: Full control with a monthly fee of $125.
Collaborator: It costs $60 per month per user for active users who don’t need access to all administrative tools.
6. Agiloft
Agiloft has code-free solutions for contract and business lifecycle management changes.
Pros
1 – SMB service is free.
2 – Conditional promise.
3 – 99% service level agreement uptime (SLA).
4 – No limits on the free trial.
Cons
1 – There is no internal chat feature.
2 – You can change things as much as you want, giving you many options.
Agiloft is the oldest company on the list. It was established in 1991. But it has continued to be updated often, giving businesses of all sizes access to solutions made just for them. Agiloft is the winner in our best customization category because it has enterprise-level and unique features. The cloud-hosted software from Agiloft can be used on any computer. Every business benefits from:
1 – Free lessons online.
2 – Making a contract.
3 – A list of clauses.
4 – Print out contracts as templates.
5 – e-signature with DocuSign or Adobe Sign.
6 – Archive of content.
This is more of contract management software. With its code-free setups, you can make your workflows, routing rules, reports, and a dashboard to track your key performance indicators (KPIs) and alerts. Connecting Agiloft to Google and Microsoft makes it easy to upload documents using your business software. Agiloft gives each document an audit trail, keeps your data in safe storage facilities, and ensures it complies with Sarbanes-Oxley, GDPR, and HIPAA. Agiloft believes that pricing should be tailored to each customer. You have the option of creating a monthly, quarterly, or yearly payment. All plans start at $65 a month per user and go up from there depending on how many users you have:
Free: Standard integrations are included in the free license for an administrator, five power users, and five regular users.
Professional: Adds phone support and five-minute intervals to timer-based rules.
Professional Extended: Get integrations with Salesforce and Jira that are already set up, vendor and customer portals, and support for multiple languages.
Enterprise: Built-in AI modes and internal deployment choices.
Enterprise Extended: Offers unlimited custom models and support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
7. ContractWorks
ContractWorks provides automated services that save you time and money. These services are made possible by technology that uses AI.
Pros
1 – Users for all time.
2 – Help is available all the time.
Cons
1 – There aren’t very many integrations.
2 – No mobile app.
3 – No document creation, but templates can be made.
Since 2012, ContractWorks has offered easy-to-use software that can be set up quickly. AI-powered smart document tagging makes ContractWorks the best choice for your automation needs. This is more of contract management software. Users like how straightforward it is to use, especially the drag-and-drop feature for downloading and the OCR text-based search engine that works like Google. You’ll get a lot of features that people like, such as:
1 – Automatically generated smart contract outlines.
2 – Archive contracts.
3 – Milestone notices.
4 – Keeping records on a computer.
5 – Use notes to quickly and easily look over documents.
6 – OCR and advanced tools for searching.
7 – Automatic reminders.
8 – Integrated e-signature.
ContractWorks gives you a lot of ways to make it your own, like branding and reports that let you choose which data point to look at. Your reports are also simple to plan, share, export, and save. With the Professional and Enterprise software plans, you can connect to Salesforce. This CLM solution has 256-bit data encryption, secure data centers, and audit log reporting. Every pricing plan is based on volume and is paid annually. In addition, you can contact the business for discounts on large orders. Plans comprise:
Standard: $600 monthly for 2,500 documents and five licenses for electronic signatures.
Professional: $800 monthly for 10,000 documents and ten electronic signature licenses.
Enterprise: $1000 a month for 20 e-signature licenses and unlimited documents.
FAQs:
What Is Contract Management Software?
With the assistance of contract administration software, you can handle everything online with full transparency at every step, whether you need a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) or a third-party contract signed. All of the following are part of a contract’s lifecycle:
1 – Create documentation.
2 – Sending the contract to the other party.
3 – Redlining or inside-document alterations.
4 – Talking things out.
5 – The way to say yes.
6 – Changes or renewals every year.
7 – Compliance inspections.
8 – Deals that last for a long time.
What Parts Usually Makeup Contract Management Software?
Even though CLM software solutions have different features, almost all help business owners throughout the document lifecycle. For example, most people want contract management software to do the following things:
Custom Or Smart Fields: For your contracts, you can choose from fields that have already been set up or make your own to collect specific information about your clients.
Automated Approval Process: Well, with enterprise-level software, you can build up workflows that make it easy for the right individuals to approve your document quickly.
Automated Alerts: Well, these alerts keep everyone in the loop at every stage of the process. For example, alerts for contract changes and milestones keep everyone in the loop.
Redlining: During this process, all parties review contracts and make any necessary revisions. In the digital age, this is also a part of talks since parties send and receive papers and decide whether or not to accept revisions.
E-signature: Plenty of CLMs have native (software-integrated) e-signature features. Other businesses use software from a third party that includes e-signature technology.
OCR Features that work with text or voice make it easy to find contracts, clauses, or client information in your storage.
Audit Trails: If your contract is disputed, some CLM software will keep track of all versions, chats, and changes to show a clear audit trail.
Content Repository: Don’t print and file hundreds of contracts anymore. Instead, a content library holds all your contracts, templates, and, in some cases, standard terms.
How We Chosen the Best Contract Management Software?
Most contract management software offers monthly or yearly subscriptions, with discounts for paying for an entire year, having a lot of contracts, or having a lot of users. Small businesses with standard contracts benefit greatly from the free and cheap plans because you can upload your contract or use a standard template, then email it for an electronic signature.
Basic contract management tools are included in monthly paid plans that start at $25 per user. As a result, low-cost programs may not have as many options for customization, reporting, or branding. On the other hand, technologies that allow for full customization, automation, and AI might cost up to $125 per user per month.
When we looked at more than 36 contract lifecycle management companies, we paid close attention to the main features, integrations, and ease of use. We also looked at suppliers based on their automation and customization tools, audit support, and volume capacities.
We found that the best solutions have mobile apps that are easy to use, automated workflows, and advanced search tools. Small businesses also needed reminders and notifications in real-time, as well as reasonable prices.
