SignNow

Founding and early years (2011-2013)

SignNow was founded in 2011 in Newport Beach, California, by Chris Hawkins, who had previously operated NotaryNow, a service connecting users with notaries by webcam. In March 2011, the company raised $500,000 from angel investors ahead of the product’s launch the following month. In March 2012 it raised $2 million in a round led by Khosla Ventures and released a free iPad application alongside its existing iPhone and Android apps; at the time it competed with DocuSign and EchoSign, later renamed Adobe Sign.

Barracuda Networks (2013-2017)

Barracuda Networks acquired SignNow in a transaction announced on 22 May 2013. Barracuda stated the service had more than one million users and over 100,000 small-business customers at that point. In March 2015 Barracuda renamed the product CudaSign, priced it at $1 per user per month and placed it within its data protection line, reporting more than two million users.

In October 2017, as part of a strategy of divesting non-core products, Barracuda sold SignNow for $8.6 million to PDFfiller, and the product regained its original name.

airSlate era (2017-present)

PDFfiller, a document management company with headquarters in Boston and its main development office in Kyiv, rebranded as airSlate in 2019 after raising approximately $30 million from General Catalyst and Horizon Capital.

In January 2021, airSlate raised $40 million from investors including Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, General Catalyst, and HighSage Ventures, bringing its total funding to $80 million.

In June 2022, the company raised a further $51.5 million in a round led by G Squared with participation from UiPath Ventures, at a valuation above $1 billion; TechCrunch reported that about 80 percent of the company's workforce was based in Kyiv, Ukraine. In July 2022, airSlate acquired DocHub, an online PDF editing and e-signing platform distributed through the Google Workspace Marketplace.

In July 2025, airSlate co-founder Vadim Yasinovsky returned as president and CEO, succeeding long-time chief executive Borya Shakhnovich, who had held the role for 13 years.

SignNow is a subscription service used through a web browser, with applications for iOS and Android. Users upload a document, place fields such as text boxes, radio buttons and drop-down menus, assign each field to a particular recipient, and route the document to one or more signers; completed documents are recorded with an audit trail. Documents can be saved as reusable templates, and higher subscription tiers add bulk sending, a kiosk mode for collecting signatures in person on a mobile device, and the option to request payment at the moment of signing. Signer identity can be confirmed with two-factor authentication.

The service connects to cloud storage and business applications including Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, Dropbox, Microsoft 365, Salesforce and NetSuite, and provides a REST API and a Zapier connector.

At the time of TechRadar's 2025 review, plans ranged from $8 per user per month billed annually to $50 per user per month for the highest tier, which carried HIPAA and 21 CFR Part 11 compliance. TechRadar reported in 2026 that paid plans allow unlimited users and are billed by the number of documents sent for signature, with additional fees beyond 100 signature invitations a year.

Reviewing the service for TechRadar in 2025, Steve Paris rated the signature-creation workflow 4.5 out of 5 and pricing and document preparation 4 out of 5, describing document setup as intuitive but noting the absence of text-formatting options and concluding that the service suited collaborative teams better than individual users. TechRadar's 2026 roundup of e-signature software placed SignNow first, as its pick for business use, citing the unlimited-user policy on paid plans. Tom's Guide named it the best e-signature software for multiple signers. Galen Low of The Digital Project Manager rated the service 4.6 out of 5 in 2026.