Overview
Draw your signature with a finger or a pen on a phone, and most e-signature tools log it as a simple electronic signature — a picture of a scribble. inSign treats that same gesture as an Advanced Electronic Signature (AES) under eIDAS, because it captures the biometric dynamics of how you sign — movement, speed, pressure — and seals them into the evidence trail. That single design decision is inSign's headline, and it is why a fifteen-year-old German product still stands out in a crowded category.
inSign is made by inSign GmbH, based in Marzling in Bavaria, just north of Munich. BSI Business Systems Integration Deutschland GmbH has been its owner since 2022, but inSign GmbH develops and operates the product independently. The positioning is unambiguous: "Made & hosted in Germany." No US cloud, EU data residency, and a compliance stack built for German and European regulated industries. More than 10 million users across many European countries have signed with it, and it holds a 4.8 rating on Capterra.
What inSign is (and isn't)
inSign is an assurance-first signing platform rather than a document-automation suite. Its cleverest idea is offering the full ladder of eIDAS assurance inside one document: type your name for a Simple Electronic Signature (SES), add an SMS code to step up to AES, draw your signature for a biometric AES, or use a certificate for a Qualified Electronic Signature (QES) — and you can mix methods within the same document, matching the assurance level to each signer and each clause.
You won't find PandaDoc-style proposal building or dynamic pricing tables here. What you get instead is a focused authoring flow — upload or even photograph a paper document, drag on signature, text, checkbox and photo fields, then send — plus a distinctive weblink model: a reusable, self-serve public signing link where the signer needs no account and no login. For high-volume, front-desk or web-form scenarios, that is a materially different workflow from the usual one-recipient envelope.
Who it's for
inSign fits German-speaking and European regulated sectors where a handwritten-style signature still carries weight and data has to stay in the EU — insurance, finance, healthcare, energy, tax advice, real estate and public administration. Debeka, Die Mobiliar, HDI, Thüga Energienetze and V-BANK are among its reference customers, a list that skews heavily toward insurers, banks and utilities that get audited.
If your signing is US-centric and volume-driven, a global generalist like DocuSign covers more ground. Cross-border Swiss work is not a reason to look past inSign, though: it supports both eIDAS and ZertES, so its signatures hold on either side of the Swiss border. Skribble remains the sharper pick if you want to choose the jurisdiction per signature and keep the data in Switzerland. But if "biometric AES out of the box, made and hosted in Germany, GDPR without a US-cloud dependency" describes your requirement, inSign is one of the most complete answers in the category.
Key Features
- Four assurance methods in one document: typed SES, SMS-verified AES, biometric-handwriting AES, and certificate-based QES
- Biometric handwriting captured as an Advanced Electronic Signature (AES) under eIDAS — movement, speed and pressure sealed into the audit report
- Qualified Electronic Signatures (QES) via partner trust-service providers: D-Trust, Evrotrust, Swisscom and A-Trust
- eIDAS plus Switzerland's ZertES coverage
- Weblink signing — a reusable, self-serve public link; signers need no account or login
- Template builder with drag-to-place signature, text, checkbox and photo fields
- "Photograph a document" — sign a paper document captured with a camera
- Signing workflows with approval and signing order, plus bulk / mass dispatch
- Company stamp per signature field (optional or required) and optical signature positioning
- Document locked against changes after the first signature
- Microsoft Office / Outlook add-in, plus SAP and Salesforce connectors and single sign-on
- Native iOS and Android apps; web-based, zero-install signing for recipients
- Auto-generated audit report per session; electronic archive; on-premises option (enterprise)
- Available in 18 interface languages
Pricing
inSign publishes a clear per-user price for its standalone product and quotes its API and enterprise editions on request. Every plan includes a free trial with no credit card. There is one number the price list doesn't give you, though, and it matters: Qualified signatures cost extra. Typed and handwritten signing are covered by the plan, but QES is billed on top, per signature, at a rate inSign doesn't publish. At any real Qualified volume that unlisted figure — not the €24.90 headline — decides whether inSign is cheap or expensive.
- inSign 365 — €24.90 per user/month (annual, plus VAT). The standalone web app with the full signing feature set. Billed monthly it is €26.90; the annual term runs 12 months, and a volume discount applies from two users up, so the per-user price falls as the licence count rises.
- inSign connect (API) — price on request. The SaaS interface for embedding inSign into your own software, portals and business systems, including the SAP and Salesforce connectors.
- inSign enterprise — price on request. Licensing for extensive, unlimited requirements, with the on-premises, multi-tenant and single sign-on options.
A separate product, inSign Siegel, adds an eIDAS electronic company seal — proof of origin and tamper-proofing for documents such as mass invoices, applied via the REST API and SAP. Pricing may change; check the official website for the most current numbers.
inSign 365
- Standalone web app
- Full SES/AES/QES + Swiss ZertES
- Biometric handwriting = AES
- Volume discount from 2 users
- €26.90/mo billed monthly (plus VAT)
inSign connect (API)
★- SaaS API for integration
- Embed signing in your product
- SAP + Salesforce connectors
inSign enterprise
- Extensive / unlimited needs
- On-premises + multi-tenant
- Single sign-on
Security & Compliance
Security is inSign's home turf. Everything runs on EU-based servers with, in the vendor's words, "100% data sovereignty and no US-cloud dependency" — "Made in Germany, used in Europe." The compliance evidence is unusually deep for a mid-market product: ISO 27001 at full scope, C5 according to the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), a §203 StGB professional-confidentiality declaration, and full GDPR compliance.
The cryptography is specific rather than hand-wavy: asymmetric RSA-3072 with NIST P-384 elliptic-curve keys and AES-256-class symmetric encryption. Biometric signature data — the handwriting dynamics behind an AES — is asymmetrically encrypted, with the private key typically generated and deposited at an independent authority such as a notary, so no single party can reconstruct it unilaterally. Two-factor authentication is available, and every session produces an audit report logging the date and time, the trigger and action (including device), the signature event, the biometric-consent confirmation and the named field. Once a document carries its first signature, it can no longer be changed.
Integrations
inSign is built to sit inside existing business software rather than replace it. There is a Microsoft Office and Outlook add-in for signing from where documents already live, connectors for SAP and Salesforce, and BSI's own CRM. Larger deployments use the REST API to embed signing directly into portals and line-of-business systems — the same API that drives automated bulk sealing with inSign Siegel, where invoices are sealed by inSign and then processed straight through in SAP. Native iOS and Android apps cover mobile signing, while recipients sign in any current browser with nothing to install.
