Need to sign a contract, form or agreement without printing and scanning? ButDoc's PDF signing tool lets you create a signature in seconds — type your name in a handwriting style, draw it with a mouse, finger or stylus, or upload a photo of your real one — then click anywhere on the document and drag it into position.
No software to install and no sign-up. Upload your PDF, preview every page as a thumbnail, place your signature on one page or repeat it across all of them, and download immediately.
Below: how to make a signature that actually looks good, when a typed or drawn signature is legally sufficient, when it is not, and the one step most people skip before sending a signed document out.
These two terms get used interchangeably and they are not the same. The distinction matters, because it determines whether this tool is the right one for your document.
An electronic signature is any mark applied electronically with the intent to sign — a typed name, a drawn squiggle, a scanned image of your handwriting, even clicking "I agree". It is the direct electronic equivalent of signing with a pen. That is what this tool creates.
A digital signature is a specific cryptographic technology. It embeds a certificate issued by a trusted authority, mathematically binds it to the document's contents, and lets any reader verify two things: who signed, and that not a single byte has changed since. PDF readers show these as a validated signature panel with a verified identity.
The practical difference: an electronic signature shows intent. A digital signature also proves identity and integrity. Most everyday documents need only the first.
Most countries have long recognised electronic signatures as valid. In the United States this comes from the ESIGN Act and state adoptions of UETA; the European Union has eIDAS; Canada, the UK, Australia and many others have equivalent legislation. The common principle is that a signature cannot be denied legal effect purely because it is electronic.
What these frameworks generally look for is not a particular technology but a set of conditions:
For an NDA, a freelance contract, a rental application, a school form, a delivery acceptance or an internal approval, an electronic signature of this kind is normal practice and widely accepted.
Being clear about this is more useful than pretending otherwise. Consider a dedicated e-signature service, a notary, or wet ink if any of the following apply.
The document type is commonly excluded. Electronic signature laws typically carve out categories where paper is still required or strongly preferred: wills and testamentary trusts, many family-law matters such as divorce and adoption, court filings, and certain statutory notices. The exact list varies by country and by state or province, so check locally rather than assuming.
The stakes are high enough that the signature might be challenged. A visual signature proves very little on its own about who applied it. If a dispute is plausible — a large property transaction, a significant commercial agreement — you want an audit trail: timestamps, IP addresses, email verification, a tamper-evident seal. Services built for that purpose provide it. This tool does not.
The other party specified a format. Some organisations require a qualified or advanced electronic signature under eIDAS, or a certificate-based digital signature. If the request names a standard, meet that standard.
This is general information about how electronic signatures work, not legal advice. Requirements differ by jurisdiction and by document type. For anything consequential, ask a lawyer in your own country.
This is the step almost everyone skips, and it is the one that matters most for how your signed document behaves.
When a signature is placed on a PDF, it can sit as a separate layer or annotation above the page rather than becoming part of it. In many PDF editors the recipient can then select that layer, move it, resize it, or delete it entirely. Your signature becomes a sticker rather than ink.
Flattening merges those layers into the page content permanently. Afterwards the signature is part of the document's visual content and cannot casually be dragged off. It also guarantees the document looks identical in every reader, including older or unusual ones.
If you are sending a signed contract to anyone outside your organisation, flatten it first — our Flatten PDF tool does this in one step. For an extra layer, Protect PDF can set an editing password so the file cannot be modified without it.
All three methods work, and each has a technique that improves the result noticeably.
Drawing. The most common mistake is drawing small. A mouse or fingertip cannot produce fine detail at signature size, so the result comes out shaky. Draw as large as the pad allows — big, confident strokes — then let it scale down. Reduction hides tremor and smooths curves. A stylus on a tablet gives the best result by a wide margin; a fingertip is far better than a mouse.
Uploading a photo of your real signature. Sign in black ink on plain white unlined paper. Photograph it straight on in bright, even daylight, avoiding shadow across the page. Crop tightly to the signature itself. Best of all, use a background-removal step first so the signature arrives with a transparent background — otherwise you are placing a white rectangle over the document, which will cover any text or line beneath it.
Typing. Fastest and perfectly legitimate. Its weakness is that it looks like a font, because it is one. For routine forms and internal approvals nobody minds. For a document someone will scrutinise, a drawn or photographed signature reads as more considered.
Whichever you use, place the signature on the line rather than floating above it, and keep it proportionate — an oversized signature is the clearest sign a document was signed in a hurry.
An image of your handwritten signature is reusable. Once it exists as a file, anyone who has it can place it on any document.
That is not a reason to avoid signing electronically — it is a reason to be deliberate. Keep your signature image somewhere private rather than in a shared folder or an email thread. Be selective about which sites you upload it to. And be aware that a signature visible in a PDF you publish openly can be extracted from it by anyone who downloads the file.
On our side: your document is transmitted over an encrypted connection, processed automatically without human review, and permanently deleted from our servers within 60 minutes. Nothing is stored, and there is no account holding a signature library. The full detail is in our Privacy Policy.
After signing: Flatten PDF merges the signature permanently into the page, Protect PDF adds a password, Compress PDF shrinks the file for email, and Merge PDF combines a signed contract with its attachments. Browse all PDF tools.