PandaDoc was the product ChatGPT and Gemini named most often when we asked them to recommend e-signature software, appearing in 4 of the 6 answers we recorded on 2026-08-03.
Three products tied for second: Docusign, SignNow, and SignWell each showed up in 3 of the 6 answers (50%). No single product was named in all six, so PandaDoc's 4 of 6 (67%) was the ceiling for the whole category.
We put six buyer questions to ChatGPT and Gemini, gave each one live web search, and logged every product named and every domain cited. Across the six answers, 19 different products were named and 15 different domains fed those answers. More than half of the products, 10 of the 19, appeared in only one of the six answers.
One brand wrinkle matters before the counts. DocuSign was recorded under two labels, "Docusign" in 3 answers and "DocuSign eSignature" in 2, so the brand was referenced in 5 of the 6 answers even though no single label passed 3. We keep the two labels separate rather than merge them into a 5-of-6 figure the measurement never stored as one number. Adobe split the same way (Adobe Sign in 2, Adobe Acrobat Sign in 1), and so did SignNow (SignNow in 3, airSlate SignNow in 1).
The shortlist changed with almost every question
The bare query "best e-signature software" returned a tidy establishment list of 6 names: Docusign, Adobe Sign, PandaDoc, SignNow, BoldSign, and SignWell. That is the set a vendor probably pictures when they imagine their category.
"best free e-signature software" narrowed to 4 names: Docusign, PandaDoc, SignWell, and OpenSign. OpenSign is the tell here. It appeared in this one free-tools answer and nowhere else, 1 of 6, and only because its own domain was cited for that question.
"most affordable e-signature software" returned a different 4: SignNow, Dropbox Sign, Adobe Sign, and Signaturely. The striking part is who is missing. PandaDoc and both DocuSign labels, the most-named brands in the whole run, did not appear in the affordable answer at all. Price pulled a separate cast.
"best e-signature software for small teams" returned 5 names: DocuSign eSignature, SignNow, airSlate SignNow, BoldSign, and Dropbox Sign. It is the only answer where SignNow showed up under both of its labels at once, and the only one to pair Dropbox Sign with BoldSign.
"what e-signature software should I use" was the biggest swerve. That vague, personal phrasing surfaced GetAccept, Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive, four products that appeared in no other answer (1 of 6 each). Three of them are general cloud-storage tools, not e-signature specialists, which the loose wording invited in.
The pattern holds across the set: 10 of the 19 named products showed up in exactly one answer. "e-signature software recommendations" alone contributed four of those one-timers (Adobe Acrobat Sign, DocHub, Fill, and Xodo Sign) and was the longest answer at 8 names, while "small teams" added airSlate SignNow. If you only track the bare "best" query, you miss more than half the shortlist your buyers actually see.
Where the answers came from
Two domains fed every single answer: reddit.com (6 of 6) and zapier.com (6 of 6). quora.com was close behind at 5 of 6. So the three most influential sources in this category are two community Q&A platforms and one editorial roundup, not a review directory.
Vendors' own websites did a lot of the feeding: 7 of the 15 cited domains were e-signature companies' own sites. docusign.com was cited in 4 of 6 answers, and getaccept.com and pandadoc.com in 3 each. A vendor's own published pages are among the most-cited sources in its own category.
Here is the insight a marketer should take away. When a vendor's own domain fed an answer, that vendor tended to be named in it. pandadoc.com was cited in 3 answers and PandaDoc was named in all 3 of them, plus one more, for 4 of 6 total. OpenSign is the cleanest case: it appears exactly once, in the single answer where opensignlabs.com was cited. Being your own citable source is not a guarantee, but it lines up closely with getting named.
The classic software review directories were mostly absent. G2 and Capterra did not appear in any of the 6 answers. The only analyst-style source was gartner.com, cited in 2 of 6 (the "best" and "recommendations" answers). Beyond the big three, the rest of the field showed up lightly: community.spiceworks.com and facebook.com fed 1 answer each, techradar.com fed 2 of 6, and esigntoday.com 1. The tail is small and community-heavy, which means a handful of well-placed threads can move the shortlist.
What we would do to get named here
If we sold e-signature software, we would stop guessing about market share and go straight to the sources these answers are built from. reddit.com and zapier.com fed 6 of 6 answers and quora.com fed 5 of 6, so credible presence in those three, plus our own comparison pages published to be cited, is worth more than a fourth review-directory listing that never gets read.
The source list, not the size of the company, decided who got named. Signaturely was named in 2 of 6 answers without its own domain being cited once, carried entirely by roundups and community threads. OpenSign, a tool almost nobody would call a market leader, made the list because one relevant page was cited. Get into the pages the assistants read, and you get named.
The full list, counted
Share is each product's presence across the six answers. DocuSign and Adobe each appear twice below because the measurement recorded them under two labels, and we have not merged them.
| Product | Named in | Share |
|---|---|---|
| PandaDoc | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| Docusign | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| SignNow | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| SignWell | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Adobe Sign | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| BoldSign | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| DocuSign eSignature | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Dropbox Sign | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Signaturely | 2 of 6 | 33% |
Glotier does not sell e-signature software, so we are correctly absent from all 6 of these answers, and we would not want to fake our way in. But this measurement is exactly what we run for a customer's own category: the same six-question fan-out, the same product counts, the same source map showing which Reddit threads and roundups to get into. The check is free, needs no account, and takes about a minute.