There's plenty of competition for DocuSign's (DOCU +0.20%) flagship e-signature product, but the digital agreement software continues to lead in the market. On a Fool Live episode recorded on April 28, Fool contributors Brian Feroldi and Brian Withers discuss the e-signature specialist's biggest competitor and how investors should think about this rivalry.
Brian Feroldi: I do see a question here that I do want to take. It's from MS Regular saying, "Is there any competitor for DocuSign?" Yes. There's a lot of competitors for DocuSign. The number one competitor is a little company called Adobe. Adobe is not a company that should be overlooked because they have deep relationships, and they have a growing marketing and sales business that is focused on business services and it is winning. Their e-signature solution is part of their product.
But look at the results, what are the results clearly say? Clearly, there's plenty of customers that are choosing DocuSign, and DocuSign is the top dog, and first mover in this space. Moreover, DocuSign has hundreds upon hundreds of integrations directly with some of the leading products that are out there. DocuSign works directly with Microsoft's products, with salesforce.com, etc. Don't overlook that as a competitive advantage.
Finally, I always think about what is the value of this thing compared to the costs to a company. The productivity gains that you get from using an e-signature solution are just so massive compared to the costs of it. I don't think once you adopt DocuSign that you're going to be going away from it. Competition is something to watch, but DocuSign is basically a verb at this point and they have clearly done a great job about staying the lead husky.
Brian Withers: Yeah. I wanted to tag onto that, Brian. DocuSign has got like 70 percent-plus market share, Adobe is in the single digits. But do you have to remember and I think you stated it well, is people don't necessarily go to Adobe to buy the e-signature product they go to buy more of a holistic solution.
Recently there was an announcement that I saw that "Adobe partners with all 50 states to modernize digital experience for citizens", and really if you read through the documentation what they're doing is they're putting together websites and experiences for customers and some small part of that is a signature process. Maybe they're building online forms for people, or questionnaires to allow them to get to the right department, or something like that. It's part of a holistic solution, whereas that something that Adobe can offer that DocuSign doesn't necessarily have.
