↗ · How-to guide
How to send an NDA for signature online, in five minutes.
From 'we should sign an NDA' to a sealed, audit-trailed PDF in one sitting, whether you start from our template or your own document.
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↗ · Step by step
NDAs stall deals out of pure friction: someone has to find the document, the other side prints and scans, a week disappears. Electronically it's a five-minute job, and you end up with better evidence than the scan. There are two routes depending on whether you have your own NDA wording.
Worth knowing · Our NDA template covers a standard mutual confidentiality structure, but it isn't legal advice. If the information at stake is genuinely sensitive, have counsel review the wording once, then reuse it forever.
01 ·Pick your route: template or your own PDF
No NDA of your own? Start from Sign Sail's NDA template, with disclosing and receiving parties, effective date, purpose, confidentiality term, and signature fields ready. Have lawyer-approved wording? Upload the PDF instead, and document signing is included on every plan, the free one too.
02 ·Place the fields (or let tags do it)
On an uploaded PDF, drag signature, date, and name fields where they belong. Faster: type tags like {{sig:s1}} and {{date}} into the document before exporting it, and Sign Sail detects them on upload and places the fields automatically.
03 ·Prefill your side before it goes out
Fields assigned to the 'Prefilled' slot are yours to complete at send time: your company name, the effective date, the term. The counterparty receives a document that's already half done, which is one less excuse for it to sit.
04 ·Add the recipient and send
Enter the signer's name and email and send. They get a private, token-gated link, with no account or app required, and can sign from a phone. For a mutual NDA on the Business plan, add both signers and choose parallel (everyone at once) or sequential (you countersign after they sign).
05 ·Track, remind, and collect the sealed copy
The envelope view shows sent, viewed, and signed states in real time. When everyone's done, both sides automatically receive the final PDF: signatures, the full audit trail (IP, timestamps, consent, SHA-256 hash), and a PAdES cryptographic seal so any later edit is detectable in any PDF reader.
↗ · Questions
Before you start.
Is an electronically signed NDA enforceable?
Yes. NDAs are ordinary commercial contracts, squarely inside the ESIGN Act, UETA, and eIDAS coverage. Enforceability disputes turn on evidence of who signed and what they saw, which is exactly what the audit trail and the frozen document snapshot prove.
Can the other party sign without creating an account?
Yes. Recipients get a private signing link and never need a Sign Sail account, a password, or an app. They open the link, review, sign, and both parties receive the sealed copy by email.
How do mutual NDAs work, where both sides sign?
Add both signers to the envelope on the Business plan and pick the order: parallel if it doesn't matter, sequential if you want to countersign only after the other side commits. Each signer gets their own private link and the audit trail records both signatures with their evidence.
The NDA is the easy part now.
Template or your own PDF, signed and sealed with a full audit trail. Free plan includes document signing.