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by kodon
2699 days ago
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I had a project that used docuSign a few years ago. There were some very strange things going on with their API. I remember having to call them asking where to find a template ID so I could save that and send out the proper doc to customers. It was not listed anywhere on the developer dashboard. The rep told me in a very condescending way that it template ID was part of the URL. I should have known to just use that! My app was written in a python backend. They had a some API examples in different languages for their docs. The python example was a total embarrassment. It was clear that the person who wrote it had no experience with python at all. I am not trying to be mean, it was that bad. Every line ended with a semicolon (in python this is not an error, but is officially discouraged). The person also seemed to not be aware of a dictionary. They built their json paylod by concatenating text. It was the messiest python code I had ever seen. I think this particular bit of code is gone now, but it was incredible. I felt so bad that I emailed them some suggested fixes and asked if they had python experience. They responded with a something along the lines of ya, we had the java guy do that. But the code stayed up there for a long time... |
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I was able to hack together solutions and skirt around DocuSign's many problems, garbage documentation, and general very-low-quality API, but in no circumstance would I ever recommend it to anyone. Late in the project I seriously considered throwing it away and switching to another API.
The other API I considered was: https://app.hellosign.com/api/pricing
This is literally ten times the price of DocuSign and I don't know how long they'll be in business, so it's a hard sell to buy into that. The API docs looked way way better (like stripe or twilio or slack apis, rather than some janky enterprise nonsense), but development and hacking around DocuSign was a one time expense, and the API is an ongoing cost.
If remotely possible, I'd just sign stuff in person and mail or fax it, since all this stuff just adds difficulty, complexity, and cost, to very little benefit unless you have a LOT of people signing stuff. The application I worked one was for one or two signatures a month, so not worth the trouble.