Zoho's Sridhar Vembu hits out at DocuSign: Don't need 6,705 employees to make digital sign software

Zoho co-founder, chief scientist, and former CEO Sridhar Vembu.

Zoho co-founder and chief scientist Sridhar Vembu has hit out at popular digital signature software company DocuSign for charging exorbitant prices for their services. He claimed that his company's version of the software, Zoho Sign, solved the problem without requiring close to 7,000 employees to work on it.

"DocuSign is a supremely bloated company that sells super over-priced enterprise software. We solve that problem with Zoho Sign and we don't need 6,705 employees to produce digital signature software," Vembu wrote on X.

His reaction was triggered by a US-based co-founder, Andrew Wilkinson, who claimed that his "jaw dropped" after finding out how much his company pays for DocuSign. "I just found out how much we pay for DocuSign and my jaw dropped. What's the best alternative? Is there something free or stupid cheap?" he wrote on X.

Reacting to this, Vembu commented, "So much 'enterprise Saas' fits the 'supremely bloated company that sells super over-priced enterprise software'. As the Saas bubble deflates, customers of the over-priced enterprise Saas will have the same reaction as Andrew."

Vembu also recommended entrepreneurs and companies consider looking at public Saas players' sales and marketing expenses versus their R&D expenses. "If they are spending a lot more selling the software to you than building it in the first place, that is a very good signal you can save a ton of money replacing them," he added.

Meanwhile, several X users who claimed to have used Zoho Sign lauded the company for offering its services at a fraction of DocuSign's charges.

"Zoho Sign has everything and much more than what DocuSign has to offer and all priced lesser than the cost of a ballpoint pen," commented GK Raju (@GKRAJU1). Another X user Shyam Sekhar (@shyamsek) wrote, "I use the Zoho Sign software and prefer it over any other competing product."