Sign documents properly — not just quickly.
Upload a PDF, place your fields, and send it to be signed in the right order, from any device. The moment everyone's done, KuduDoc locks the file down with a certification signature, a SHA-256 fingerprint and an independent timestamp — so nobody has to take your word for it.
Personal plan available — no credit card, no catch.
12. Signature
By signing below, the Employer and Employee each confirm that they have read, understood and agree to be bound by the terms of this Agreement, effective from the date of the last signature recorded.
One envelope, two signers, in order.
Sequential routing on loop: Lindiwe's invitation only goes out once Sipho has signed. Nothing to click — it runs itself.
What is an electronic signature in South Africa?
An electronic signature is simply data — typed, drawn, or otherwise attached to a document — that shows a person meant to sign it. Under South Africa's Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (the ECT Act), that carries the same legal weight as a signature made with a pen, for the vast majority of agreements: leases, offer letters, employment contracts, service agreements and general commercial documents.
Some documents are excluded from electronic signing altogether. Section 4(3) of the ECT Act, read with Schedule 2, keeps wills and codicils, bills of exchange, sales of land, and leases of land longer than 20 years on paper. Sign those in wet ink. You can still use KuduDoc afterwards to seal and archive the scanned original.
Suretyships sit outside that list but need the same care. The law itself requires the surety's signature, and where a statute requires a signature, only an advanced electronic signature from an accredited provider satisfies it. KuduDoc is not accredited and does not offer AES, so a surety should sign in wet ink or through an accredited provider — we would rather say that than sell you a deed that can be attacked on exactly that ground. What KuduDoc is genuinely good for on a suretyship is preparing it, routing it, and sealing the executed copy afterwards so its terms can be proved years later: the full explanation is here.
For everything else, the ECT Act looks for three things: clear intent to sign, a reliable link between the signer and the document, and a dependable record that nothing changed afterwards. That's exactly what the next section is about.
Three independent proofs, on every completed document.
None of these ask you to trust KuduDoc's word for it — each one can be checked independently, by anyone, for free.
Certification signature
The instant a document is complete, KuduDoc applies a certifying digital signature to the PDF itself — the same DocMDP mechanism built into the PDF standard. Change a single character afterwards and any standard PDF reader will show the certification as broken.
Our signing certificate is currently self-signed, so Adobe Reader shows its validity as "unknown" rather than a trusted green tick. Tamper-evidence doesn't depend on that — it works either way.
File fingerprint
Every completed document is hashed into a unique fingerprint tied to those exact bytes. Alter a word, a date, even invisible metadata, and the fingerprint changes completely — there's no such thing as a partial match.
9c4f2a11 7e0d3b58 aa61c9f4 3d0e7ab2 55c8f110 2b7e94ac
Independent timestamp
That fingerprint gets anchored independently through OpenTimestamps, proving the exact file existed in that exact form at that moment — a proof that lives outside KuduDoc entirely, and outlives KuduDoc's own servers.
Anchored 2 Aug 2026, 14:19 SAST. Checkable forever, not just while KuduDoc is running.
4. Acceptance
This Agreement is entered into by and between the parties below, who by their signature accept the terms set out herein.
Drag a field, drop it exactly where it belongs
Drop fields where they belong. Decide who signs, and when.
Choose a field type — signature, initials, date or plain text — and drop it directly onto the page, exactly where it needs to sit. KuduDoc shows you precisely what each recipient will see before you ever hit send.
Then set the order: everyone signs in sequence, one after another, or all at once in parallel — your call, document by document.
Service-Agreement.pdf
"...who by their signature accept the terms set out herein."
Certificate of completion
A phone is enough to sign. A certificate is enough to prove it.
Recipients get a secure link by email — no app, no account, no password. It opens straight into a signing view built for a small screen, with a signature pad big enough for a thumb.
Once everyone's done, download a completion certificate: a timestamped record of every view and every signature, ready to keep, attach, or produce as evidence.
Frequently asked questions
For most documents, yes. Under South Africa's Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (ECT Act), an electronic signature carries the same legal weight as a handwritten one for the vast majority of agreements — leases, employment contracts, offer letters, service agreements and general commercial agreements included.
Two limits are worth knowing before you send. Wills, bills of exchange, sales of land and leases of land longer than 20 years cannot be concluded electronically at all — Schedule 2 of the ECT Act excludes them, and no platform design gets around that. And a suretyship needs more than an ordinary electronic signature: because a statute requires the surety's signature, only an advanced electronic signature from an accredited provider will satisfy it. KuduDoc is not accredited and does not offer AES, so a surety should sign in wet ink or through an accredited provider — the detail is here.
What KuduDoc gives you on everything else is the record the ECT Act cares about: consent and intent captured at signing, an audit trail of what happened and when, and a seal that shows the file has not changed since. Whether your particular document holds up is a question of law and fact for an attorney — we describe the framework, we don't rule on your agreement. The terms set this out in full.
It shows. Every document KuduDoc completes is sealed with a certification signature (the DocMDP mechanism built into the PDF standard) the moment signing finishes. Change so much as a single character afterwards — text, a date, a page — and any standard PDF reader will flag the certification as broken the next time the file is opened. Add the SHA-256 fingerprint and OpenTimestamps anchor KuduDoc also records, and you have three independent ways to prove a file is exactly what it was at completion — all checkable for free at /verify, by anyone, not just KuduDoc users.
No. Recipients get a secure link by email and can review and sign straight from their browser — no account, no app, no password to create. A free KuduDoc account only matters if you're the one preparing and sending documents.
PDF is the format KuduDoc signs — it's the one format that displays identically everywhere and can carry a certification signature properly. Already have a Word doc, a scan, or a photo of a page? KuduDoc's free PDF tools include conversion and OCR, so getting to a clean, signable PDF usually takes seconds, not a separate app.
Yes. KuduDoc is hosted in South Africa and built with POPIA in mind from the ground up. Your documents aren't sold, scraped for ads, or shared with anyone beyond the recipients you choose to send them to.
Your next signature should hold up, wherever it's checked.
Personal plan available · Made in South Africa · POPIA-minded