Good Seal
Notes

6 August 2026 · 2 min read

Digital signature vs electronic signature: what's actually different

The two terms get used as if they mean the same thing. They don't, and the gap between them is where a lot of vendors make their money.

"Electronic signature" and "digital signature" get used interchangeably in casual conversation, in marketing copy, and often in the same sentence. They name two different things, and mixing them up is how someone ends up paying for a tier of security they do not need — or, less often but more expensively, not realising they needed one they did not have.

The short version

An electronic signature is a legal category: any mark made electronically with the intent to sign — a typed name, a drawn squiggle, a click on "I agree." A digital signature is a specific technical mechanism: a cryptographic signature built on public-key infrastructure, tied to a certificate that identifies the signer. Every digital signature is an electronic signature. Most electronic signatures are not digital signatures.

What a digital signature actually does

The signer holds a private key, matched to a public key certified by a trust service provider. Signing produces a cryptographic hash of the document, encrypted with that private key. Anyone can verify the hash with the public certificate — and if a single byte of the document changes afterward, the hash no longer matches, which is what makes tampering detectable rather than merely forbidden.

This is the mechanism eIDAS calls a Qualified Electronic Signature when the certificate comes from an accredited provider, and it is the closest electronic equivalent to a notarised wet signature — the one tier that reverses the burden of proof in a dispute.

What "just" an electronic signature covers

  • A typed name in a text box.
  • A signature drawn on a touchscreen or trackpad.
  • Clicking a "Sign" button after reviewing a document.
  • A scanned image of a wet signature, pasted into a PDF.

Under ESIGN, UETA, and eIDAS's Simple Electronic Signature tier, every one of those is a legally valid signature. Courts do not require cryptography for a contract to hold up — what they weigh is intent to sign and evidence of who did it.

Where Good Seal sits

Every document completed through Good Seal is stamped with a PAdES digital signature - the cryptographic kind - over the top of an ordinary electronic signing process. You get the legal simplicity of an electronic signature and the tamper-evidence of a digital one, without doing anything differently.

So which do you actually need

For the overwhelming majority of business contracts — NDAs, consulting agreements, vendor terms, leases — a simple electronic signature with a solid audit trail is exactly as legally binding as a digital signature, and courts have upheld it just as often. The cases where a Qualified digital signature is specifically required are narrow: certain government filings, some countries' company-registry paperwork, a handful of regulated financial instruments. If you are not sure which category your document falls into, it is almost always the first one.

The confusion is profitable for whoever is selling the more expensive tier — every "upgrade to digital signatures" pitch starts with the buyer not knowing the difference. Now you do.

Good Seal is a free DocuSign alternative: upload a PDF, place the fields, email a link. The other side signs in the browser and everyone gets a sealed copy.

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