A signing tool, not a PDF suite
Acrobat Sign is usually bought alongside Acrobat, per user, which makes sense for people who edit PDFs all day. For the manager who sends a supplier agreement twice a month, or the approver who only needs to say yes, it is a lot of licence.
Refrendo does the approve-and-sign part only. Upload the finished PDF, add the approvers and signers, place their fields, send. The people you send to never need an account or a licence.
Approvals in the same request
Put Finance or Legal in front of the signature as an approval step. Approvers can approve, reject or ask for changes, and if they ask, you send a revised version that everyone reviews again. Routing can be in order, several people at once, or “any two of three”.
What happens when it’s done
Everyone who took part gets the flattened final PDF and a completion certificate. Both are fingerprinted with SHA-256, and the audit trail records each step in a chain that makes later edits detectable.
What you give up
Refrendo doesn’t edit PDFs, doesn’t offer certificate-based digital signatures, and doesn’t have Adobe’s integrations with the rest of the Adobe ecosystem. If those matter more than simplicity and price, Acrobat Sign is the better fit.
Details about other products are from their public websites as of September 2026 and may have changed. DocuSign and Adobe Acrobat Sign are trademarks of their owners; Refrendo is not affiliated with them.