Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu hits out at ‘bloated’ DocuSign’s ‘overpriced’ model: ‘Do not need…’

Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu on Saturday took a dig at popular digital signature software DocuSign, saying that the “supremely bloated company” is selling overpriced enterprise software.

In a post on X, the chief scientist of Zoho talked about his own software Zoho Sign, which he said does not need over 6,500 employees to create a digital signature software.

“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 6705 employees to produce digital signature software,” he said.

Sridhar Vembu’s dig at DocuSign came in response to a post made by Andrew Wilkinson, who is the co-founder of Tiny and owns popular platforms like Dribbble, Letterboxd and AeroPress.

“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,” the American businessman said in his X post.

Replying to Wilkinson’s query, Vembu said, “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,” he added.

Sridhar Vembu’s advice to US businessman

Sridhar Vembu offered a piece of advice to Wilkinson, answering his concerns. He asked the Tiny co-founder to consider public SaaS players.

“Useful heuristic: consider public Saas players that are your vendors and look at their sales and marketing expense vs their R&D expense,” he said.

If the vendors are spending more money in selling the company than actually building the product, it can be a signal to replace them, Vembu advised.

“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 said.

“Glad to be of help,” the Zoho co-founder added.

Social media praises Zoho Sign

Sridhar Vembu’s X post garnered much attention, with many entrepreneurs and other users of the application praising Zoho Sign.

“I use the zohosign software and prefer it over any other competing product,” a person commented.

“Yes we moved to zoho sign and also to Zoho mail which is also much cheaper compared to MS. Off course improvements are required for zoho mai and cliq but it is value for money,” another chimed in.

“I came across using Zoho Sign when trying to register my booking with a hotel. It had a very innovative interface where I didn’t need to sign by hand. Innovative and thoughtful options were provided,” a third user replied.