Lettings is not a signing problem in the ordinary sense. One let can involve four or five people who have never been in the same room, a stack of documents that has to go out in roughly the right order, and a set of deadlines that other people set for you. Nothing about it is hard on its own. All of it is hard at once, on a Thursday, when a negotiator is also doing three viewings.
The failure is almost never that a document did not get signed. It is that it got signed late, or by the wrong person, or that six months later nobody can show when it went out and when it came back.
One let, five documents, four people
Look at what a single tenancy actually generates. The agreement itself. Right-to-rent checks (in England) and the referencing pack. The prescribed information that goes with the deposit. A guarantor form, if there is a guarantor. The inventory and schedule of condition at check-in. Then, later on, the changes: a sharer moving out, a replacement moving in, new landlord terms, each one the same dance again with less urgency and the same chance of drifting.
Most agencies run this on a mix of email attachments, a portal the tenant will not log into and a printer in the branch. The result is a folder full of documents whose provenance is a series of email threads. It works right up until a deposit is disputed, a landlord changes agent, or somebody asks a precise question about dates.
- Nobody is at a desk. The tenant is moving. The guarantor is at work. The landlord is abroad. A document that assumes a laptop and a printer will sit unsigned for four days.
- Joint tenants stall each other. Three sharers on one agreement, and the one who is hardest to reach sets the pace for everyone.
- Version confusion. The agreement was amended after a negotiation about the pets clause. Two of the four signed the earlier PDF.
- No independent record of timing. The sent folder shows when you sent it. Nothing in the file proves when they signed it, except their word and yours.
The multi-signer shape, handled properly
This is where the tool has to earn its keep. Pixasign puts multiple signers on one document, each with their own fields and their own private link. Tenant one signs their block, tenant two signs theirs, the guarantor signs the guarantee section, and the landlord countersigns. Nobody sees anybody else’s link, and nobody can sign in the wrong place because the fields are assigned before it goes out.
You can also set a signing order, so the document moves through the people in the sequence your process needs rather than all at once. If the landlord should only countersign once every tenant is on it, the landlord does not get their link until that has happened. And if the order does not matter, turn it off and send to everyone together, which is usually the faster choice when a move-in date is close.
Each signer is recorded separately in the audit trail: when their link was opened, when they signed, from what IP and approximate location and on what device. If one of the four sharers later says they never saw the agreement, that is answerable with a record rather than with a recollection.
Deadlines you do not control but must evidence
Deposit paperwork, rent increase notices and referencing all carry timing expectations, and some of them are set by legislation rather than by you. Those requirements are a matter for your own compliance advice, your scheme or your solicitor, and a software supplier is the wrong source for them.
What we can tell you is what evidence you end up with. The seal carries a timestamp from DigiCert, an independent timestamp authority, applied when the document is sealed, after the last signature. That matters because a date you assert about your own document is worth very little in a dispute. A timestamp from an outside authority is a different thing: it is an attestation, by someone with no interest in the outcome, that the signed document existed at that moment. The time each person signed is recorded by our server on the evidence certificate. Anyone can check it free at pixasign.co.uk/check, including a deposit scheme adjudicator, a landlord’s solicitor or the agent who takes the portfolio over from you.
Signing from a phone, mid-move
Tenants sign on the device they actually have. There is no app, no account and no password. They get an email, tap the link, read the agreement, sign, and they are done. A guarantor who has never heard of you can do the same without creating anything. Each link stays live for fourteen days from when it reaches that person, and Remind sends a fresh one if anybody needs longer.
That matters more for lettings than for most trades, because the people you need are specifically the people whose lives are disrupted that week. A process that assumes a printer is a process that assumes the tenant is settled, and the whole point is that they are not.
What you are left holding afterwards
Pixasign gives each completed document a cryptographic seal, time-stamped by DigiCert. Change a byte the seal covers and it breaks, and anything added to the file later shows as a change at pixasign.co.uk/check.
Alongside it comes an evidence certificate: every signer, the address each link went to, IP and approximate location, device, and the whole timeline to the second, with digital fingerprints of the file before and after sealing. The events are hash-chained, so each one locks in the one before it. The chain’s final value is printed on the evidence certificate every party is sent, so a later change to the record would not match their copy.
| The question | Emailed PDF, signed and scanned | Sealed through Pixasign |
|---|---|---|
| Did all four actually sign? | Four threads, four attachments, one guess | One document, every signer recorded on it |
| When did each of them sign? | The date typed next to the signature | Recorded to the second, and the sealed document carries a DigiCert timestamp |
| Which version did they get? | Whichever attachment was on that thread | A digital fingerprint of the exact file |
| Has it been altered since? | No way to tell from the file | Change a byte the seal covers and it breaks; anything added later shows as a change at pixasign.co.uk/check |
| Can an adjudicator confirm it? | They have to take your word for it | Anyone can check it, free, without an account |
All of it travels with the document. The seal and its timestamp are embedded in the PDF itself, and anyone can check a document free at pixasign.co.uk/check: drop or choose a file and it tells you whether Pixasign sealed it and whether it has changed since. No account, no login. Download your signed tenancies whenever you like, which is the difference between owning your records and renting them.
Technical details
The seal is a PAdES document timestamp, the standard set out in ETSI EN 319 142: an RFC 3161 timestamp issued by DigiCert over the whole file, RSA-4096 with SHA-384, with long-term validation (LTV) data embedded in the PDF. The fingerprints on the evidence certificate are SHA-256 hashes.
Where an electronic signature is not the whole answer
Electronic signatures are valid and enforceable for the vast majority of UK business documents. There are categories that carry extra formality requirements, deeds and certain land and property matters among them, where witnessing and other conditions come into play. Some documents in an agency’s stack may fall into those categories depending on how they are drafted.
Which of your templates those are is not a question for a software supplier, and any supplier who answers it should worry you. Take the list to whoever drafts your agreements or advises you on compliance, get a straight answer about which documents can be signed electronically in your process, and then use this for those.
Pricing, for a branch where everybody sends paperwork
Per-user pricing is the wrong shape for an agency. The lettings negotiator sends the tenancy, the property manager sends the inventory, the branch manager sends the landlord terms of business, and whoever is covering on Saturday sends whatever is urgent. Per-seat pricing means either paying for all of them or sharing one login, and sharing a login wrecks the audit trail you bought the thing for.
Pixasign is free for 1 user and 3 documents a month, then flat with unlimited users: £19 a month for 50 documents, £59 for 200, £99 for 500, all inc VAT. The price you see is the price you pay. Unlimited users means no charge per user: an account starts with room for 200 active people, and we raise that free on request. Put the whole branch on it. Tenants, guarantors and landlords never pay anything and never need an account.
Documents and their evidence are stored in Nuremberg, Germany, with backups in Reykjavík, Iceland, and card payments are handled by Stripe. Where the data sits is a question that comes up more often now when a landlord or a corporate customer reads your data-protection paperwork.
Send one tenancy and see
Free for 3 documents a month, no card. Put a real agreement through it with every signer on the same document, and read the evidence certificate that comes back.
Start free UK company. Documents stored in the EEA.Questions
- Can several tenants sign the same tenancy agreement?
- Yes. Add every tenant to the same document, each with their own signature and date fields, and each gets their own private link. Nobody sees anyone else’s link, and the certificate records each person separately: when they opened it, when they signed, from where and on what device.
- Our landlord lives overseas. Can they still sign?
- Yes. The signing link works in any modern browser, with no account and no app, so a landlord in another country signs the same way a tenant in the next street does. Their approximate location is recorded in the audit trail alongside everyone else’s. Where the document itself is stored does not change: our servers are in Germany with backups in Iceland.
- Is an electronically signed tenancy agreement valid?
- Electronic signatures are valid and enforceable for the vast majority of UK business documents. Property paperwork is the area where exceptions cluster, because deeds and certain land formalities carry extra requirements such as witnessing, and whether a given template falls into that group depends on how it is drafted. Ask whoever drafts your agreements or handles your compliance which of your documents can be signed electronically. We will not answer that for you, and no supplier should.
- Can I prove exactly when something was signed?
- Pixasign has each seal time-stamped by DigiCert, an independent timestamp authority, when the document is sealed after the last signature, so that time does not come from us or from you. The evidence certificate adds the full timeline, recorded by our server: when it was sent, and when each person opened it and signed, to the second. That evidences when the signing happened. Whether that meets a particular deadline in your process is a question for your compliance advice, not for us.
- What happens to our signed tenancies if we stop paying?
- Nothing is deleted. The account moves to the Free plan, so you can still open, download and check everything already signed, and send up to 3 documents a month. Documents you sent earlier in the same month count towards it. Anything already out for signature still completes. Anything already downloaded is unaffected, because the seal and its timestamp are embedded in the PDF itself.