Best Contract Management Software for Small Business: Top 10

Navigating the vast array of contract management software options can be daunting, especially for small businesses with unique needs. This guide distills the market, spotlighting software that excels in ease of use, customization, automation, and overall performance, ensuring you find a solution that aligns well with your business needs and goals.

Top Picks for Contract Management Software for Small Business

In the dynamic day-to-day of small business, managing contracts efficiently is non-negotiable. Our top picks for contract management software are tailored to empower your business, whether you prioritize seamless user experience, extensive customization, sophisticated automation, or a blend of these crucial elements.

Here’s our breakdown of the top contenders.

• Best Overall: Signaturely
• Easiest to Use: Signaturely
• Best for Customization: DocuSign
• Best for Automation: PandaDoc

Best Contract Management Software for Small Business: 10 Options 

Choosing the right contract management software is pivotal for streamlining operations and enhancing productivity. In this comprehensive section, we unravel the nuances of 10 exceptional software options, each offering distinct capabilities to cater to the multifaceted needs of small businesses.

1. Signaturely

Signaturely is a cloud-based digital signature software built for small to medium-sized businesses. Eliminating paper and manual approvals from key digital workflows helps teams accelerate transactions with legally binding eSignatures. The intuitive editor and pre-built templates enable users to quickly create, customize, and automate document routings. And signature collection is simplified with drag-and-drop sending, guided signing, and built-in notifications.

Signaturely scales affordably alongside growth by offering configuration layers not ordinarily accessible to small teams. This future-proofs productivity as needs evolve. But approachability and ease of use sit at the foundation to ensure a short learning curve and rapid time-to-value.

Key Features

• Simple drag-and-drop document creation
• Custom routing flows and signature order
• Role-based team permissions
• Pre-built templates and reusable widgets
• Notifications and follow-ups

Best For: Ease of Use

With its simple editor and guided document creation, Signaturely excels in approachability and usability. Nontechnical users can quickly build, customize, and send digital documents in minutes with a gentle learning curve.

Plans & Pricing

Signaturely offers two main plans with layered features and capabilities:

• Personal: $16/month billed annually (or $20/month billed monthly) with unlimited signature workflows, access to one template, and integrations
• Business: $32/month billed annually (or $40/month billed monthly) with access to unlimited templates, team management, and custom business branding

Pros & Cons

Signaturely hits leadoff home runs in swift usability for basic to moderately complex signing needs. New users can quickly create, send, and collect legally binding eSignatures with the intuitiveness rivals rarely match. Even non-technical teams will find custom branding, permissions, and notifications readily accessible alongside core performing features.

2. DocuSign

Software Overview

DocuSign, a pioneer in the eSignature space, leverages over 15 years of industry experience to provide secure digital transaction solutions for leading enterprises globally. Recognized by its iconic green “Sign” button, DocuSign simplifies sending, signing, and managing legally binding contracts across various devices. The platform ensures rigorous compliance, especially for regulated industries, through extensive audit trails and robust encryption. Additionally, its seamless integrations allow for embedding DocuSign’s capabilities directly into existing business systems.

Despite its comprehensive range of customization options catering to complex workflows, DocuSign maintains an intuitive user interface, ensuring that teams of all sizes can quickly yield a return on investment. The platform supports scalability, offering role-based access and modular features that can be activated as business needs develop. This allows organizations to increase sophistication gradually without overwhelming users from the outset. This balance of advanced contract management features and user-friendliness makes DocuSign an adaptable and reliable choice for businesses aiming to streamline their digital transaction management processes.

Key Features

• Drag-and-drop document builder
• Custom signing workflows
• Legally-binding eSignatures
• 1000+ template library
• Secure cloud storage

Best For: Security

DocuSign prioritizes security and integrity with encrypted data storage, robust access controls, and authentication protocols certifying legitimacy. This makes it ideal for regulated data needs.

Plans & Pricing

DocuSign offers four pricing tiers, with up to a 44% discount by opting for annual plans:

• Personal: $10 per user per month billed annually (or $15 per user per month billed monthly) with five signatures per month and reusable templates
• Standard: $25 per user per month billed annually (or $45 per user per month billed monthly) with shared templates and collaboration tools 
• Business Pro: $40 per user per month (or $65 per user per month billed monthly) with bulk sending and payment capabilities 

Pros & Cons

Long the market frontrunner, DocuSign’s seasoned proficiency in securing billions of transactions makes it the definitive enterprise choice for rigorously regulated security demands. Compliance and process documentation toolkits address complex policy needs as AI capacities automate manual oversight where possible.

However, with sophistication comes tradeoffs in simplicity for lighter users. Those needing basic signatures may find the learning curve steep compared to DocuSign alternatives like Signaturely— which are more intuitively designed. However, in contract lifecycle management, few provide customer confidence with decades of market leadership and trust.

3. PandaDoc

Software Overview

PandaDoc serves as a powerful ally for revenue teams, aiming to expedite deal cycles by enhancing document creation, facilitating eSignatures, and offering seamless integrations with pivotal platforms such as CRMs. The platform’s proposal builder is designed to ease the process of custom branding, and additional features like in-depth analytics and task automation further streamline operations.

Despite its capability to handle robust configurations and meet extensive requirements, PandaDoc maintains a user-friendly interface, ensuring ease of adoption across teams. This approachability allows businesses to quickly realize returns on investment by starting with the essential functionalities and gradually scaling up to more sophisticated modules. These modules can be seamlessly woven into complex systems, enabling businesses to evolve their contract management practices in tandem with their growth, ensuring efficiency and effectiveness at every stage.

Key Features

• Document creation and editing
• Quote builder with automatic pricing
• Advanced workflow and document automation
• 1,000+ customizable business templates
• Built-in eSignatures

Best For: Established Sales Teams

With PandaDoc’s focus on quotes, proposals, and streamlining document processes, it suits transactional revenue teams needing to close deals quickly amid complex workflows.

Plans & Pricing

PandaDoc offers four paid plans:

• Essentials: $19 per user per month, billed annually (or $35 per user per month billed monthly), with access to unlimited document uploads and document analytics
• Business: $49 per user per month, billed annually (or $65 per user per month billed monthly), with access to unlimited document uploads and integrations
• Enterprise: Custom quoted to include API access and SSO support

Pros & Cons

Compared to alternatives like DocuSign, PandaDoc earns strong reviews for its wide-ranging features, user-friendly interface, and competitive pricing. Capabilities like unlimited uploads, templates, tracking tools, and drag-and-drop editing are highlighted as key strengths. In contrast, DocuSign is better recognized for its security, including encryption, platform stability, and audit trails. DocuSign also offers more out-of-the-box integrations with other tools. When comparing the two, PandaDoc forms tend to be less dynamic, but its broader feature set and affordability make it a viable choice, especially for smaller teams. DocuSign stands out most where security reputation and integrations are top priorities.

4. Juro

Software Overview

Juro offers a dynamic solution that empowers legal teams by automating the contract drafting process, freeing them from the tediousness of administrative tasks. Leveraging AI for document generation, incorporating embedded analytics tools, and providing access to custom clause libraries, Juro significantly enhances productivity of transactional operations traditionally dependent on manual input. Its integration capabilities, particularly with platforms like Salesforce, ensure that completed agreements can immediately translate into executed deals.

While Juro’s specialized focus on legal requirements offers distinct advantages, it might initially seem less approachable than more generalized systems. However, Juro mitigates this by providing structured playbooks, which guide and support users navigating new or complex scenarios. For legal departments grappling with the dual pressures of increasing contract volume and escalating business intricacy, Juro stands out by offering targeted expertise and advanced tools that outperform generic solutions, making it an invaluable asset in modern contract management.

Key Features

• AI-supported contract generation
• Central contract repository
• eSignature workflows
• Advanced analytics/reporting

Best For: Legal Teams

Juro stands out as an intelligent solution laser-focused on legal teams needing advanced capabilities to streamline contracting workflows amid evolving complexity.

Plans & Pricing

Juro offers custom quotes for each of its three tiers (pricing information is not displayed on the platform’s website): 

• Essentials: Includes unlimited users and templates with contract repository and custom branding
• Growth: Includes AI assistant and deeper integrations with DocuSign and Hubspot for teams that have more complex workflow requirements 
• Enterprise: Access to APIs and custom integrations for scaling companies

Pros & Cons

Based on user reviews, Juro is well regarded for its contract creation, editing, and sending capabilities that streamline the contract management process alongside its no-code editor, turning contracts into usable data. Users also highlight the software’s contract customization and organization features. However, some find the interface confusing and note limitations with integrations and reporting functionality.

Additionally, while issues with responsiveness have been called out, Juro’s customer service is cited as responsive and helpful. Users see strong potential in Juro’s legal contract management offering but believe user experience and expanded integrations and insights can be improved.

5. ContractWorks

Software Overview

ContractWorks offers a comprehensive solution that centralizes contract management, enabling cross-functional teams, including legal, sales, and procurement teams, to manage agreements with complete visibility. These teams can generate valuable insights from unified analytics by syncing their workflows around a shared repository. This integrated approach not only merges different viewpoints but also significantly enhances productivity by breaking down previous data silos.

However, the challenge lies in maintaining simplicity within this consolidated framework, as a system that caters to a wide range of functionalities can become complex. ContractWorks addresses this by balancing providing a comprehensive feature set and ensuring ease of use. It allows organizations to tailor the information flow to fit their existing operational structures while safeguarding sensitive data with robust permission settings. Embracing versatility, ContractWorks blends visibility with user-friendliness, ensuring its powerful capabilities are accessible and beneficial to all users.

Key Features

• Unified contract repository
• Customizable field capture
• Cross-departmental analytics
• Deadline trackers & alerts

Best For: Contract Visibility

Robust unified reporting visualizes data bottlenecks across contract lifecycles previously obscured in decentralized views. 

Plans & Pricing

ContractWorks offers three main plans, all with an annual commitment:

• Standard: $700 per month for unlimited users and 2,500 documents
• Professional: $900 per month for 10,000 documents and ten electronic signature licenses
• Premium: $2,000 per month with more advanced workflows

ContractWorks plans come with a free trial. 

Pros & Cons

ContractWorks garners positive feedback for its transparent, affordable pricing and user-friendly interface. The free 2-week trial period is also valuable for evaluating the contract management software. However, electronic signature capabilities come at an additional cost to the base plans, which some customers have found expensive. Also, users need to be aware the free trial automatically converts to a paid subscription after two weeks unless canceled ahead of time, which can take some customers by surprise.

6. GetAccept

Software Overview

GetAccept seamlessly arms sales teams to drive deals to the finish line by merging compliant eSignatures directly into existing CRM workflows. Salesforce users tap agreements pre-loaded for instant sending or quickly uploading custom documents. Real-time status tracking then monitors progress right in daily routines without losing context.

Key Features

• Embedded document sending
• Template library
• Real-time tracking
• CRM integration

Best For: Growing Sales Teams

GetAccept stands out by directly enhancing existing CRM ecosystems with intuitive eSignatures tailored to sales-specific document needs, driving deals forward. 

Plans & Pricing

GetAccept offers:

• Free Trial: 14-day trial of the entire platform
• Professional: $49 per user per month with access to basic integrations and advanced document tracking features 
• Enterprise: Custom pricing with contract management suite and premium integrations 

Pros & Cons

With unrivaled CRM embeddability, GetAccept earns praise as a signing solution enabling sales teams to handle essential workflows like downloading, uploading, tracking, and getting signatures without switching between systems. Its strengths are its focus on sales processes, templatized standards, and conversion analytics. However, sales-centric optimization also means limited visibility into downstream functions once deals transition cross-departmentally. 

This can lead to misalignments from earlier oversights coming to light later through limited, siloed lenses before reconciliations.However, optimizing for sales risks and blindspots still needs to be addressed where deals transition across functions. 

7. Odoo

Software Overview

Odoo introduces a lightweight contract management feature as part of its open-source ERP platform, tailored specifically for small and medium-sized businesses. This integration enables smaller teams to track basic agreements directly within their existing workflows, providing convenient access to essential contract information without other contract management software expenses.

The seamless integration within Odoo’s ecosystem ensures smooth data flow between contracts, document approvals, billing, CRM, and other processes, all coordinated through a unified system with shared access permissions. This cohesive approach simplifies contract management for smaller teams, allowing them to focus on their core business activities while maintaining a streamlined and cost-effective operational structure.

Key Features

• Central contract database
• Template designer
• Alerts for renewals
• Real-time progress

Best For: Already-Odoo Users

Native integration with Odoo’s SMB ERP platform makes the contract module a seamless add-on for existing customers to overlay lightweight agreement tracking without adding platforms.

Plans & Pricing

Odoo offers:

• Free: for only one Odoo app
• Standard: $24.90 per user per month, billed annually (or $31.10 per user per month billed monthly) and includes access to all Odoo apps like Sales, Marketing, and HR
• Custom: $37.40 per user per month, billed annually (or $46.80 per user per month billed monthly) and adds access to multi-company capabilities and external API 

Pros & Cons

Odoo earns praise as a flexible, open-source platform integrating multiple business applications from HR to inventory under one umbrella. Users highlight the ability to customize workflows and scale to enterprise-level needs. However, the extensive app ecosystem can overwhelm businesses with more basic needs.

Additionally, while the open-source Python-based platform enables modifications, it may not suit users wanting out-of-the-box configurations. Furthermore, tapping Odoo’s advanced features and customization often requires integration services, making it a more significant investment than some alternative solutions.

8. Concord

Software Overview

Concord streamlines contract management by offering a unified platform where legal teams can manage the entire contract lifecycle. It centralizes tasks like document creation, editing, storage, and tracking in a single workspace, ensuring consistency and transparency. The system’s centralized controls enhance the integrity and compliance of the contracting process.

The platform promotes collaboration beyond traditional departmental boundaries, enabling legal teams to work seamlessly with other departments. However, the true potential of Concord is realized only when it is widely adopted across the entire workforce. Resistance may occur among those accustomed to traditional methods, which requires effective change management from leadership. Once fully adopted, Concord effectively connects disparate teams and processes, replacing informal communication channels with a more structured, efficient workflow. This integration creates a cohesive environment, significantly boosting productivity and contract management efficacy.

Key Features

• Configurable contract workflows
• Collaborative authoring
• Open API 
• Real-time status tracking

Best For: Contract Collaboration

Concord’s end-to-end workspace environment, access controls, and activity tracking enable transparent contract collaboration between previously siloed legal teams.

Plans & Pricing

Concord offers three plans and a 14-day free trial:

• Standard: $17 per user per month, billed annually (or $23 per user per month, billed monthly) with access to unlimited signatures and bulk sending
• Professional: $49 per user per month, billed annually (or $59 per user per month, billed monthly) and adds approval workflows for documents and integrations with apps like Salesforce and Google Drive
• Enterprise: Custom pricing with an added clause library and custom branding capabilities 

Pros & Cons

Concord earns positive feedback for its user-friendly interface, competitive pricing, and breadth of easy-to-use contract management features covering document creation to monitoring. Users specifically highlight useful capabilities like conditional approval workflows, clause libraries, and templates. However, the template setup process has room for improvement to be more streamlined. Additionally, while Concord provides an all-in-one solution, it offers less customization and integration capabilities than some alternatives.

9. Conga

Software Overview

Conga CLM (Contract Lifecycle Management) integrates contract management seamlessly into Salesforce, utilizing its Lightning-native application. This allows teams to advance agreements within their daily CRM workflows without switching between different systems. Sales teams can quickly initiate personalized contracts, and support staff can smoothly carry them forward, all guided by user-friendly templates and streamlined through pre-built components, reducing the need for extensive configuration.

However, this integration comes with a dependency on Salesforce, which may become a limitation if an organization’s needs evolve beyond the Salesforce ecosystem. Yet, within CRM, Conga offers significant convenience. Users can perform cross-team transactions through an interface that’s both mature and familiar, easing the learning process when applying it to contract management. Conga represents a strategic addition for those deeply integrated with Salesforce, eliminating the extensive planning typically required when integrating external tools by enhancing the CRM with targeted contract management functionalities. 

Key Features

• Contract generation
• eSignature workflows
• Real-time tracking
• Custom clause library

Best For: Salesforce Users

As a fully native app, Conga CLM provides ideal contract management directly within Salesforce CRM for teams wanting tight alignment without new tools.

Plans & Pricing

Conga does not display pricing for its CLM product. Potential users must contact the sales team to schedule a demo and learn more about pricing. 

Pros & Cons

Conga Contracts earns praise for its robust contract management capabilities, including automated workflows, tight Salesforce integration, and streamlined contract lifecycle management. Users highlight the intuitive interface and automation features like notifications and approvals, which save time and reduce errors. However, while the unification of processes is seen as valuable, smaller businesses may find Conga’s pricing less affordable compared to alternatives. Additionally, learning to customize and fully leverage capabilities can have a steep learning curve.

10. Agiloft

Software Overview

Agiloft offers a sophisticated contract management solution that caters to the unique needs of organizations. Thanks to its intuitive visual interfaces, it does so without requiring IT expertise, allowing business teams to configure the system without coding. This eliminates the typical delays associated with implementing automated platforms. Legal and administrative leaders can easily design and manage comprehensive workflows, from contract creation to renewal, by customizing modular components designed for users without a technical background.

Key Features

• No-code UI configuration
• Custom contract workflow
• AI-supported insights
• Robust integration support

Best For: No-Code Customization

Agiloft allows adaptable non-technical users, even across business teams, to tailor sophisticated contract workflows aligned with unique organizational needs absent IT intermediaries.

Plans & Pricing

Agiloft offers:

• Essentials: Includes repository and basic workflows
• Advanced: Includes advanced workflows and automation, as well as Tableau and BI connectors
• Premium: Includes deeper capabilities with AI platform 

Pros & Cons

Agiloft earns praise for its flexible no-code platform that enables customizable contract workflows without IT support and for providing insightful analytics through robust reporting and dashboards that facilitate data-driven decisions. However, the contract management software requires more hands-on configuration to set up workflows versus out-of-the-box solutions.

Additionally, Agiloft has an unconventional user interface that some find unfamiliar and involves a learning curve. While Agiloft garners positive attention for its constant innovation and understanding of customer needs, specific end-user reviews that evaluate the pros and cons are not readily published to inform buying decisions.

11. HyperStart CLM

Software Overview

HyperStart CLM is a contract management software to manage all stages of contractual processes—request generation, creation, review, redlining, negotiation, approval, signing, storage, tracking, and analysis. Built using AI technology, HyperStart CLM streamlines contracting processes and supports legal teams through automation.

HyperStart CLM offers an intuitive and easy-to-use UI and excellent configurability with legacy business apps like Salesforce, Google Business Suite, and Sharepoint, among other tools. This way, HyperStart CLM works in sync with your existing business infrastructure—enabling flawless automation and efficiency in contract management.

HyperStart CLM is designed to manage a wide range of agreements, from legacy to newly created ones. You can use the OCR tech of HyperStart CLM to drive insights from your paper agreements and even track their obligations and renewals. HyperStart CLM offers a 2-week free trial, allowing users to explore the platform before committing to a purchase.

Key Features

• 99% accurate AI metadata extraction
• No-code custom workflow builder
• In-flight analytics for pre-signature contracts
• Auto-track upcoming renewals and obligations
• AI review and redlining for counterparty documents

Best For: Automated contractual tasks.

HyperStart CLM uses an artificial intelligence model with a record of handling over 1 billion documents. The AI tech, with a 99% accuracy rate, helps non-legal teams automate contractual processes efficiently.

Plans and Pricing

HyperStart CLM offers custom pricing options based on individual organization needs. The quotations are based on the following factors:

• Number of modules you want to purchase
• Number of users on the CLM platform
• Number of contracts to be managed

Pros and Cons

HyperStart CLM’s users appreciate the platform for its user-friendly UI/UX, flexible pricing options, and broad automation capabilities. The features offered by this platform help auto-pilot routine contracting tasks like agreement creation, review, signature collection, tracking, and analysis using AI.

Consequently, for small-scale businesses dealing with low contract volumes, there is limited scope for AI implementation. Since such businesses have a limited number of contracts, certain features of HyperStart CLM might not be useful. However, due to the platform’s module-based pricing options, startups and small-scale companies can opt out of these features and only buy functionalities like templates, repositories, signatures, etc.

What is Contract Management Software?

Contract management software offers a centralized digital solution for orchestrating the entire contract lifecycle within an organization, from pre-positioning language through ongoing administration over multi-year legal frameworks spanning the agreement’s structured lifespan. Teams gain an accessible environment housing related documentation, policies, and insights in a common repository for authoring, negotiating, signing, tracking, and analyzing contractual data, including renewals and terminations.

The best contract management software aims to streamline the entire lifecycle by reducing cycle times, drafting fresh business contracts, minimizing risk exposure from deadline oversight, and maximizing revenue recognition by tracking forthcoming renewal trigger points. Core capabilities include a centralized contract database, multi-team collaboration instruments, workflow automation for target states, compliance notifications when approaching milestones like opt-outs or renewal dates, integration bridges into related systems, and analytics dashboards delivering transparency into performance metrics such as average deal durations.

Solutions cater to a range of team specifics while advancing cross-group alignment:

• Legal: Accelerates document generation by applying automated templates and clause libraries—Integrates workflows into contract management tools.
• Sales: Increases deal velocity by simplifying approval routing to finalize terms faster.
• Procurement: Manages supplier risks guiding language standards across purchases. Integrates into PO systems.
• Finance: Identifies upcoming renewal revenue streams for improved forecasting and supports revenue recognition.

Overall, the best contract management software aim to deliver greater systematic cohesion over what historically manifests as decentralized repositories lacking holistic visibility into agreement relationships and upcoming triggers jeopardizing compliance or revenue leakage from lapses going unnoticed. By transitioning into centralized smart hubs, teams gain accessibility to provision language thoughtfully designed for reuse while proactively managing deadlines with alerts, ensuring obligations remain in good standing.

How a Small Business Can Benefit from Contract Management Software

Contract management software offers many advantages for small businesses seeking to systematize their agreement processes despite typically lacking sizable legal teams that large enterprises leverage. Creating, tracking, and maintaining contracts can become extremely difficult without automation.

Implementing contract management software provides the following key benefits:

• Increased Efficiency: Automating manual tasks for document generation, routing, and distribution allows small teams to focus on high-value work rather than repetitive administrative contract processes. Features like templates, clause libraries, and defined workflows significantly cut down on the time spent drafting new agreements.
• Enhanced Visibility: A centralized contract repository gives small businesses better visibility into upcoming deadlines, obligations, renewal terms, and complete contract histories. Configurable analytics dashboards surface actionable insights from agreement data to guide optimized decision-making.
• Reduced Risk: Capabilities include automated notifications around contractual milestones, customizable expiration, renewal tracking, and thorough audit trail version control to help small companies proactively manage terms in good standing, prevent clause breaches, and reduce human error.
• Revenue Growth Opportunities: Advanced analytics quantifying customer agreements, pending renewal timelines, and other contract data enables small businesses to identify and leverage expansion revenue opportunities.
• Streamlined Collaboration: Contract management software facilitates real-time document collaboration across employees, customers, partners, etc, through integrated features like in-document commenting, version control with visible redlining, and permissioned external participant document portals.
• Anywhere Accessibility: Web and mobile access empowers distributed teams to manage contracts remotely from anywhere while enabling sales teams to get documents signed promptly. This facilitates broader collaboration despite tight resources.
• Affordable Scaling: Pre-configured capabilities like unlimited storage, open API integrations, compliance assurance, and responsive customer support catered toward timely small business needs offer accessible versatility to scale complexity absent over-engineering costs sinking adoption.

CLM or contract management software delivers immense value by centralizing contract management document access, automating workflows, and surfacing data-backed insights, absent bloated software costs that hamper adoption. It saves time lost on repetitive tasks, provides compliance guardrails, and enables sustainable growth for resource-constrained small business teams to punch above their weight overseeing complexity. Specifically, small businesses can gain leverage from captured institutional knowledge through clause and language libraries codifying successful terms, securing favorable obligations in prior agreements for reuse in subsequent negotiations. Checklists inside document templates also embed best practices to guide contracting novices, reducing risk points otherwise exploited by opposing parties.

How to Choose the Best Contract Management Software for Small Businesses

Selecting good contract management software is crucial for small businesses looking to manage agreements effectively. The ideal platform provides the features needed while aligning with an organization’s budget and requirements.

Key Capabilities

Assess must-have capabilities like contract creation, collaboration tools, central repository, search, reporting, and integrations with existing systems. Consider both current needs and future scalability. Prioritize capabilities that will deliver the most value.

Ease of Use

Evaluate the overall usability and intuitiveness of the platform. As small teams are often stretched thin, solutions with simpler interfaces and workflows enable quicker adoption. Conversely, more complex contract management tools can slow usage and provide limited ROI.

Budget

Carefully consider pricing models across contract management solutions. Opt for the best-value platform that provides essential features at an affordable cost without restricting users or capabilities. Most offer monthly subscriptions starting under $25 per user and free trials.

When considering the budget, also consider the total cost of ownership, which includes subscription fees and additional costs for integrations, extra storage, or added features. Be wary of seemingly low-cost contract management solutions that may charge extra for essential functionalities or scale up pricing significantly as your business grows. Opt for transparent pricing models that allow you to plan your finances predictably and offer the flexibility to adjust your plan as your business needs evolve.

Customizability

While out-of-the-box contract management solutions work for primary use cases, small businesses can benefit from platforms that allow easy workflow customizations aligned to their specific processes. This ensures optimal efficiency gains.

Assess the level of technical expertise required to customize the platform. Solutions offering visual customization tools or simple scripting can empower your team to adjust without needing specialized IT skills. Moreover, a platform with a robust API and a wide array of integration possibilities can seamlessly fit into your existing tech ecosystem, ensuring that your contract management process dovetails with other business operations, thereby enhancing overall productivity and reducing the likelihood of data silos.

Implementation & Support

Assess expected timelines for implementation along with the associated training and support level. This ensures smooth onboarding for small teams. Ongoing customer support availability is also essential when issues arise. Incorporating call center software can enhance support capabilities, providing immediate assistance and resolving issues more efficiently, which is critical for maintaining smooth operations and high customer satisfaction.

Security & Compliance

Evaluate security protocols and compliance with regulations like HIPAA depending on industry-specific needs around data protection and electronically-signed documents.

Furthermore, delving into the software’s security architecture and data encryption standards is essential. Verify the presence of features such as multi-factor authentication, regular security audits, and user access controls to safeguard sensitive information. In compliance, confirm that the platform stays ahead of the latest legal requirements and industry standards, offering updates and features that address these evolving demands. 

Small firms can determine the optimum contract management platform for driving greater efficiency, risk mitigation, and revenue growth while aligning with budget and resource constraints by weighing key elements from capabilities to usability and cost.

FAQs About Contract Management Software for Small Business

Below are a few of the most frequently asked questions about contract management software for small businesses.

What You Need to Remember About Contract Management Software

Implementing contract management software is crucial for modern businesses to gain control over their agreements. However, not all solutions are made equal. Focus your search on platforms that provide robust core capabilities around contract creation, collaboration, storage, and analytics tailored to your workflows at an affordable price. Beyond checking boxes on features, ensure the platform has an intuitive interface to drive regular usage and commercial-grade security to protect your data. With the right contract management system aligned to your specific needs, your small business can transform how it manages contracts to reduce risk and capture revenue while enabling scale and growth.