Two ways to collect a signature — choose deliberately
tuyaform can capture a signature in two very different ways, and picking the right one up front saves rework. The first is the subject of this guide: a form with a Signature field. You build a form, share one link, and every person who opens it fills in their answers and signs — one form, many independent signed responses. It fits parent consent forms, event registrations, policy acknowledgments, volunteer sign-ups: high volume, one signer per response.
The second is send-to-sign: you prepare a specific document for named signers, each signs their assigned fields, and the outcome is a sealed, tamper-evident PDF with a Certificate of Completion and an audit trail. That's the tool for contracts, leases, NDAs — documents where you may one day need to prove exactly who signed exactly what. The last two sections cover when to switch; everything in between shows how to build the form.
Step 1: Add a Signature field to your form
Create a free account, start a new form, and add the Signature field from the field palette. When someone reaches it, they sign in one of two ways: draw with a finger or mouse, or type their name and get a handwriting-style signature. Either way produces a signature image that is saved with their response.
Toggle the field to required if a response without a signature is worthless to you — respondents then can't submit until they've signed. And place the field at the end of the form, after the terms and the answers it refers to, the same way paper forms put the signature line last.
Step 2: Add the fields that give a signature meaning
A signature image on its own answers almost nothing. Who signed? Agreeing to what? When? A well-built signature form captures all three alongside the mark itself.
Use a Full name field for the printed name (the signature itself is rarely legible), and an Email field so you can reach the person later — and send them a confirmation receipt. Put a text block directly above the signature spelling out exactly what is being agreed to, in the respondent's own view rather than on some page they never saw. Then add a required Checkboxes field with a single option — "I have read and agree to the terms above" — so agreement is an affirmative tick, not an inference. The submission itself carries a timestamp, so "when" is recorded for you. If you also want the respondent to state a date themselves — a date of birth, an event date — add a Date field; the submission timestamp is recorded regardless.
Step 3: Share one link, collect from any device
Publish the form and share its link wherever your people are — email, WhatsApp, a school newsletter, a poster. Nobody needs an account or an app: the form opens in the browser, phones and tablets included, and the signature pad works naturally with a fingertip on a touchscreen.
Responses are unlimited and free, whether you collect twelve signatures or twelve thousand. The per-form settings give you control while collection runs: close the form at a date and time (say, the registration deadline), cap the number of responses, pause and resume manually, get an email as each response arrives, and send each respondent a confirmation receipt if the form collects their email address. You can also customize the thank-you screen people see after signing.
Where the signed responses live
Each submission stores the signature as an image in private storage, attached to the response with its timestamp. On your dashboard, the form's responses table lists every submission; open one to review the answers and the signature image. The answers export to CSV whenever you want the data in a spreadsheet. The analytics page also charts responses per day over the last 30 days, so you can watch signatures roll in against a deadline.
Access is private by default: the public link shows only the blank form, never anyone's answers, and responses are visible only to you — plus any collaborators you explicitly share the document with, under owner, editor or analyst roles.
On the free plan, your public form carries a small "Made with tuyaform" credit; paid plans remove that credit. (They don't remove ads — and third-party ads never run on the page where people fill out your form in any case.)
When send-to-sign is the better tool
A form response records that someone signed; it doesn't produce a signed document. There is no sealed PDF, no Certificate of Completion, and no per-signer audit trail — the signature is an image stored with the answers. For a routine acknowledgment, that's usually all you need. For an agreement someone might later dispute, it isn't.
That's what the send-to-sign flow is for: add named signers to a document — or upload the PDF you already have (PDF only, up to 4 MB) and place fields visually on its pages — and send it out. Signers can sign in sequence or in parallel, you can protect a signer with an access code, and when the last one finishes, every party receives a sealed PDF whose SHA-256 fingerprint makes any later edit provable, plus a Certificate of Completion recording who signed, when, and from where.
The rule of thumb: many people, one link, low dispute risk — use a form with a Signature field. A specific document, named parties, real consequences — send it for signature. The free plan covers both: forms and responses without limits, 30 emailed signature invitations a month, and unlimited signing links you share yourself.
Is a signature collected on a form legally meaningful?
Broadly, electronic signatures are recognized across most of the world — the U.S. ESIGN Act and UETA, and the EU's eIDAS regulation, all say a signature can't be denied legal effect merely because it's electronic. A drawn or typed mark on a form can express intent to agree, especially next to an explicit "I agree" checkbox and terms the respondent actually saw.
What differs between the two flows is evidence, not legality in principle. A form response gives you the signature image, the answers, and a timestamp. The send-to-sign flow adds the artifacts disputes turn on: a tamper-evident sealed PDF, a Certificate of Completion, and an audit trail of who did what and when. Match the tool to the stakes — and for anything with real legal weight, remember this is general information rather than legal advice; our guide on e-signature legality goes deeper into the frameworks.