Self-fill vs. send for signature: which one your document actually needs

Self-fill: when you're the only signer

If you're signing your own document — a form for your own records, a template you're completing for yourself — upload it, place your fields, fill them in, and download the signed PDF. There's no recipient to add and nothing to send; the whole flow stays on one screen.

This is the simpler, original mode, and it's the right default whenever the document doesn't actually involve a second party's signature.

Send for signature: when someone else needs to sign

The moment a document needs another person's actual signature — a contract the other party has to agree to, an offer letter someone else accepts — self-fill stops being sufficient, because you can't legitimately supply another person's signature yourself.

Adding a recipient switches the document into the send flow: fields get assigned to specific people, and each person gets their own link rather than the document being editable by whoever has the URL.

What changes once a document has recipients

A self-fill document has no status beyond draft and completed. A sent document tracks each recipient's state — pending, viewed, signed, declined — and only assembles into a final, certificate-bearing copy once every recipient has actually signed.

This is worth knowing before you start: adding even one recipient to a document changes it from something you finish immediately to something that waits on someone else's action, which affects how you should plan around it.

Mixed cases: you sign too, alongside someone else

A document you both need to sign — you and a vendor, for instance — still goes through the send flow, with you added as one of the recipients rather than using self-fill for your half and sending the rest. That keeps a single, consistent record of who signed what and when, instead of splitting the same document across two different mechanisms.

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