Lifted Sign is a self-hostable, ESIGN/UETA-compliant electronic-signature server. It runs on nothing but SQLite, seals completed documents with real PAdES certificates, and ships a developer API — so you can send legally-binding documents without handing your contracts to a third party. Read the code, self-host it under AGPL, or let us run it.
Most e-signature comes as a subscription that keeps your signed contracts on someone else's servers. Lifted Sign inverts that. It's a small, auditable, open-source server you can stand up on a single box and own end-to-end — the documents, the audit trail, and the deployment.
Under the hood it does the hard parts properly. Every envelope opens with an explicit intent-to-sign consent gate, as ESIGN and UETA require. When a signer finishes, Lifted Sign produces a PAdES-sealed, tamper-evident PDF and a Certificate of Completion that captures signer identities, timestamps, IP addresses, and the consent record — the evidence you'd actually want if a signature were ever challenged.
It's written in Python and runs on SQLite by default, so there's no database to provision before your first signature. A developer API and SDKs let you drive the whole flow — create a document, add signers and fields, send, and collect the sealed result — from your own application.
When a signature is legal evidence, "trust us" isn't good enough. The entire consent, sealing, and certificate pipeline is open to inspection — your security team can verify exactly how a document is bound.
Self-host and your executed contracts never leave your infrastructure — a real requirement for regulated, healthcare, legal, and government workloads that can't ship documents to a third-party cloud.
Commercial e-signature meters every envelope. Under AGPL you run it yourself with no per-signature pricing — and when you'd rather not, the managed cloud is there as an option, not a requirement.
Clone the repo, set a signing secret, and start the server. SQLite means there's nothing else to install.
Grab the source from GitHub.
Lifted Sign fails closed without a secret — export one, then start it. No database service required.
Open the app, upload a PDF, place fields, add signers, and send — or drive the same flow from the developer API.
# 1 — clone the open-source server git clone https://github.com/LiftedHoldings/lifted-sign.git cd lifted-sign # 2 — set a signing secret and start it (SQLite by default) export SIGN_SECRET=$(python -c "import secrets;print(secrets.token_urlsafe(48))") python -m lifted_sign # 3 — open http://localhost:8080, upload a PDF, add signers, send. # completion produces a PAdES-sealed PDF + Certificate of Completion.
Commands are illustrative — the repository README is the source of truth for exact run steps, SDKs, and configuration.
An explicit intent-to-sign gate on every envelope, and a Certificate of Completion recording identities, timestamps, IPs, and consent.
Completed documents are sealed as tamper-evident PDFs — alter a byte and the seal breaks, so a finished contract is provably unchanged.
Runs on a single file. No Postgres to stand up, no managed database bill — provision it when you scale, not to send signature one.
Create documents, place fields, add signers, send, and pull the sealed result programmatically — embed signing directly in your product.
A clean, mobile-friendly signing page for the people who actually sign — no account required for a recipient to complete a document.
Run it yourself under AGPL, or use the managed cloud at sign.liftedholdings.com — free during beta — with the same engine underneath.
Hosted tools like DocuSign and Dropbox Sign are excellent products. Lifted Sign is for teams who need to own the deployment, the data, and the code.
| Capability | Lifted Sign | Typical hosted e-signature SaaS |
|---|---|---|
| Self-host on your own servers | Yes — you run it | No — vendor cloud only |
| Source code you can read & modify | Yes — AGPL-3.0 | Closed source |
| Default database | SQLite — nothing to run | Managed vendor database |
| ESIGN / UETA consent + certificate | Yes | Yes |
| Tamper-evident sealed PDF | PAdES | Varies by plan |
| Per-envelope pricing when self-hosted | None | Metered per envelope |
| Managed option available | Yes — sign.liftedholdings.com | Yes |
Yes. Lifted Sign is an open-source e-signature server you can run on your own infrastructure. It captures legally-binding signatures under the U.S. ESIGN Act and UETA, with an explicit consent gate and a Certificate of Completion — the same class of audit trail commercial tools like DocuSign or Dropbox Sign produce, but you own the deployment and the data.
Lifted Sign is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0). You can read, self-host, and modify it freely; the AGPL requires that network-served modifications be shared back under the same license.
None to start. Lifted Sign runs on SQLite by default, so a single server or container is enough to send and complete envelopes. There is no separate database service to provision, back up, or scale before your first signature.
Signatures are designed to be legally binding under ESIGN and UETA. Each envelope records an explicit intent-to-sign consent, and completion produces a PAdES-sealed, tamper-evident PDF plus a Certificate of Completion capturing signer identities, timestamps, IP addresses, and consent records.
Both. You can self-host the open-source server under AGPL, or use the managed Lifted Sign cloud at sign.liftedholdings.com — free during beta — if you would rather not run infrastructure.
Clone it from GitHub and self-host under AGPL, or open the managed app and send your first document in minutes.