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Jay-nicer overview of some paperless solutions. I've used Cartavi along with Docusign for over a year and really enjoy having all my documents in one place and its easy to use. Plus Cartavi has a nice fax feature for my clients that don't have scanners. 

Great hands on evaluation and report. Thanks for sharing. Docusign seems to be the most popular based on what I've heard from agents in this area. I still have many people that prefer hands on.

Jay...thanks for the review!  I've used DocuSign for a while now but our MLS is now offering DotLoop for free as part of membership....but given the reviews, I'd rather just keep DocuSign.  I've used DocuSign Ink before too on my iPad.  

I'm an actual user of both Cartavi & Dotloop and would like to point out a few things. It seems that you've judged Dotloop, rather harshly, without really understanding the capability of the system. Cartavi's CEO & founder, Glenn Shimkus, designed his product based on his experience watching his wife chase paperwork with her very successful & productive real estate career. They have a great apps on both iOS & Android & they integrate with your existing Docusign Account. It isn't storage for compliance purposes, and its an agent only product. at the moment. But they are a smart company with a great product and they love feedback. So they are always evolving. 

Dotloop's CEO & Founder Austin Allison actually sold real estate for several years, while he went to Law School. Compliance and usability is at the forefront of their business model, but re: process. I have the Dotloop Broker Dashboard product, and because I provide that as the brokerage - my agents have access to all the forms that i've provided and dotloop has made them fillable...Did you provide Dotloop with your forms for them to convert? Does your Board play nice with them and allow them to access their forms? You can invite as many folks as needed to the Loop, like an attorney, home inspector, mortgage person, as well as the clients, and set document level permissions. You can also send notes thru the system when you send a document set out, so you can provide instructions or view others notes.  

Since Dotloop's concentration is on Compliance - everytime theres a change to the contract - everyone must acknowledge the change, because you always have the latest and most accurate version. I'm not sure why you would, outside of testing purposes, take transactions from dotloop to another transaction mgmt. system, but that would be the only reason why you need to download a PDF. Because there's really no need for dotloop to integrate with another system - and anything other than a PDF would compromise the integrity of the documents. 

As a current client, I am quite aware that Dotloop is working on a dedicated mobile app solution, but its currently accessible thru any web browser on any mobile device - so its lack of an app doesn't make it any "less paperless". Dotloop is more than just an esignature platform - its a full fledged transaction management system with archival storage, so not only can you get your transaction done in the cloud - but Dotloop provides storage for 7 yrs and allows retrieval of those documents should you or your clients need them at a future time.

If your ReMax region did a deal with Dotloop, as implied by your post, isn't it worth a second look? Or at the very least - worth respecting both your brand and your brand associations to not flat out bad mouth any vendor that has chosen to get behind the your brand? 

I encourage anyone considering investing in any third party solution to call each one and find out what kind of support they will provide to you. Cartavi & Dotloop are among the best of the best in the vendor sphere and love feedback.  Best of Luck. 

Jay~ Funny I was on twitter giving "kudos" to dotloop when your post came across my Twitter feed so of course I had to hop over and take a look.  

I have used a few different systems over the years and began with dotloop two years ago when it was introduced into our market. I have watched it grow over that time to get to where it is today and there were some bumps along the way.

Living and working in a military town my clients are away as much as they are here when it comes to signing documents through the process.  Dotloop has made that possible with no hassle at all! I am not sure what you mean about them coming into the loop I send the documents to them and they sign and I am notified. 

I have heard the discussion before about putting an effective date and I know things are done differently in all areas...but here the effective date is when the last person sings and no changes are made. After that there is nothing put on our documents unless both sides initial...so for me that is not a problem.  So where you are you can add after all parties sign and do not need their ok?

I send to all parties on one side at a time and when they are both done that when I get it back so I don't have to go in and assign again..not sure what that means?  And I send directly to the attorney, lender, etc directly from my dotloop account...

I think if it is provided for you for free you should give it another go... Just my opinion, I love dot loop it sure has made being tied to my computer a thing of the past!! 

Disclaimer: I am just an agent that enjoy technology and give it all a try! You have to decide what works best for you!

Hi Jay - great review of the latest paperless solutions for real estate.  I am the office Tech guy and am always searching out new resources to learn.

I have use both Docusign and Dotloop in the past - settling on just Dotloop over the last 2 years.  Athough my past solutions worked - Zipforms for contract entry, Email attachments for delivery, Docusign for signatures (plus apps for mobile), Online Cloud for storage - there were too many places/apps to keep track of.

Now with everything in one place it seems much easier - plus the office uses Dotloop Broker Dashboard to receive/review all my files for compliance.  Not sure of your troubles using Dotloop, especially with inviting others to receive copeis when they are signed - that part works very well for me.

One unique concept the their Version Now technology - where there is only one current live document, that has all the current signatures. It ensures everyone is looking at the same/current version, by accessing it in the Loop.  When any change is made to the contract (even a small date field), everyone's version is updated to reflect that - meaning noone has signed "that" version - hence the re-signing.

I am a little partial to Dotloop since I have seen it evolve into a great all-in-one solution, and I think it is fairly simple to comprehend - I even teach it to our new agents during their orientation.  Not surprisingly some of the larger brokerages (Keller Williams, Exit Realty, and Re/Max) are incorporating DotLoop into their internal systems and using just one standard paperless platform.

If anyone is new to Paperless or eSignates - all this stuff is amazing.  Just last week I modified a contract; eSigned it myself and so did my clients; then had it delivered to the attorney - all from my phone while at a conference - Amazing!

Keep up the great work.

Jay,

Nice writeup. I agree with most of your sentiments here. I've been through the same experience. For someone who prides themeself on the ability to use and master new technologies...I just never 'got' Dotloop. It's a stripped down software that requires the use of all stakeholders in order for it to actually be a useful as a tool to consider a transition to. 

Coming to the document in theory sort of makes sense. The biggest problem I have with this, is that it's only really effective if we get everyone on board. And that process starts with us as agents. I have to be willing to convince myself, my team, our customers, title reps, loan officers, etc that this platform is the 'one' - the holy grail of document storage and e-signature. And I'm sure as hell not going to do that unless it really is.

On the other hand, we have a job to push our real estate vendors in the right direction and tell them what they want. These kinds of posts help make the moves possible. I've been a user of products who 'promised' radical updates before which either never happened or fell flat. I admire what the DotLoop guys are trying to do, but in this case - I'll be on the sidelines until this space revolutionizes itself more and more people adopt these kinds of technologies into their business. Their is NO benefit to being an early adopter here, because our systems (currently Docusign via Cartavi) work really well. There are still many brokern chains in the document delivery and signature chain, and these need to be fixed before we'll ever even consider a platform change.

I have a love/hate relationship with DotLoop. When it works, it works great. When it doesn't work it fails horribly. There are a lot of caveats of DotLoop that are there that shouldn't be there. Probably the most annoying of them are the usage of folders and how the system automatically fills out loop information. 

I've been using DocuSign for a while now, and it has made my life SOOOOOO much easier!!

I am a docusign fan and need to learn dot-loop because its free and the standard in our board now. I have to pay for zipform library and docusign and choose to do so because I am very familiar with it. 

Jay, great post!  I am a dotloop gal from the start of my business and could not imagine changing.  I love the simplicity of the product and my clients like signing on their mobile phones.  My transaction coordinator uses docusign and honestly, I like having two options.  You never know when a site may be down.

Cartavi is now called Docusign Transaction Room. In two adjacent counties the Agents each use different products so I am learning both. 

Use Transaction Desk for our Real Estate Forms and Authentisign for electronic signatures. Once it's time to submit executed Real Estate Forms, I create a loop and I upload them into Dotloop. This is actually much easier than printing them out and turning them in. Plus it saves on paper. We also use dropbox so that everyone on our team has easy access to all the active transactions from their computers, tablets or mobile phones.

you may want to try www.SkySignature.com if you're looking for a free alternative to major online document signing software. It is free for personal use and got some cool features.

I had a terrible experience with Docusign. They billed me for two years and I was never able to get connected with a customer service function to get the billing fixed. They tried to autobill me for the third year. I had to report my credit card as stolen and report the third year as fraud.

It seemed to me that Docusign "farmed out" their billing/collection activity and made no provision for servicing a customer with a problem like mine.

I use Doc-U-Sign and Paperless Pipeline and that's a winning combo for me! Tried Skyslope, terrible system full of kinks, as an alternate to Doc-U-Sign. Big mistake and glad to have gotten back to Doc-U-Sign!

My issue is zillow owns dotloop. Zillow is creating a monoply in our industry and eventually to compete with higher volume agents you will need to pay one of zillows companies either for advertising, now facebook, TC you name is at they monopolize our industry. I hope there is always a different option then a zillow company!

Hopefully NAR's involvment will modify the cost on Docusign and now ZipForms is a basic service included in your membership to the old Cartavi should be a part of this.