It’s the land vs. the land down under. Secured Signings (out of New Zealand) vs. BlueNotary (out of Chicago) in a showdown of who has the best Remote Online Notarization Platform.
You might have stumbled across this article while looking for a “notary near me“. Well look no further, we’ve got two platforms that do the job. Now let’s waste no time and get to the RON Platform comparison.
For General Signers
This category is a one platform race as only BlueNotary offers the ability for anybody to come in and get their documents notarized in 10 minutes or less.
Point goes to: BlueNotary
One-Time Notarization
BlueNotary charges $25 for a one time notarization which it turns around and gives right to the person who signed the document. There’s an extra $8 dollar fee is you need an extra seal which is pretty rare for General Notary Work.
Secured Signings has no offering of this nature if you are just a random person googling “where can I get something notarized” or “what does notarized mean?“
Point goes to: BlueNotary
For Notaries
The User Experience
Secured Signings is probably a step up from the last platform that was compared to BlueNotary, but their software is still archaic and not of this decade. What we mean by this, is it’s going to take you MANY more clicks in order to accomplish the same tasks that you can with BlueNotary. It is probably close to double when it comes down to it.
They also do not make it as easy on new signers by offering seemingly lots of different options when conducting a notarization session. BlueNotary offers the same options, we just condense them to make it easier on the client and notary. Nobody likes to be overwhelmed with choices.
Here are some examples of Secured Signing’s dated user experience:
- When looking at an individual PDF, Secured Signings requires you to click through every single page of the file, you cannot just scroll.
- When uploading PDF’s you need to specify if you are uploading one or multiple for some reason.
- They have no drag and drop function for uploading files.
- You are required to type the signers name in separate boxes instead of just writing their full name in one box.
- You have to manually input your Notary Journal (BlueNotary just pulls the info from the session and generates it for you).
- They even have a redundant invitation check screen to work through before you can invite signers. BlueNotary has worked out a system where this isn’t necessary and it’s still just as accurate.
As you can see, all these clicks can really add up. You don’t want to be wasting time filling out forms. You want to be spending time sourcing more clients!
BlueNotary’s platform started design in the year 2022 and it shows. This means it was designed with the modern professionals and users in mind. BN doesn’t like their time being wasted, so they certainly don’t spend their time building a RON platform that wastes yours.
Point goes to: BlueNotary, for modernity, reliability and time saved.
Free Plans
BlueNotary touts the best FREE plan for notaries on the market. You make $22 per GNW notarization and you are allowed to do as many as you like.
Secured Signing doesn’t have a free plan available for their notaries.
Point goes to: BlueNotary
Professional Plans for Notaries
BlueNotary offers the best deal on the market for independent notaries desiring to build their own businesses (just $27/month). In addition to being able to use BlueNotary sourced clients through their Open Call program, they offer the option for notaries to “Bill their clients outside BlueNotary”. They can do this at a small cost of $3 for GNW work and $25 for Loan Signings and you can do as many as you want.
This means you can source clients locally and charge them $30 for GNW work and put $27 in your pocket. For Loan Signings, which you can charge $150-200 for if you are a well trained and professional signing agent, this means you can put $125-175 in your pocket per loan signing session. All done online. No more back pain from driving across your area and you get to dodge rising gas prices.
Secured Signing, operates on a pay as you go system that is less than straightforward. They tout $9.95/month for individuals to sign up, but you’re going to be paying for every transaction. Roger Castile, the SVP of Sales at Secured Signings says that the average transaction ends up costing $11 per transaction.
Below you will find a full breakdown of the costs of their signings. It’s important to note that only the first 10 documents of each month are free. Afterwards, it will cost an additional $1.50 per document. And again, similar to DocVerify, it seems they work on some sort of credit system. They do cap out at $50 as a max fee charged to the notary per transaction.
Secured Signing does recognize the confusing nature of their platform so they do provide a calculator on their site to help you wrap your head around it and get your pricing straight for you clients. The more clients within a session the higher your price is going to be.
But to break it down in simple terms, let’s do some math:
BlueNotary: $27 membership + 3 GNW signings ($2 each if billed outside BN) will cost you $33 dollars, and you get to profit the difference you charge from your clients.
Secured Signings: $9.95 + 3 GNW signings ($11.50 each) will cost you $44.45 and you will be stuck paying $11.50 per document as you keep going.
The choice to save money, time, and impress your clients is up to you.
Point goes to: BlueNotary
For Businesses
This is going to be pretty similar to the above for Individual Notary section.
Secured Signings does allow you to add up to 10 notary seats to your table if you are a title company, law firm, or business that wants to use your own notaries at a price of $9.95 per notary. They still only charge $9.95 to startup, but your costs will continue to increase with volume and you will have to supply your own notaries and witnesses.
BlueNotary’s Business plans start at just $7/month (the price of a netflix subscription) and go up to $147/month. At $147/month, you are given an admin account to manage 3 of your own notaries and you are also given 7 built in notarizations off the rip. Afterwards notarizations cost a flat rate of $13 per. You can see BlueNotary’s full Business Fee Schedule for further details.
Point goes to: Both. We give credit to Secured Signings for keeping their price low, but we have had feedback from clients who came to us because they were unable to get done what they needed to consistently with Secured Signings.
Enterprise Plans
Secured Signings asks that you reach out if you are interested in their higher volume plans.
BlueNotary has some open transparent deals for Title Companies and Title Agents seeking notarization services, but is also open to negotiations if you have the volume to match.
Point goes to: Both. You’ll just have to reach out to see what’s behind the curtain 😉
The Summary
BlueNotary is a platform for the future made in the present with constant updates and improvements per customer requests. Secured Signings requires boatloads of clicks to get through a session and doesn’t seem to have been updated in years.
You get what you pay for, and although they offer some low rates, we all know what its like to purchase a cheap product that breaks on you just when you need it most, be it your headphones or your software. Just do your research and make sure you know what you are diving into.
Both platforms are relatively affordable to join up and get your feet wet and make an educated decision for yourself. If you’re a serious company, you want to work with the best. To start doing some hands-on research you can sign up for BlueNotary Solutions Program expeditiously.