FreeSign

The Open Source DocuSign Alternative.

Issues

About FreeSign

Signing documents digitally should be fast and easy and should be the best practice for every document signed worldwide. FreeSign is an open-source signing tool you can self-host and audit end-to-end, so trust in your document signing pipeline isn't outsourced to a black-box vendor.

Tech Stack

• TypeScript - Language
• React Router - Framework
• Prisma - ORM
• Tailwind - CSS
• shadcn/ui - Component Library
• react-email - Email Templates
• tRPC - API
• React-PDF - Viewing PDFs
• PDF-Lib - PDF manipulation
• Stripe - Payments

Local Development

Requirements

• Node.js (v22 or above)
• Postgres SQL Database
• Docker (optional)

Developer Quickstart

Note: This assumes that you have both docker and docker-compose installed on your machine.

1. Fork this repository to your GitHub account, then clone it locally:

   git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/freesign

2. Set up your .env file using the recommendations in .env.example. Or just run cp .env.example .env to start with handpicked defaults.

3. Run npm run dx in the root directory to spin up a postgres database and inbucket mailserver in a docker container.

4. Run npm run dev in the root directory.

   Or use the shorthand: npm run d.

Access Points

1. App - http://localhost:3000
2. Incoming Mail Access - http://localhost:9000
3. Database - port 54320
4. S3 Storage Dashboard - http://localhost:9001

Manual Setup

1. Fork and clone the repo, as above.
2. npm i
3. cp .env.example .env
4. Set the required environment variables:
   • NEXTAUTH_SECRET
   • NEXT_PUBLIC_WEBAPP_URL
   • NEXT_PRIVATE_DATABASE_URL
   • NEXT_PRIVATE_DIRECT_DATABASE_URL
   • NEXT_PRIVATE_SMTP_FROM_NAME
   • NEXT_PRIVATE_SMTP_FROM_ADDRESS
5. npm run prisma:migrate-dev
6. npm run translate:compile
7. npm run dev
8. Register a new user at http://localhost:3000/signup.

Optional:

• Seed the database with npm run prisma:seed -w @documenso/prisma to create a test user and document.
• Create your own signing certificate. See SIGNING.md.
• Configure a job provider for document reminders. The default local job provider does not support scheduled jobs. To enable reminders, set NEXT_PRIVATE_JOBS_PROVIDER=inngest and provide NEXT_PRIVATE_INNGEST_EVENT_KEY in your .env.

Docker

A Docker image is published to GitHub Container Registry:

• ghcr.io/freesign-io/freesign

Pull and run with your preferred container hosting provider, providing environment variables for the database, mailserver, and so on. See the Docker README for detailed instructions.

Self-Hosting

Fetch, configure, build

git clone https://github.com/FreeSign-io/freesign.git
cd freesign
cp .env.example .env

The following environment variables must be set:

• NEXTAUTH_SECRET
• NEXT_PUBLIC_WEBAPP_URL
• NEXT_PRIVATE_DATABASE_URL
• NEXT_PRIVATE_DIRECT_DATABASE_URL
• NEXT_PRIVATE_SMTP_FROM_NAME
• NEXT_PRIVATE_SMTP_FROM_ADDRESS

If you run FreeSign behind a reverse proxy, set NEXT_PUBLIC_WEBAPP_URL to the public URL.

Install and build:

npm i
npm run build
npm run prisma:migrate-deploy

Start the server:

cd apps/remix
npm run start

This serves on localhost:3000. Pair with a reverse proxy for SSL termination. To run on another port, use next -p <PORT> from apps/remix.

Run as a systemd service

[Unit]
Description=freesign
After=network.target

[Service]
Environment=PATH=/path/to/your/node/binaries
Type=simple
User=www-data
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/freesign/apps/remix
ExecStart=/usr/bin/next start -p 3500
TimeoutSec=15
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Troubleshooting

I'm not receiving any emails when using the developer quickstart.

The dev quickstart starts an Inbucket server in a docker container that captures all outgoing email locally. Web UI: http://localhost:9000. SMTP port: 2500.

Support IPv6

If you are deploying to a cluster that uses only IPv6, pass -H :: to the start command:

docker run -it freesign:latest npm run start -- -H ::

For k8s or docker-compose:

containers:
  - name: freesign
    image: freesign:latest
    imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
    command:
      - npm
    args:
      - run
      - start
      - --
      - -H
      - '::'

I can't see environment variables in my package scripts.

Wrap the script with with:env:

npm run with:env -- npm run myscript

For npx:

npm run with:env -- npx myscript

This loads variables from your .env and .env.local.

Contributing

See the contribution guide.