Four questions decide most of these evaluations. Answer them before you book demos and the shortlist above collapses to two or three names.
How much of the job is the archive.
If most of your contracts arrive signed from elsewhere and the work is finding them, reading them and not missing a notice period, you need strong extraction, OCR search and reminders. If you also create and negotiate contracts, the drafting side matters as much as the archive.
Where drafting and negotiation happen.
Some platforms draft in Microsoft Word and sync the result back. Others have a browser editor where the counterparty suggests changes directly. Neither is wrong, but the choice decides whether legal keeps working in Word or the whole process moves into one tool.
What the base plan actually includes.
Signing, templates, approvals, the API and AI features are placed differently on every price list. Price the plan that covers your full process, including the add-ons, not the entry package.
Where the data lives.
Every mid-market platform on this list hosts in the EU. For regulated buyers the follow-up questions are whether the vendor itself holds ISO 27001, where AI processing happens, and whether a SOC 2 report is available if your procurement asks for one.
When ContractHero is still the right answer.
Worth saying plainly, since we sell against it. If your main problem is an existing, scattered contract archive that needs structure, deadline control and group-wide permissions, and your legal team drafts in Word anyway, ContractHero fits well. AI extraction, summaries with jump to source and OCR full-text search are on every plan, data is stored and processed in Frankfurt, and the company itself is ISO 27001 certified. It also suits buyers who want a guided onboarding with data migration rather than self-service setup: ContractHero states an average go-live within 20 days, and it holds a 4.9 out of 5 rating from 33 reviews on Capterra.
