PandaDoc Starter vs Business: the 5-template limit and what you give up

PandaDoc’s Starter plan costs $19 per seat per month on annual billing, or $35 monthly, and allows a maximum of five templates across the whole account. Pricing tables, payment collection, CRM integrations, approval workflows, auto reminders and recipient analytics are not on Starter: they start on Business, at $49 per seat per month billed annually or $65 monthly. Starter replaced the Essentials plan in mid-2024, which had no template cap and included pricing tables and payments.

What the PandaDoc Starter plan includes

Starter is PandaDoc’s entry paid plan. According to PandaDoc’s pricing page on 22 October 2026, it includes:

• Unlimited document uploads and e-signatures
• The document editor, with up to 5 templates
• Reusing your own uploaded documents and bulk import
• Themes and embedded videos
• Signing order, inline comments, real-time notifications and an audit trail
• Unlimited storage, folders, tags, search and filters
• eIDAS, ESIGN, GDPR and SOC 2 Type II compliance

The template limit is the part that shapes how teams use the plan. PandaDoc’s help article on templates (updated 21 August 2026) lists availability as “Free eSign (up to 5 templates), Starter (up to 5 templates*), Business, and Enterprise plans”, with the footnote that the five count “across all workspaces within an account”. Business and Enterprise have no template cap.

What Starter does not include

Everything in this table is marked as not available on Starter in PandaDoc’s own plan comparison:

Two rows matter more than they look. Auto reminders means that on Starter, someone has to chase every unsigned document by hand. Data residency in the US or the EU is listed for Enterprise only on the pricing page. PandaDoc’s separate data residency page describes a choice between US and EU servers without naming a plan, so if EU hosting matters, get the plan requirement confirmed before you buy Starter or Business.

How Starter differs from the Essentials plan it replaced

PandaDoc’s entry plan used to be called Essentials. Archived copies of the pricing page show Essentials on 12 June 2024 and Starter in its place on 11 August 2024. The price stayed at $19 per seat per month on annual billing. What the plan includes changed:

So the change cut both ways. Starter dropped the two-seat cap that Essentials had, which matters for a team of three or more, and later gained themes. It lost the template freedom and the quoting features that made the old plan useful for small sales teams sending proposals. Recipient analytics disappeared from Starter later: archived copies show it on Starter in January 2025 and gone by June 2025.

The archive only captures the page on certain days, so these dates show when each version was online, not the exact day it changed. A customer who bought Essentials before the change may still be on its terms; PandaDoc’s help center has no public changelog for the switch.

What moving from Starter to Business costs

Most teams that outgrow Starter do so for one of three reasons: they need a sixth template, a pricing table in a proposal, or a CRM integration. In PandaDoc’s billing settings, the account owner picks one plan and then the number of seats, so in practice each of them means Business for every seat.

These are list prices from PandaDoc’s pricing page and exclude tax. Business also has its own paid add-ons: the Salesforce integration, SSO, team workspaces, bulk send and web forms are marked “optional” there, and documents created through Zapier, the API, Bulk Send, Forms or Automations use usage credits, which we cover in PandaDoc usage credits explained.

How to get the most out of five templates

If Starter fits otherwise, a few habits stretch the limit:

1. Count templates account-wide, not per workspace. The five are shared across all workspaces, so agree internally who owns which slot.
2. Build fewer, broader templates. One service agreement with fields for scope and price goes further than one template per customer type. Conditional sections (smart content) are Enterprise only, so plan for templates that work without them.
3. Send one-off documents from uploads. “Reuse your own documents” is on Starter, so a document that is only sent once does not need a template slot.
4. Check before you build automations. Workflow automation tools such as Zapier, Make and Workato are Business and above. Starter can create documents through the API and PandaDoc’s internal automations, but those are optional and use paid usage credits.

What PandaDoc gets right with Starter

It is fair to say what the plan does well. Starter includes unlimited document uploads and e-signatures from the app, which many entry plans meter. The pricing page lists no seat cap for it, where the Essentials plan before it allowed two seats. The price has not moved since 2024. PandaDoc publishes the plan comparison in detail and documents the template limit in its help center, which is why every number in this article can be checked. And there is a Free plan below Starter for teams that send a handful of documents a month.

For a freelancer or a small team that sends the same three or four agreements and does not need pricing tables or CRM data in them, Starter does the job at a low price.

How fynk handles templates on smaller plans

We created fynk, so weigh this section with that in mind.

fynk does not cap templates on any plan, including Free. Approval workflows are on every plan too. Pricing tables (currently in beta) and the Salesforce and Pipedrive connectors start on Essential, which costs €19 per user per month billed annually, or €29 monthly. The native HubSpot integration, the API and Zapier are on Business, at €39 per user per month billed annually. Every plan includes signatures up to QES, and fynk is hosted in the EU.

If templates are what keeps pushing you towards Business, the PandaDoc alternatives and the fynk vs PandaDoc comparison go through the rest of the decision.

Sources

Checked on 22 October 2026.

1. PandaDoc, Pricing: plan prices and the plan comparison table (Starter and Business columns).
2. PandaDoc Help Center, Save time with a reusable template (updated 21 August 2026): template availability by plan, the five-template cap across workspaces.
3. Internet Archive, earlier versions of the PandaDoc pricing page: 12 June 2024 (Essentials), 11 August 2024 (Starter), 7 January 2025, 12 June 2025, 2 July 2026.
4. fynk, Pricing: plan prices, templates, approval workflows, pricing tables, CRM connectors and signature levels by plan.

Spotted a figure that has moved? Tell us at [email protected] and we will re-check it.

Frequently asked questions

• How many templates does PandaDoc Starter include?

  Five. PandaDoc's help center says there should be a maximum of 5 templates in total across all workspaces within an account. The Free plan has the same cap. Business and Enterprise have no template limit.

• Does PandaDoc Starter include pricing tables?

  No. Pricing tables, payment collection and the product catalog are on Business and Enterprise only. The Essentials plan that Starter replaced in 2024 did include them.

• Does PandaDoc Starter integrate with HubSpot or Salesforce?

  No. CRM integrations start on Business. The Salesforce integration is an optional paid add-on even on Business.

• What is the difference between PandaDoc Starter and Business?

  Business removes the 5-template cap and adds pricing tables, payments, the product catalog, CRM integrations, approval workflows, auto reminders, auto expirations, recipient analytics, custom branding and the content library. It costs $49 per seat per month billed annually, against $19 for Starter.

• How much does PandaDoc Starter cost?

  $19 per seat per month billed annually, or $35 per seat per month on monthly billing, excluding tax. The annual price has been the same since the plan launched in 2024.

• What happened to the PandaDoc Essentials plan?

  Archived copies of PandaDoc's pricing page show Essentials in June 2024 and Starter in its place in August 2024, at the same $19 annual price. Starter dropped the two-seat limit but capped templates at five and removed pricing tables, payments and the product catalog.

• Does PandaDoc Starter send automatic reminders?

  No. Auto reminders are listed for Business and Enterprise only on PandaDoc's pricing page. On Starter, reminders to signers are sent by hand.

• Can I choose EU data residency on PandaDoc Starter?

  PandaDoc's pricing page lists data residency in the US or EU for Enterprise only, not for Free, Starter or Business. Its separate data residency page describes a choice of US or EU servers without naming a plan, so confirm the requirement with PandaDoc before you buy.

• Is there a PandaDoc alternative without a template limit?

  fynk, which publishes this article, has no template cap on any plan, including Free. Pricing tables and Salesforce or Pipedrive connectors start on Essential at €19 per user per month billed annually. fynk does not offer payment collection or a product catalog.