Clear
When Per-Envelope Pricing Doesn't Scale
Hawaii has 85,000 cesspools that need to be converted to septic tanks. The upfront cost for homeowners ranges from $30,000 to $60,000, which most people simply can't afford. Clear solves this with 25-year lease agreements that let customers pay a small monthly amount instead.
These aren't simple contracts. Each lease agreement contains over 107 data points and needs to be generated dynamically from Clear's Salesforce CRM, signed by multiple parties, and tracked through a multi-month permitting and installation process.
Paul Jolley, Clear's enterprise architect, had built e-signature integrations before. On the solar side of the business, they used DocuSign at roughly $1.50 per envelope. At 20,000 envelopes per month, that added up fast. For a startup tackling a new market, those economics didn't work.
I've implemented e-sign on my own a few times with different companies and I've always wanted something like this. I didn't really understand why people were charging so much for e-signatures.
— Paul Jolley, Enterprise Architect, Clear
Built Fast, Runs Itself
Paul found Firma.dev and had test agreements running within a day. Even the full lease agreement, with all 107 data points populated dynamically through the API, took only about a day and a half to implement.
The integration connects Firma.dev's API directly to Salesforce, so lease agreements are generated and sent for signing automatically as customers move through Clear's pipeline. No manual document prep, no copy-pasting data between systems. Paul compared the billing model to Twilio: straightforward per-envelope pricing with no surprises.
It only took me within a day to have test agreements going. The complex lease agreement with over 107 data points took about a day and a half.
— Paul Jolley, Enterprise Architect, Clear
97% Less Per Envelope, 100% More Speed
Clear went from paying $1.50 per envelope with DocuSign to $0.029 with Firma.dev. That's a 97% reduction in per-envelope cost. Paul estimates the switch will save Clear between $5,000 and $10,000 over the next year, and those savings scale as the company grows from 25 customers in the pipeline to the thousands of lease agreements they're planning annually.
Beyond cost, the biggest win has been speed. Clear can now rapidly generate and send contracts for signing, which is critical for a startup that needs to move fast. The API-first approach means everything ties into their existing Salesforce workflow without friction.
I love the API-first approach. The billing's straightforward. It's kind of like Twilio: you just charge cents per envelope, which is great.
— Paul Jolley, Enterprise Architect, Clear
Comparison
DocuSign
Firma.dev
Per envelope cost
€1.50
€0.029
Integration time
Weeks
1 day
Contract minimums
Yes
None
API-first
No
Yes
Complex template (107 fields)
Multiple sessions
1.5 days
