US STREET PRICE$2700.00
PROS
Provides nearly unlimited customization through easy-to-use wizards. Has many features available for further automation of business practices. Free level of service available.CONS
Unlimited customization can be daunting.BOTTOM LINE
Agiloft might be the most customizable contract management system we tested. Deployable on-premises or as a cloud service, it's fast, full-featured, and can scale to any workload.
Editors' Choice Agiloft (which is free for up to 10 users) is the most customizable contract management platform we've tested. It is used by customers worldwide for everything from legal and sales contracts to supply chain and medical equipment contracts. Used by non-profits, local governments, and more, Agiloft is defined by complete platform customizability combined with ease of use through detailed Help resources and wizard-based setup experiences.
Since our initial review, Agiloft has re-configured its pricing to be more friendly to small businesses. It has also added more advanced features such as in-table editing, custom Microsoft Excel reporting with pivot tables, and an improved graphical workflow editor to trigger automated actions based on contract record changes. The platform also now supports direct file editing in Microsoft Word without the need to save a local copy of a contract document. Combined with its Agiloft Service Desk suite and the low-code software developmentcapabilities of its Workflow BPM solution (available at no extra cost), Agiloft offers a scalable business platform that goes beyond basic contract management. It offers built-in security, auditability, and advanced customization for the entire contract life cycle. Once again, it is a runaway Editors' Choice for contract management software.
Pricing and Plans
Agiloft offers extremely flexible pricing, which begins with a free plan for up to 10 total users (five staff and five users) but does not limit much of the platform's functionality. Agiloft is available both as a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform and a solution that can be deployed on-premises. The free edition includes access to Agiloft's full file and record management features. These features include customizable tables and data fields, search and audit capabilities, charts and reports, contract authoring and templates, approval workflows, and more.
The $65-per-license per-month Professional plan adds standard email and phone support, timer-based rules automation, and support portal access, though there is still a limit on users. The Professional Unlimited plan (priced at $95 per license per month) is where you get unlimited user access for contract requesters and viewers, access to custom role-based views including employee and vendor portals, and advanced features such as multi-language support and optical character recognition (OCR) for contract and file scanning. Finally, the $120-per-license per-month Enterprise plan adds deeper application programming interface (API) and system integration features. Agiloft also offers discounts for non-profit organizations.
Agiloft offers an "unconditional success guarantee" for all plans, which gives customers a 90-day complete refund on both the software license and implementation services. The main license type offered is Assigned Power User, which is defined as someone who regularly works in the staff interface of the system. Licenses are tied to recency so, if a user is inactive for more than 30 days, that license can be assigned to another user. Agiloft also offers a "Floating Power User" license for managers, contract approvals, or other executives who log in periodically without specifying a user name for the license. Companies can buy a combination of assigned and floating power user licenses depending on their needs. Per-user licensing has its pros and cons depending on your organization's size and user needs. But Agiloft's model gives you more flexibility than the $500-per-month flat fee you'd have to pay for ContractWorks, for example. Overall, Agiloft's pricing matches up very closely with Concord on a per-user basis, though the floating licenses are a plus.
Interface and Core Features
Agiloft customizes each implementation based on individual business needs, so what you see in Agiloft is completely tied to your user role and the particular contract management workflows tailored to your organization. In contrast to a platform such as Coupa Contract Lifecycle Management, which focuses its contract management solely on spend management and procurement scenarios, Agiloft is a blank slate that you can tailor to any business use case.
The vanilla user interface (UI) can come off looking somewhat dated if used without applying any customization. But Agiloft lets you adjust the colors, branding, and layout to your liking or to match your company website. To test the updated platform, I logged into four different portals customized to specific roles. Depending on whether I logged in as an administrator, contract manager, contract approver, or contract user, I saw a different arrangement of available features and fields.
In all of the user-defined dashboards, the first thing you see is a customized dashboard with charts and widgets and a left-hand navigation menu that shows available "tables" of the platform, recently opened records and contracts, and any task you've been assigned. There's also a universal search bar at the top of the UI that can run queries on every contract, file, page, and record in the database. For the purposes of this review, we tested from the perspective of a contract manager, approver, and user from the different customized UIs.
Logging into the contract manager portal, I was immediately given widget-based charts of contracts in progress and upcoming contract expirations and renewals. I was also given a list of records to manage active contracts. A Mail icon next to each contract gave me options to set up notifications or automated actions on a particular contract action or to assign a task to another user. From this page, I could also import and export contracts, check the contract I wanted to mass-edit, etc. As a contract manager, I then had a host of options in the left-hand menu. I was able to view directory lists of all the people and companies associated with contracts inside and outside of my organization, as well as all the contracts in the system with a tree icon. This let me see a relationship diagram of the users and companies associated with that contract. As with Onit Contract Administration and Contract Review & Approval, there are also approval workflows to track contracts, as well as contract types and the ability to create different templates. Agiloft also lets you search by the specific clauses in a contract and search a clause-specific library. To illustrate the difference in user roles, the contract approver portal only showed the basic directory and contract approvals tables without any of the deeper functionality; the contract user wouldn't see the approvals option.
To test how Agiloft handles the contract life cycle, I created a new contract, set up an approval workflow for it, and tracked the contract from inception to signature. When you click the New Contract button, Agiloft opens a detailed window with a dizzying array of options. Each new record gets an ID number by default, and then I had the option to choose whether this record was a contract, subcontract, master agreement, or an amendment to an existing contract. There's also Contract Type, which gives you all of the customized types and templates your business has created to choose from. These types and templates include such a customer service contract, non-disclosure agreement, employment agreement, vendor, and partner contract.
I chose a customer service contract and assigned it to the Internal Customer Team (Agiloft lets you create custom groups, teams, and departments). From there, I configured my PCMag Test Contract to auto-renew every 12 months, and then entered the contract start and end date, amount, and company information associated with the contract. You can get as deep into the details as you want with the contract wizard. This wizard lets you associate attached documents and assets, configure emails and tasks and, of course, set up approval workflows and signatures with a full history and audit trail associated with the record. Associated attachments and assets can even include insurance certificates associated with a company or contract.
Depending on your user permissions, once you're done, a contract manager or admin can save their changes to the contract or click the "Submit for Review" button to send it to the next step in the process. Overall, the contract creation processl felt somewhat overwhelming compared to the more streamlined experiences of platforms such as Concord and ContractWorks. But this is only because Agiloft gives you more granular options and fields than any other solution we tested. The customization ability lets you make the contract management workflow as simple or complex as you wish.
Advanced Workflows, Reports, and Integrations
Agiloft shines when it comes to advanced contract management features and workflow automation. From the admin portal, you can see the full range of functionality contained within the platform should you decide to customize it to that degree. This starts with advanced search and more dynamic native editing capabilities.
The new Quick Search bar defaults to a text search, so you can type in any keyword and Agiloft will scan all the tables in the database along with every document and PDF file in the system using OCR. You can also configure the search drop-down menu to search for specific fields, such as finding every contract that has a Pending status attached to it. Admins choose what fields appear in the search drop-down menu, and you can also save searches for a quick repeat query. If you've searched for a specific record and want to make changes on the fly, then new in-table editing and direct file edit features let you check out and edit a document in Microsoft Word. You can then re-save it when you're done, with a full change log but without the need to save a local copy of the document.
Reporting is also extensive. In the admin interface, each tab in the left-hand menu includes a Charts/Reports option that lets you extract analytics on any aspect of your contract management life cycle. In Tasks, for example, you can see the average time it takes employees to close tasks, or you can break the information down by team or department. Approvals reports can help you identify bottlenecks for pending contracts. Reports run on your entire contract database can help you prioritize based on monetary value, expirations, progress, or a host of other factors. When creating a new report, I could choose from 10 different chart types (line, bar, multiple axes, gauges, pie, funnel, etc.), add date and record filters, add additional formatting and customization, schedule the report to recur on any basis, and email the report to particular users, departments, or teams. The finished charts and reports aren't the prettiest compared to Concord or Coupa Contract Lifecycle Management, but Agiloft offers by far the most advanced report customization we tested.
If you pull in Agiloft's Workflow BPM capabilities (at no extra cost if you have a paid plan), then you can layer powerful workflow automation atop your contract management life cycle. The improved graphical workflow editor gives you an overview of all the states in which a record can be, and all of the transactions taking place within a contract process. From there, it's easy to add actions and triggers into any step of that contract life cycle, triggered by changes in a record. So, if a contract hits 60 days before it's up for renewal, then you can set an email trigger to fire off an email at that step of the workflow.
Finally, Agiloft offers a strong list of integrations and application programming interface (API) access. The platform doesn't offer a proprietary eSigning feature, choosing instead to customize the experience with Adobe Sign and DocuSign integrations depending on the business needs or preferences. Agiloft also offers a built-in integration with Salesforce for salespeople to sync contacts, companies, and contract records directly with your customer relationship management (CRM) system. Agiloft also offers calendar integrations with Apple iCal, Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Exchange, and Rescue by LogMeIn. On the API and security front, Agiloft syncs with OAuth 2 and SAML 2. It also integrates with the LDAP and Active Directory (AD) protocols. If you're subscribed to the Enterprise plan, then you also get access to Agiloft's REST API, web API, Python and Perl scripting, and JSON integration.
Where Customization Meets Simplicity
Agiloft is the most customizable contract management systems on the market. Its wizard-based approach to customization makes it easier to configure than many other systems. It can be ready to go out of the box and its free level of service makes it as feasible for small businesses as it is powerful for large enterprise. Agiloft was already an Editors' Choice tool in the past, and its enhancements to usability, dynamic editing, and workflow automation only strengthen its position atop the contract management space.
