As of June 2026. This post describes the start of early access. We have since made some statements on encryption and storage location more precise. You can find the current status on the product page.
Teaser: We are building ratum — an e-signature solution for SMEs that doesn’t fleece you on price, encrypts and decentrally archives documents, and is designed for GDPR compliance. The landing page is live and early access is open. Here is what we are building and why.
The Problem
E-signing is a commodity — the pricing is not. Established providers sell annual subscriptions with user tiers that are absurd for an SME processing ten contracts a month. You pay for “seats”, not for signatures.
Our Approach — Three Things We Do Differently
- Fair pricing, pay-as-you-go. CHF 0.50 per signature, capped at CHF 15/month. No compulsory subscription, no seat pricing. 3 documents/month free, 7-day trial.
- Encrypted & decentrally archived. Completed signed documents are encrypted before archiving (envelope encryption) and stored on IPFS. The archive contains only encrypted data, and tampering can be detected via the CID and integrity hash in the audit trail. Encryption happens server-side; it is not end-to-end encryption.
- Designed for GDPR, data in the EU. The application and database run in Frankfurt (Fly.io, EU region), plus cookie-free analytics. The encrypted IPFS archive may also be replicated outside the EU. We address the “right to erasure” via crypto-shredding — destroy the key, and the data becomes unreadable, even on immutable storage.
Current Status (Build in Public)
Live: landing page at ratum.ch, early access sign-up, backend + EU database on Fly.io. In progress: auth, signature workflow, audit trail, billing. We are building in the open and documenting architectural decisions (ADRs) along the way.
Get Involved
Sign up for early access at ratum.ch — the first users will help shape the roadmap.