B Evidence Grade B Graded accuracy verified by the review judge Safe to Cite Dated

38%

38% -- share of small businesses relying on paper or pdf email contracts for US small businesses (2023)

Name: Share Of Small Businesses Relying On Paper Or Pdf Email Contracts Statistics
Creator: Lighthouse Intelligence
Published: 2026-09-28

2023 · Adobe

Roughly 38% of US small businesses still rely primarily on paper or PDF-and-email contracts.

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Attribution: Adobe View source

Lighthouse Research Team

Last verified: 2026-09-28 · How we verify data →

Source verified Evidence graded

Value

38%

Unit

Percentage

Data Vintage

2023

Entity

US small businesses

Evidence Quality

Strong, reliable evidence

Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.

61/100 confidence

Single source - not yet corroborated

Score breakdown

Extraction

Source Trust

Citation Chain

Independence

Methodology

Freshness

Source

Adobe Primary Tier B

https://zignt.com/blog/how-to-verify-a-signature-on-pdf ↗

Confidence: 53/100 Vintage: 2023 Channel: Deep Crawl

Source Article

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How to Verify a Signature on PDF in 5 Simple Steps Learn how to verify a signature on PDF documents using free and paid tools. Step-by-step methods for Adobe, online validators, and e-signature platforms. A signed PDF lands in your inbox. The deal is worth $45,000, and the signature at the bottom lo…

Original Research

Adobe · Original study ↗

Methodology

Adobe Small Business Survey, 2023

Methodology documented

Segmentation

Industrymarketing

Cite this stat

Plain Text

US small businesses: 38% share of small businesses relying on paper or pdf email contracts. Source: Adobe (2023). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/us-small-businesses-paper-contracts-2023

HTML Embed

<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/us-small-businesses-paper-contracts-2023" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>38%</strong> -- share of small businesses relying on paper or pdf email contracts for US small businesses<br><small>Source: Adobe (2023) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/us-small-businesses-paper-contracts-2023" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>

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