Bulk Send vs. Individual Send: Choosing the Best eSignature Workflow

Every organization sending out documents for signature faces a key decision: send each document individually or send them in bulk. 

Both Bulk Send and Individual Send are viable eSignature workflows, but they serve different needs. Choosing the best approach can streamline your process, save time, and ensure a smooth signing experience for everyone involved. 

In this article, we’ll break down Bulk Send vs. Individual Send for electronic signatures, explore their benefits, and show how Blueink’s eSignature platform supports both methods for maximum flexibility.

Why Your eSignature Workflow Matters

Sending documents for eSignature is now a routine part of doing business. But how you send them can make a huge difference in efficiency and user experience. 

If you’ve ever felt bogged down sending contracts one by one or worried that mass-sending a form might sacrifice a personal touch, you’re not alone. The good news is you don’t have to choose one-size-fits-all—you can tailor your approach. 

By understanding when to use Bulk Send versus Individual Send, you can optimize your document distribution workflow for speed, accuracy, and scale. Whether you’re a small HR team sending a single offer letter or a large enterprise distributing thousands of forms, the right workflow ensures documents get signed quickly and correctly. 

Let’s define each method and dive into their advantages.

What is Bulk Send?

Bulk Send is the ability to send the same document (or set of documents) to a large number of recipients all at once. Instead of repeating the send process for each signer, you prepare one master template and deliver it to hundreds or even thousands of people in one go.

Key Benefits of Bulk Send

• Time and Efficiency Gains: Bulk Send eliminates the tedious, one-by-one sending process. Your team no longer needs to create separate envelopes or emails for each signer. With a few clicks, you can dispatch a document to everyone on your list, significantly reducing repetitive admin work and saves time
• Consistency and Accuracy: When you send in bulk, every recipient gets the same, standardized version of the document. This ensures uniform messaging and reduces the chance of errors or someone receiving the wrong version.
• Scalability for Large Audiences: Bulk workflows shine when you have a large  volume of documents or recipients. For instance, if an HR team is onboarding dozens of employees at once or updating contracts for an entire department, Bulk Send can handle it seamlessly.
• Automation with Templates and Data: Using Bulk Send in Blueink, you can upload a list of recipients and automatically populate each document with each signer’s personal data. You can even set up pre-configured bulk send templates to automate routing and workflow rules for these envelopes.
• Scheduling and Tracking: Advanced bulk send tools let you schedule batches for later and track them collectively. This oversight is invaluable when managing large campaigns of documents.

What is Individual Send?

Individual Send refers to the traditional way of sending documents for eSignature: preparing and sending each document to a specific signer or set of signers, one at a time. 

This is a sender-driven, point-to-point workflow—you select the recipient(s), add fields to the document, and send it out, then repeat for the next document.

Key Benefits of Individual Send

• Personalization for Each Document: Individual sending gives you the maximum ability to tailor each document and message for the recipient. You can customize terms, add unique fields, or include a personalized note for that signer.
• Greater Control and Attention: Because you handle documents one by one, there’s less risk of mixing up information. This focused approach can be crucial for high-stakes agreements. 
• Simplicity for Low Volume: If you only have a few documents to send, doing them individually might be simplest. There’s no need to prepare a spreadsheet or import data. You just upload the document in your eSignature tool, tag the signer, and send. 
• Ad-hoc Flexibility: Individual Send is great for unique or irregular workflows. These situations don’t require a bulk process—they require flexibility and on-the-fly preparation, which individual sending provides.
• Wider Accessibility: In Blueink, the Bulk Send feature is typically restricted to certain plan levels or administrator roles, whereas individual sending is available to all users for everyday transactions. This means any team member can quickly send out a contract or form on a case-by-case basis.

When to Use Bulk Send vs. When to Use Individual Send

Choosing between Bulk Send and Individual Send often comes down to the context of what you’re sending. Here are some specific scenarios for when each method makes the most sense:

When to Use Bulk Send

• High-Volume Signings: If you have a large number of people who all need to sign an identical document, Bulk Send is your best friend. For example, an HR department rolling out updated PTO policy forms to 300 employees at once, or a school sending permission slips to all parents for an upcoming event, can do it in one bulk action instead of 300 individual emails.
• Routine Forms and Agreements: Many industries deal with standardized documents that go out regularly. Think of a healthcare provider obtaining annual HIPAA acknowledgments from every patient or a government agency collecting e-signatures on a community survey or registration form from thousands of residents. Bulk Send streamlines these routine, repetitive workflows by automating the document distribution.
• Batch Onboarding or Enrollment: Anytime there’s a batch of people joining or starting something simultaneously, Bulk Send is ideal. This could be a university sending enrollment packets to all incoming students or a staffing agency sending contract agreements to dozens of new hires at multiple client companies.
• Company-Wide or Department-Wide Signatures: If a document like an updated handbook, compliance form, or benefit election form needs to be signed by everyone in the company or an entire department, it’s far more efficient to send it in bulk. Bulk Send ensures everyone gets the document at roughly the same time, and you can track who has signed and who hasn’t without manually cross-checking hundreds of individual envelopes.

When to Use Individual Send

• Personalized Contracts & Deals: If you’re sending a contract that has been tailored to a specific client or partner, you’ll want to send that individually. This way you can double-check all details and perhaps even communicate one-on-one with the signer. For instance, a sales manager might use individual send for each client proposal to customize pricing or terms.
• One-Off or Infrequent Documents: Small businesses or teams sometimes only send documents occasionally, like a single freelancer agreement or a lone NDA. In these cases, setting up a bulk process is overkill. It’s faster to just use individual send on the fly. 
• Sensitive or High-Importance Signers: Perhaps a document is going to a high-profile signer or contains highly sensitive info (e.g., a CEO’s contract). You might prefer an individual approach for extra care and perhaps enhanced security options on that one envelope. You can utilize Blueink’s features like signer authentication (e.g., SMS PIN, ID check, etc.) on an individual envelope basis to ensure security, giving that envelope special attention.
• Unique Forms or Non-Standard Documents: Not every document you send is boilerplate. If each document requires some editing or unique content, it doesn’t lend itself to bulk sending. For example, a legal department preparing custom settlement agreements will handle each case separately. Or an operations manager might have different instructions per vendor contract. Individual Send handles these unique cases gracefully, since you prepare each envelope from the ground up.
• Small Recipient Lists: If you only need, say, 2 or 3 people to sign a document (and it’s not a recurring scenario), individual send is usually simplest. For example, if you’re in finance and need the CFO and one manager to sign off on a single audit report, you just address that envelope to those two specific individuals. No need for bulk—it’s a targeted send.

How Blueink Supports Both Workflows

As a modern electronic signature software platform, Blueink offers robust support for both bulk sending and individual sending:

• Bulk Send Feature: Blueink’s built-in Bulk Send feature allows you to easily send one envelope or thousands at a time. You can upload a CSV of recipients, automatically populate each document with the right data, and send out a batch in minutes. The platform will monitor each signer’s progress and even handle reminders, so managing large-scale signings becomes effortless.
• User-Friendly Individual Sending: For one-off or day-to-day document sends, Blueink’s intuitive dashboard makes it simple to prepare and send documents individually. Every envelope benefits from Blueink’s core features like real-time tracking, audit trails, and secure authentication options, whether you send one document or one thousand.
• Teams & Permission Control: If your organization has multiple departments or groups using eSignatures, Blueink’s Teams feature helps manage both bulk and individual workflows in a structured way. You can create segmented workspaces for different departments and set role-based permissions. 
• SmartLink Forms (Self-Service Signing): Blueink goes beyond sender-driven workflows with SmartLink Forms, which allow a hybrid approach. SmartLink Forms let you post a signing link on a website or send it out so that signers can initiate the signing themselves at their convenience. This is perfect for high-volume scenarios where you don’t even know exactly who needs to sign.
• API and Integrations: For organizations looking to fully automate their eSignature workflows (be it bulk or individual), Blueink offers a full-featured API. This allows your IT team or developers to integrate Blueink’s sending capabilities directly into your other systems. For example, you could have your CRM trigger individual signature requests when a deal closes or have your HRIS system automatically bulk send annual policy sign-offs to all employees.

In essence, Blueink provides the tools for both scenarios. The platform doesn’t force you into one way of sending. It empowers you to choose the best workflow for the task at hand. By supporting both methods, Blueink ensures that your eSignature process is always optimized, regardless of scale.

Optimize Your Workflow with Blueink

Choosing between Bulk Send and Individual Send comes down to understanding your document workflow and picking the method that best fits each task. 

Often, the optimal approach is a blend of both—using Bulk Send for efficiency when distributing standard documents en masse and using Individual Send for precision when handling unique or critical documents. By aligning the method with the need, you’ll streamline your operations, impress your signers, and save your team countless hours.

The best part is you don’t have to juggle multiple tools to achieve this. Blueink streamlines document workflows for every industry by supporting both bulk and individual sending in one easy-to-use platform. 

From bulk sendouts of forms to one-on-one signature requests, Blueink has the features and flexibility to adapt to your organization’s needs. 

Ready to modernize your signing process? 

Whether you need to send 1 or 1,000 documents, Blueink provides a scalable eSignature solution that grows with you. Explore Blueink’s flexible electronic signature software and see how it can transform both your high-volume document distribution and your individual signature requests. 

Get started today and experience the convenience of sending documents your way, all under one platform. Sign up for a free trial.