Ironclad vs Agiloft: Choose the Right CLM in 2026

The choice this search is asking you to make

A contract lifecycle management system is software that stores agreements and runs the path from request through signature, renewal, and the obligations that follow. You searched Ironclad vs Agiloft because a vendor panel, a litigation matter, or a commercial backlog is forcing a pick, and a shared drive plus email redlines is no longer enough. Both products are still on sale. Neither has been renamed away or shut down. The decision is which system of record should hold the agreement, who signs it, and how a finished contract gets into the matter or finance file a person already trusts.

TL;DR: request both quotes, then choose Ironclad when you want a cloud workflow product with a published clause-detection catalog and a separate eSignature line on the order form. Choose Agiloft when you need a configurable platform, are willing to sign through DocuSign or Adobe Sign, and may need a deployment model other than cloud-only. Neither vendor publishes a rate card. Treat every dollar figure you hear on a sales call as unconfirmed until it is on the order form.

Ironclad editor score: 8.9/10 according to iTechGuides (2026), which scores Agiloft at 8.7/10, ranks them #5 and #7 in its contract-management list, and marks pricing on request for both. That site also says vendors can pay for placement, so treat the scores as an editor rubric with a commercial disclosure, not as a lab test of your docket.

Key Takeaways

• Ironclad and Agiloft both still sell contract lifecycle management, and both hide the price behind a quote. Pricing checked October 13, 2026.

• Agiloft was founded as Integral Solutions Corporation and renamed in 2012. A KKR fund took a majority stake in May 2024, and Agiloft bought the Screens review product on January 14, 2025. Ironclad's current product descriptions took effect September 2, 2026.

• Ironclad publishes hard AI-use caps after year one, including 50,000 Smart Import runs a quarter and 30,000 Extract Metadata runs in 30 days. Agiloft's public pages do not publish matching numeric caps.

• Agiloft's own site says e-signature is ready with DocuSign and Adobe Sign. Ironclad sells an eSignature product and also lists DocuSign, Adobe Acrobat Sign, and Dropbox Sign as providers its CLM subscription may include.

• A Forrester study Ironclad commissioned in 2023 reports a 314% three-year ROI for a composite organization. That is not your forecast. Ask both vendors for a written split of license, implementation, connectors, and AI use.

• The CLM is the agreement system. A litigation docket, outside-counsel bill, and hold notice still live next to it. The handoff is a separate design with a human review before dates and values move.

Who this is for

This comparison is for a litigation lead or a contracts lead who will request quotes in this buying cycle and must defend the pick to finance and to the lawyers who touch third-party paper. You are deciding where NDAs, engagement letters, vendor panels, settlements, and commercial agreements should be requested, reviewed, signed, stored, and watched for renewal. You already know a folder of Word files fails audit, and you want the public facts before a salesperson sets the agenda.

Red flags: you only need a shared inbox and a signature link for a handful of templates; nobody on the team will own workflow changes after go-live; you require a public per-seat price before any sales conversation.

If those flags match you, stop the CLM evaluation. A signature tool you already pay for, plus a written playbook in the document, will carry the work with less admin. If you are comparing systems because obligations fall through after signature, keep reading. That gap is where the two products differ, and where a layer above either system has to be designed on purpose.

How we evaluated these tools

We weighted the choice for a person who is close to buying, not for a general software tour. The weights below are our buying criteria for this reader. They are not vendor scores, and they are not the iTechGuides rubric. A higher weight means the point should move the decision if the two quotes are otherwise close. Each factor is scored from 1 to 5 only after you have the order form and a sandbox, because public pages do not support a numeric product grade.

Third-party paper is tied for the top weight because litigation and commercial teams rarely live on their own templates alone. Counterparties send paper, and the review path has to show the fallback position and the person who approved a deviation. Repository and obligations share that weight because a signed file that nobody watches becomes the next dispute. AI review is next, and only when a person can see the clause the model flagged and override it. Signature ownership matters because a "sign" step that quietly requires a second vendor changes the quote and the evidence trail. The API weight covers the moment the executed agreement must create a task somewhere else. Deployment is real for teams with a hosting standard, and it is lower only because many legal teams can accept cloud if the admin model is clear. Price transparency is last in weight because both vendors withhold list prices. It still belongs on the score sheet so a vague bundle cannot win on a verbal discount.

We did not run the products, and we did not invent a head-to-head score. Public pages, vendor product descriptions, and independent write-ups are the record. Where a number exists, it is cited on the line. Where a price does not exist, the cell says Quote-based.

What is actually for sale in October 2026

Ironclad's FY2026 product descriptions, effective September 2, 2026, still describe CLM services reached through its application, plus an assistant, workflow design, a repository, and AI features that sit under a separate AI credit policy. Nothing on the pages opened for this guide says Ironclad was acquired, renamed, or withdrawn. Treat it as a current cloud contracting suite, and confirm the modules on the order form rather than on a blog recap.

Agiloft was founded on October 12, 1990 as Integral Solutions Corporation, and the business and software were renamed Agiloft in 2012, according to Wikipedia (2026). A KKR fund acquired a majority stake in May 2024, the company reported more than 600 customers as of 2020, and the same article describes a February 2025 AI update plus a December 2025 obligation-management feature, according to Wikipedia (2026). The product name Agiloft is still the CLM. Astra, shown on the current homepage, is a separate contracts AI product. Do not let a demo of Astra stand in for the CLM quote.

Agiloft acquired Screens on January 14, 2025, and the announcement says Screens stays available on its own while also being built into the platform. Implementation success: 99.6% according to Agiloft (2025), in the company description on that announcement. That label is not the same as the retention figure below. Ask which metric would be written into your statement of work.

Retention rate: 96% according to Agiloft (2026), on a customer page that also says RUSH University Medical Center reduced off-process vendor payments by 80%. Those are Agiloft's published figures, including one named customer story. They are not a result this guide measured, and this 96% retention figure should not be swapped with the 99.6% success-rate line.

iTechGuides records a deployment difference you should verify in writing. Cloud-only listing: 1 platform according to iTechGuides (2026), which marks Ironclad as cloud and Agiloft as cloud and self-hosted, and lists 8,000+ integrations for Ironclad beside 1,000+ for Agiloft. Agiloft's own site supports the 1,000+ connector claim, including Salesforce, SAP, and Oracle. The 8,000+ figure is iTechGuides' listing. Ask Ironclad to name the connectors in your stack rather than accepting the directory total.

Public feature matrix

The matrix records claims a buyer can check on a public page. Fit comments come after the table, in prose, so the grid stays a fact sheet.

Read the signature row before anything else if your evidence file must show who sent the envelope. Ironclad can put signing inside its own product or hand it to DocuSign, Adobe Acrobat Sign, or Dropbox Sign. Agiloft's public wording points at DocuSign and Adobe Sign. iTechGuides reaches the same conclusion and says Agiloft's electronic signing relies on those integrations. Budget the signature vendor inside the Agiloft quote even when the demo looks complete.

Read the AI row as a review design, not as a promise that lawyers leave the process. Ironclad's playbooks use clause detection and your rules, and the product description says suggested values depend on document quality and human review. Agiloft's Screens deal is a playbook that marks passages against standards you or a community author defined. A litigation lead should ask to see one hostile third-party draft run through each playbook, with the fallback language and the audit of who accepted a fail.

The connector counts are not interchangeable. Agiloft stating 1,000+ and a directory stating 8,000+ for Ironclad does not tell you whether your matter system, billing system, or records hold is in either catalog. Make the short list of systems a required exhibit to the quote.

What the quotes do and do not show

Pricing checked October 13, 2026. Ironclad's pricing page offers a tailored quote shaped by products, users, workflows, and growth. You pick among contract lifecycle management, an AI assistant, and eSignature, then choose who leads deployment and which extras you add. The page says some integrations are included and some are add-ons. It does not print a dollar rate. Agiloft's pricing page is a request for pricing. It does not print a dollar rate either. Both lines below are Quote-based because that is all the vendor pages show.

Three-year ROI: 314% according to Ironclad (2023), from a Total Economic Impact study Ironclad commissioned from Forrester Consulting. The page says the composite result also included a 65% lift in end-to-end contract efficiency, a 60% lift in operational efficiency for legal, a 25 basis-point profit-margin expansion, and a 3% conversion lift from Clickwrap, drawn from interviews with five organizations. Use it as a list of metrics to demand in a pilot. Do not paste 314% into your business case. The study is from 2023, it is vendor-commissioned, and the composite organization is not described as a litigation docket.

A usable quote has six lines even when the license is a single number: subscription, implementation, signature, connectors, AI consumption after the first term, and the support tier. If any line is "included" with no limit, ask for the limit in writing. Ironclad's own product description is the model for that request, because it already prints caps for import and extraction. Ask Agiloft for the same style of cap for batch analysis, Screens reviews, and Astra, since those were not printed as numbers on the pages reviewed.

Total cost also includes the admin person. Both vendors describe no-code change. No-code still means someone decides the approval route, the clause fallback, and the retention rule. Put that person's time in the internal cost, without inventing an hourly rate the vendors do not publish. If finance wants a single year-one figure, the honest answer from public sources is Quote-based plus whatever signature vendor you already pay.

Run the published Ironclad caps through one matter load

Prebuilt AI clauses: 175 types according to Ironclad (2026). That FY2026 description also allows up to 100 custom AI clauses per instance and up to 100 custom AI properties per instance. Smart Import is uncapped in the first year of the initial term, then limited to 50,000 runs each quarter. Extract Metadata is limited to 30,000 runs in a 30-day period unless the order form says otherwise. The description says AI-suggested values still depend on configuration, document quality, and human review.

Take those published caps as the illustrative math for a repository refresh, not as your firm's volume. After year one, 50,000 Smart Import runs in a quarter is 200,000 runs across four quarters. One quarter at that import cap plus one 30-day Extract Metadata window at 30,000 runs is 80,000 AI runs. Each of those imports can be checked against 175 prebuilt clause types plus 100 custom clause types, which is 275 clause types on the instance maximum. A completion notice such as workflow_completed can tell a downstream system that a workflow ended and can pass recordIDs, but it does not certify that a lawyer agreed with the extracted date, value, or governing law. Divide 80,000 runs by 275 clause types only if you truly tag every clause on every run. That quotient is about 290 runs per clause type, which is a capacity sketch, not a quality score.

Agiloft does not publish a matching numeric cap on the pages reviewed, so there is no honest second column of limits. Ask Agiloft to write batch size, Screens review volume, and AI consumption in the same units: runs per period, and who reviews a failed standard before the record is final. If your backfile is mostly scanned pleadings and old vendor PDFs, the quality caveat on Ironclad's import feature matters more than the headline cap. Poor scans burn runs and still need a person.

Ironclad, read as a buying profile

Ironclad fits a commercial or mixed legal team that wants one cloud place for intake, a no-code path through review and approval, and a repository with analytics. The product description defines seat types a quote should name. Administrators change workflows, groups, API access, and integrations. Standard seats work the contracts without changing the design. Sell-side, buy-side, and intake module users can launch requests, comment, approve their own workflows, sign, and search, with buy-side and intake also reaching Coupa and OneTrust. Jurist seats are a separate access level for the assistant. That menu is useful in a negotiation because "a seat" is not one thing. A litigation team that only reviews incoming paper may not need sell-side module users, and paying for them is a quote choice, not a technical requirement.

Best fit is a team that lives in browser workflows, wants turn tracking so everyone can see whose move it is, and will actually maintain playbooks. The public API covers workflows, records, and webhooks. Events you can subscribe to include workflow_launched, workflow_completed, workflow_approval_status_changed, and workflow_signature_packet_fully_signed. A webhook target has to be HTTPS, and failed deliveries are retried and can be disabled after repeated rejection. That is a real integration surface for a matter system. It is also a surface your security review will ask to see.

Limitations are the quote, the cloud deployment noted in the public comparison, and the AI caps after year one. The feature set can be wider than a small disputes group needs. Clickwrap conversion shows up in the commissioned ROI study, which is a website-terms problem more than a pleading problem. If your work is almost entirely counterparty paper inside Microsoft Word, confirm the editor path with a live third-party file before you treat workflow design as the main prize. Implementation timing and implementation price are not published as a schedule. The pricing page lets you lead your own deployment, use Ironclad legal engineers, or use a partner. Put the choice and the fee on the order form.

Primary evidence for this profile is the FY2026 product description for scope and caps, the pricing page for the quote model, the Forrester study page for the 2023 composite results, and the public webhook reference for event names. Customer quotes on the pricing page, including a claim that one team moved from a 12-week turnaround to 3 weeks, are vendor-published stories. They are not this guide's measurements, and they are not repeated here as your expected cycle time.

Agiloft, read as a buying profile

Agiloft fits a team that expects the system to mirror an unusual approval chain, a portal for employees or suppliers, and obligations that outlast the signature. The homepage describes configuration of contracts, approval chains, and processes without writing code, coverage from creation and negotiation through obligation tracking and renewal, search and AI extraction, and real-time dashboards. The 1,000+ connectors, with Salesforce, SAP, and Oracle named, matter if the contract record must match a vendor master or a billing account. E-signature ready with DocuSign and Adobe Sign means you should already know which of those you use, and what the envelope costs.

Best fit includes organizations that may require self-hosted deployment, which is how iTechGuides records the product, and teams that want Screens-style standards instead of only a clause library they write from scratch. The January 14, 2025 announcement describes a Screen as a playbook of standards that can pass or fail parts of a contract, with community playbooks and the vendor's own playbooks both in view. That model is attractive for a contracts lead who wants a repeatable position on indemnity or governing law. It is a poor match if you want the CLM vendor to be the signature system of record.

Limitations start with price opacity and with scope. A platform that can become many business processes can also ship with more tables than a lean legal team will maintain. The homepage invites any approved teammate to configure. That is only a benefit if one owner approves changes and you keep a record of who changed a route. Astra should be priced as its own line unless the order form folds it in. The 96% retention rate and the 99.6% implementation success rate are separate published labels. Do not average them. Ask for the definition, the period, and whether your implementation partner is bound by any of them.

Implementation detail on the public pages is qualitative. You get no-code tools and a claim of fast setup. You do not get a published week count or a published services fee. For a litigation-heavy rollout, the hard part is usually the taxonomy: matter number, opposing party, privilege status, and which agreements are work product. Confirm those fields can exist without a custom project that was not in the quote. Primary evidence is the customer page for the 96% retention rate and the integrations page for the 1,000+ connectors and signature partners, the Screens announcement for the acquisition date and the 99.6% boilerplate, and the Wikipedia history for the 2012 rename, the May 2024 stake, and the later AI feature notes.

Moving a signed agreement into the matter file

Neither CLM is a docket. Engagement letters, settlement agreements, and vendor panels still have to show up on the matter, with the right date and the right owner. That handoff is where teams either build a careful flow or accept another inbox.

A proposed configuration from US Tech Automations can take Ironclad's workflow_completed webhook as the trigger, read the workflow and the record ids in that payload through the public API, and open one renewal or obligation task in the matter system. Prerequisites are an Ironclad API credential allowed to read workflows and records, a webhook endpoint you control, and a matter-system API or a reviewed export that can create a task. The flow should stop for a contracts lawyer when the end date, the value, or the counterparty is blank or conflicts with the PDF. The output is a queued task with the source record id attached. It is a design you would configure. It is not a live customer, and it is not a measured time saving.

A second proposed design uses US Tech Automations when an Agiloft contract reaches an executed status that your admin has defined. The action pulls the contract row through Agiloft's REST interface, maps the obligation text into the matter or into an outside-counsel budget sheet, and files nothing until a person accepts the row. Prerequisites are REST access on that Agiloft knowledge base, a stable contract table, and a destination that can store the source id for a later audit. Human review is mandatory when governing law, renewal notice, or privilege marking is empty. The output is a held task, not an automatic court filing and not an automatic payment.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations: skip that layer when the only job is a playbook inside Word, because Screens or Ironclad's own review step already sits with the lawyer. Skip it when signature is the only missing piece and DocuSign or Adobe Sign already stores the envelope. Skip it when one simple scenario already copies a finished contract into a sheet that a lawyer checks every week, and the volume does not justify another system to watch.

The same legal operations group sometimes buys tools that have nothing to do with CLM. Those decisions sit in other guides on this site, including the in-house dental plan guide, the SaaS drafting-tool guide, and the campaign pacing guide. They are separate buys. They do not rank Ironclad or Agiloft.

Building the same handoff yourself

The realistic alternative is to stitch the handoff in Zapier, Make, or n8n, or to have an internal developer post the webhook into a small service. Those tools can keep a run history, retry a failed step, branch on an error, and store an audit of what moved, if you design those paths. They do not arrive knowing what a contract obligation is. Your team owns observability, idempotency so the same workflow_completed event does not open two tasks, the escalation when a run fails after hours, access control on the API credential, and the maintenance when either vendor changes a payload.

A proposed US Tech Automations design could configure that path as a named workflow with the trigger, the field map, the hold for human review, and the error branch written down in one place. The prerequisite is still the vendor API or a scheduled export, plus a destination system that accepts a task or a row. The review point stays with the lawyer on any field that would change a deadline or a payment. The difference to weigh is who maintains the map when Ironclad or Agiloft changes an event, not a claim that one side runs without care. If your team already staffs Zapier, Make, or n8n and the flow is a single record create, staying there can be the cleaner choice. If several CLM events must update a matter, a billing code, and a notice calendar, a single maintained design is easier to explain to audit than three unrelated scenarios.

Mistakes that waste the sales cycle

Treating the 314% figure as an internal forecast is the fastest way to disappoint finance. Quote the study as a 2023 commissioned composite, then pilot the two metrics you can actually count: cycle time on one agreement type, and the share of renewals that had an owner before the notice window.

Assuming Agiloft includes a native envelope is the second miss. The public pages point to DocuSign and Adobe Sign. Put that vendor's paper next to the Agiloft paper before you compare totals with Ironclad's eSignature line.

Ignoring the year-two Ironclad caps is the third. Year-one Smart Import is uncapped. The following quarters are not. A backfile project that feels fine in month six can hit 50,000 runs a quarter in month fourteen. Ask what a run costs, or what stops, when you reach the cap.

Buying a CLM to replace matter management will fail both products. Docket dates, court rules, and privilege logs are outside the pages these vendors use to describe CLM. Use the CLM for the agreement. Use the matter system for the case. Design the link between them.

Reading editor scores without the disclosure is the fifth miss. An 8.9 against an 8.7 did not decide a single row in the fact matrix above. Use the scores as a prompt to read the rubric, then return to signature, deployment, and caps.

Signing a bundle that says "AI included" without a unit is the sixth. Ironclad already shows that AI features have a policy and numeric limits. Your Agiloft order should be just as specific about Screens, batch analysis, and Astra.

Terms worth agreeing before the sales call

Use the same words in both evaluations so the quotes can be compared.

• CLM means the system of record for the agreement's request, review, signature, storage, renewal, and obligations.

• A workflow is the designed path for one agreement type, including who may launch it and who must approve a deviation.

• A playbook is the written position on a clause. Ironclad describes AI Playbooks. Agiloft's Screens product calls its version a Screen.

• Smart Import is Ironclad's bulk intake of legacy contracts, with the caps in the table above.

• An obligation is a duty the contract creates after signature, such as a notice, a payment, or a service level, tracked so a person owns it.

• A repository is the stored executed file plus the data fields you are willing to trust after review.

• Quote-based means the vendor did not publish a dollar price on the pricing page reviewed for this guide.

• A webhook is an outbound notice, such as Ironclad's workflow_completed event, that another system can receive when something changes.

If a salesperson uses "platform" to mean Astra plus CLM plus Screens, ask for three line items. If they use "user" without the Ironclad seat type, ask which type. If they use "implementation" without hours, ask who configures the first five agreement types and what you own afterward.

Questions contracts leads ask

Are Ironclad and Agiloft still the products this search names?

Yes. Both still sell contract lifecycle management, and neither page reviewed for this guide describes a shutdown or a replacement name for the CLM itself. Agiloft's company name changed in 2012, a KKR fund took a majority stake in May 2024, and Screens was added on January 14, 2025 as a review product that also remains standalone. Ironclad's product descriptions effective September 2, 2026 still describe the CLM.

Which one should a litigation or contracts lead quote first?

Quote Ironclad first if the team wants cloud workflows, a published catalog of 175 prebuilt clause types, and an eSignature choice on the same vendor's order form. Quote Agiloft first if the team needs heavy configuration, might need self-hosted deployment, and already uses DocuSign or Adobe Sign. Most teams who are truly close to buying should request both quotes with the same agreement types attached, because the public prices are both Quote-based and cannot be ranked from the websites.

Does either vendor publish a price?

No. Pricing checked October 13, 2026. Ironclad's pricing page asks you to build a quote from products, users, workflows, and growth. Agiloft's pricing page asks you to request pricing. Do not fill the gap with a directory estimate. Ask for the six cost lines listed in the pricing section, in writing.

Who handles signature?

Ironclad offers an eSignature product and also lists DocuSign, Adobe Acrobat Sign, and Dropbox Sign among providers a CLM subscription may include. Agiloft's homepage says e-signature is ready with DocuSign and Adobe Sign, and the iTechGuides comparison says Agiloft's electronic signing relies on those integrations. Your evidence file should name the system that stores the certificate.

Can either product replace the matter system?

No. Both are agreement systems with repositories, workflows, and some form of obligation tracking. Court deadlines, privilege logs, and staffing for a case stay in the matter system. The practical design is a reviewed handoff after execution, using an API or export, with a person accepting dates and values before they drive a notice or a payment.

How should we treat the 314% ROI and the 8.9 score?

Treat the 314% as a 2023 commissioned composite from five interviews, published on Ironclad's study page, and treat 8.9/10 and 8.7/10 as iTechGuides editor scores on a site that discloses paid placement. Neither number is your savings and neither number picks the vendor. Use the fact matrix, the cap table, and the two written quotes.

What do we ask in the first sales call?

Ask each vendor to process one third-party NDA and one vendor agreement you actually use, to show the playbook fail on a clause you care about, to name the signature system, to state deployment options, and to price license, implementation, connectors, and AI use as separate lines. Ask Ironclad how the 50,000 and 30,000 caps behave in year two. Ask Agiloft whether Astra and Screens are in the CLM price and how an admin change is audited.

The shortlist is ready when you can say, in one page, which agreement types move, who administers the workflows, which signature vendor holds the certificate, and which fields a person must accept before a downstream task exists. Ironclad is the tighter public fit when those answers center on cloud workflow design and a documented AI catalog. Agiloft is the tighter public fit when those answers center on deep configuration, connector breadth you can confirm against the 1,000+ claim, and signing through DocuSign or Adobe Sign. Either quote can still lose on the order form. Compare the forms, then decide whether the remaining handoff is a small scenario your team will own or a configured flow you want maintained beside the CLM. You can see how US Tech Automations configures this as a proposed handoff with an API prerequisite and a human review, after the CLM choice is made on the facts above.