How do we estimate the time spent per signature?

Count the real end-to-end time: preparing the template, sending the instructions, the employee's time, chasing, checking, fixing the cases that went wrong. Twelve to fifteen minutes per person per change is a conservative assumption.

How many signature changes a year should be expected?

Between two and six in most organisations: a brand change, a new legal notice, a campaign, a change of address or company name. Arrivals and departures add to that base rate.

Does the calculation include the cost of the software?

The calculator compares the annual subscription cost with the cost of internal time. That is the useful comparison: the question is not "what does the tool cost" but "what does having no tool cost".

From what headcount does the tool pay for itself?

Between twenty and thirty employees in most cases, earlier if your turnover is high or if legal notice compliance matters to your legal department.

What does managing email signatures by hand really cost?

How to calculate the hidden cost of hand-managed signatures: time per signature, frequency of changes, loaded hourly cost — and the economic tipping point.

“It costs nothing, we do it in-house.” That is the sentence that blocks most signature management projects, and it rests on an accounting error: internal time is not free, it is merely invisible.

The formula

The annual cost of manual management is calculated directly:

Cost = Headcount × Minutes per signature × Changes per year ÷ 60 × Loaded hourly cost

Each of the four terms deserves an honest estimate.

Headcount. The number of mailboxes receiving a managed signature. Functional mailboxes count too if somebody looks after them.

Minutes per signature. This is the term most often underestimated, because people only count the employee’s handling. You have to add preparing the template, sending the instructions, chasing, checking, and fixing the cases that went wrong. Twelve to fifteen minutes end to end is a conservative assumption.

Changes per year. Between two and six in most organisations: a brand change, a new legal notice, a change of address, a campaign. On top of that sits the continuous flow of arrivals and departures.

The loaded hourly cost. Gross salary plus contributions, divided by annual working time. Forty to sixty euros for an administrative or IT role, depending on seniority.

A worked example

An organisation of 200 employees, with 4 changes a year, 12 minutes per signature and a loaded hourly cost of €45:

200 × 12 × 4 ÷ 60 = 160 hours a year
160 × €45 = €7,200 a year

Seven thousand two hundred euros of internal time, for a result everyone knows is imperfect: part of the estate will not have followed the instructions.

The cost calculator runs exactly this calculation and sets it against the Signally price for the same headcount. You can adjust each of the four assumptions there.

The costs the formula does not capture

The calculation above is the floor. Three further items sit on top, harder to quantify but often larger.

The cost of non-compliance. A legal notice missing across part of the estate is a legal risk, whose cost is zero until the day it is not.

The brand cost. Diverging signatures, old logos in circulation, expired job titles: the effect is diffuse and permanent. It measures badly, which does not mean it does not exist — see brand governance.

The channel’s opportunity cost. This is the largest, and the most systematically ignored. A hundred-person company sends in the order of 300,000 emails a year. Without a tool, not one of those sends carries a message. What that channel represents in media value is developed in measuring the ROI of a banner campaign.

Worth knowing: the opportunity cost often flips the conclusion. An organisation hesitating over €7,200 of internal time discovers the channel represents, in media equivalent, several times that sum.

The tipping point

In practice, the subscription pays for itself between twenty and thirty employees, on the internal-time criterion alone.

It pays off earlier in three situations: high turnover, which multiplies arrivals and departures; several legal entities, which multiply the templates to maintain; or a strong compliance requirement, which makes an incomplete adoption rate unacceptable.

Below that threshold, a free generator honestly suffices — see free email signature generators.

How to present the calculation internally

Three figures are enough, in this order.

The finding. Run the sample described in standardising signatures: twenty or so real signatures, side by side. It is visual and incontestable.

The current cost. The result of the formula, with your assumptions. Present it in hours and in euros: hours speak to IT, euros to finance.

The comparison. The annual subscription cost for your headcount, from the public price list.

What that presentation avoids is the debate about the tool’s perceived value. The question is no longer “is it worth the price”, but “what does carrying on as we are cost us”.