Best Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Software in 2026
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Featured Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Software At A Glance
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Buyer's Guide: Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users find the ease of use of Conga CLM exceptional, streamlining contract management and negotiations effectively.
Users commend the improved efficiency of Conga CLM, which enhances the agility of the contracting process significantly.
Users commend the robust feature set of Conga CLM, enhancing contract management with seamless integration and excellent support.
Users face a steep learning curve with Conga CLM, as the interface can be complex and overwhelming for newcomers.
Users face a steep learning curve, as mastering all features demands time and additional training for new users.
Users find the time-consuming processes of Conga CLM frustrating, particularly with document generation and configuration.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users love the ease of use in DocuSign CLM, facilitating quick document management and notifications.
Users appreciate the user-friendly digital signing of Docusign CLM, making approvals and document tracking seamless.
Users value the time-saving features of Docusign CLM, enabling instant contract management and streamlined workflows.
Users find the high cost of DocuSign CLM burdensome, especially for smaller teams facing complex setup challenges.
Users find the steep learning curve of DocuSign CLM challenging, particularly without technical support during setup.
Users find the initial setup and implementation time-consuming, often requiring additional training and support for effective use.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users commend LinkSquares for its exceptional customer support, noting the team's quick responses and helpfulness with issues.
Users find LinkSquares to be exceptionally easy to use, enhancing contract management and offering outstanding customer support.
Users praise the top-notch customer support from LinkSquares, highlighting their exceptional assistance throughout the onboarding process.
Users desire more customization options in LinkSquares, particularly for notifications and searching agreements effectively.
Users express concerns about inaccurate AI performance, highlighting issues with naming conventions and document extraction reliability.
Users find LinkSquares' ineffective AI leads to inaccurate contract processing and limited functionality in navigating workflows.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users appreciate the ease of use with Salesforce Revenue Cloud, enhancing efficiency in their daily operations.
Users appreciate the streamlined revenue lifecycle of Salesforce Revenue Cloud, enhancing their business operations with ease and efficiency.
Users appreciate the seamless integration of Salesforce Revenue Cloud, enhancing the sales process with flexibility and automation.
Users find the steep learning curve challenging, especially with the platform's extensive features and customization options.
Users note a steep learning curve with Salesforce Revenue Cloud, making navigation and understanding challenging for new users.
Users often struggle with the complexity of Salesforce Revenue Cloud, finding the setup and customization demanding and time-consuming.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users appreciate the user-friendly platform of SAP Ariba, enhancing procurement processes and supplier collaboration effortlessly.
Users value the efficiency boosts from SAP Ariba, streamlining procurement and enhancing collaboration seamlessly.
Users value the streamlined and automated procurement process of SAP Ariba, enhancing overall efficiency and collaboration.
Users find the lengthy learning curve of SAP Ariba challenging, making initial use difficult and overwhelming.
Users find SAP Ariba's complexity overwhelming, facing a steep learning curve and limited support for customization.
Users find SAP Ariba not user-friendly, struggling with its complex interface and non-intuitive navigation steps.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users highlight the ease of use of Ironclad, noting its intuitive interface and straightforward onboarding experience.
Users value the excellent customer support of Ironclad, enhancing their overall contract management experience significantly.
Users value the seamless integrations with tools like Salesforce and DocuSign, enhancing efficiency in contract management.
Users struggle with poor search functionality, making it challenging to efficiently locate necessary documents in the system.
Users often struggle with the search difficulty in Ironclad, making document retrieval frustrating and time-consuming.
Users find a steep learning curve with Ironclad, requiring additional resources and training to navigate effectively.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users appreciate the responsive support team of DealHub.io, noting their thorough assistance and fast implementation process.
Users value the ease of use of DealHub.io, which simplifies complex configurations and enhances collaboration.
Users value DealHub.io for its time-saving features, enhancing efficiency and focus on closing deals successfully.
Users find the learning curve challenging, especially when mastering extensive features and customization options initially.
Users find limited customization options frustrating, often requiring external support for advanced features and adjustments.
Users find the steep learning curve challenging, especially during setup and customization, which can slow down productivity.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users appreciate the ease of use of Legistify, simplifying contract management and case tracking significantly in daily operations.
Users appreciate the real-time tracking feature of Legistify, which simplifies case management and enhances operational efficiency.
Users commend the tracking efficiency of Legistify, streamlining case updates and reducing manual effort significantly.
Users face occasional bug issues in Legistify, though the support team promptly addresses them, minimizing disruptions.
Users experience occasional software bugs that may disrupt the process, but the support team promptly addresses them.
Users experience poor customer support, often relying on the team to resolve technical issues and bugs.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users find Juro to be incredibly easy to use, enabling efficient team collaboration and self-service capabilities.
Users commend Juro's exceptional customer support, noting quick responses and valuable guidance to maximize productivity.
Users find Juro enhances efficiency significantly, allowing for seamless processes and improved team productivity.
Users wish for missing features in Juro, such as contract bundling and improved notification systems.
Users find contract management limitations in Juro, particularly with template flexibility and organization features compared to traditional formats.
Users feel the document management features are limited, making contract negotiation and collaboration challenging.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users praise Summize for its ease of use, allowing seamless integration without disrupting existing sales processes.
Users praise the exceptional customer support from Summize, highlighting attentive and responsive assistance throughout the implementation process.
Users commend Summize for its seamless integration with existing tools, enhancing efficiency without disrupting workflow.
Users find the limited customization options in Summize restrictive, hindering their ability to tailor the app to their needs.
Users face missing features in Summize, including limited customization, mobile functionality, and inadequate notification options.
Users find the learning curve steep due to the overwhelming functions and confusing features of Summize.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users value the ease of use of Lexion, finding it intuitive even for those with minimal technical skills.
Users find Lexion easy and intuitive to use, enabling efficient contract review even for those with minimal technical knowledge.
Users benefit from Lexion's AI-powered contract management, enhancing efficiency and simplifying legal workflows.
Users find the price too high for small organizations, leading to concerns about affordability and value.
Users find the learning difficulty of Lexion challenging, struggling with task assignments and inconsistent notifications.
Users find the poor notification system frustrating, leading to missed actions and challenges in collaboration.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users find Leah intuitive and appreciate its ease of use, which enhances contract review efficiency and data capture.
Users appreciate the responsive customer support from Leah, enhancing their contract management experience significantly.
Users find LeahAI to provide exceptional efficiency, significantly speeding up draft generation and reducing lawyer workload.
Users report user interface issues, including navigation difficulties and unwanted automated emails during the contract submission process.
Users experience confusion due to customizations being affected by upgrades, though support helps resolve issues quickly.
Users find difficult customization during upgrades can hinder usability, though support helps resolve issues quickly.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users appreciate the ease of use of Agiloft, with customizable features enhancing workflow and saving valuable time.
Users appreciate the extensive customizability of Agiloft, allowing tailored solutions that enhance their contract management workflows.
Users praise the fantastic customer support of Agiloft, ensuring quick assistance and effective problem resolution.
Users note the limited customization options in Agiloft, making tailored implementation challenging for specific needs.
Users note a steep learning curve with Agiloft, requiring time to navigate its many features and setup complexities.
Users find the difficult customization in Agiloft challenging, often complicating their deployment and user experience.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users commend the user-friendly interface of SpotDraft, highlighting its ease of implementation and overall usability.
Users love the time-saving features of SpotDraft, enhancing efficiency and streamlining contract management.
Users commend the responsive customer support of SpotDraft, which aids in seamless contract management and implementation.
Users find the missing features in SpotDraft, such as lack of customization and bulk requests, limiting their usability.
Users experience slow performance with SpotDraft, noting latency and clunky operations that hinder efficiency.
Users find the limited customization options hinder their ability to tailor SpotDraft to their specific needs.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users find Workday Strategic Sourcing to be easy to use for conducting candidate background checks efficiently.
Users require more information access regarding candidates to enhance HR efficiency and streamline hiring processes.
Learn More About Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Software
What is Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Software?
Contract lifecycle management (CLM) software assists businesses in every stage of the contract lifecycle by streamlining the process from creation to post-signature activities, including obligation tracking, contract resolution, and contract compliance management. These tools assist organizations in ensuring that internal and external stakeholders are knowledgeable and uphold their contractual obligations by storing all contract data in a centralized repository, providing a medium to collaborate and communicate.
CLM tools differ from traditional contract management software. CLM solutions allow users to manage activities after contract execution, including performance and contract compliance, obligation tracking, and dispute resolutions. CLM products provide features to notify parties of upcoming contract milestones to help streamline the contract renewal process and inform appropriate parties of contract performance.
Various departments in an organization are users of CLM solutions, as contracts are inherent to many business operations. CLM tools typically integrate with various software, including CRM software, e-signature software, accounting software, proposal software, and CPQ software.
What are the Common Features of Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Software?
The following are some core features of CLM software:
Contract creation and templates: Contracts are naturally nuanced and require standardized language and specific clauses. CLM tools allow organizations to create contracts and templates to streamline the creation process and ensure uniformity throughout the documents. This feature enables non-legal professionals to create basic contracts with confidence, ensuring that the required language is provided and correct.
Contract editing: A key feature of CLM solutions is contract redlining, or the ability to edit contracts and compare multiple versions. Contract editing can be done internally and externally and is vital in contract management as it provides an audit trail that highlights the changes between contract iterations.
Contract database: This feature helps store contracts in a central repository with native search capabilities. Organizations can increase efficiency by digitally searching through contracts rather than manually.
Notifications and reminders: CLM tools offer features to schedule reminders for users and notify them of upcoming contract milestones, such as contract renewal or expiry. This assists users in meeting contractual deadlines and ensures contracts are completed on time. Additionally, this feature ensures that businesses know and take the necessary action to renew contracts or communicate proposed changes or amendments to future contract iterations.
Integrations or APIs: Another core feature of CLM solutions is its ability to integrate with key business systems, such as CRM software to associate contracts with customer accounts and CPQ software to pull calculated quote information into the contract.
Advance contract analytics: CLM tools leverage analytics to optimize contract management with this feature. This provides businesses insight into the contract creation and delivery process and assists in identifying bottlenecks and ways to improve the efficiency of the process.
Report and dashboards: CLM solutions leverage contract data to provide standard and ad hoc reports of contract statuses and timelines, with the ability to monitor live overviews of contract activities.
Contract approvals: Streamline processes for contract approvals to integrate workflows across departments logically with this software solution. This increases the efficiency of each stage of the CLM process, easily coordinating with appropriate stakeholders and ensuring standards are met.
What are the Benefits of Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Software?
CLM software offers various benefits to organizations, including:
Increased collaboration: CLM solutions provide a digital medium for users to collaborate, revise, and review contracts with internal and external stakeholders. This expedites the entire contract process, particularly the internal review and contract negotiation stage.
Enhanced automation: A key benefit of CLM tools is the ability to streamline workflows for each stage of the contract management process to minimize manual tasks and ensure appropriate procedures are followed. Automation can be used to notify users and track key contract data, such as expiration or renewal dates and streamline contract workflows to minimize contract cycle time.
Audit trail: Due to the sensitive nature of contracts and the financial and legal risk associated with contracts, organizations need to have an audit trail of all contract activities to ensure contract compliance. CLM tools provide an audit trail to easily track all edits or revisions made to a contract and keep accurate accounting compliance records.
Performance tracking: An essential benefit of CLM software solutions is easily assessing contract performance regarding obligations and compliance. These tools provide stakeholders with a centralized dashboard to efficiently track how a contract performs to ensure maximum value is received and avoid potential revenue leakage.
Increased self service: The ability to provide contract templates is a significant benefit to non-legal professionals. It allows them to create agreements or contracts with confidence and avoid the bottleneck of legal professionals drafting the initial contract. This lets legal teams focus on higher priority items and allows other non-legal groups to perform the necessary work to begin the contract process.
Who Uses Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Software?
Contracts are an essential aspect of business operations, and as such, the stakeholders who utilize CLM tools are broad and can vary based on unique business needs and processes. Below are a few examples of business groups that likely regularly use CLM solutions.
Legal teams: CLM software enables legal professionals to streamline the contract management process by creating templates for non-legal colleagues, providing a contract repository, tracking obligations, and ensuring compliance. These tools also provide legal teams reminders and notifications of contract renewals and expirations, which is vital as most legal teams are responsible for managing a plethora of contracts simultaneously.
Sales teams: CLM tools enable sales teams to share contracts securely, collaborate with internal and external parties, and get contracts signed. CLM tools assist sales teams in streamlining the process of signing contracts and mitigating risks associated with inaccurate information as information is typically integrated from CRM, CPQ, or e-signature solutions. In addition to mitigating risk, this can expedite the contract signing process and help establish good relationships with customers.
HR teams: HR professionals can leverage CLM solutions to quickly replicate contracts or agreements using the pre-created contract templates, streamlining hiring processes.
Finance teams: CLM software helps finance teams to track contract obligations and performance, identify lost revenue, and find cost-saving opportunities. CLM solutions also notify finance teams of upcoming contract expirations and renewals to ensure that teams do not miss renewals or potential revenue opportunities.
Which Contract Lifecycle Management Software is the Best for Tech Companies?
- Ironclad: A cloud-based CLM platform offering customizable workflows, AI-assisted contract analysis, and seamless integrations with tools like Salesforce and Google Drive.
- LinkSquares: Provides AI-powered contract analysis and lifecycle management, enabling tech companies to gain insights into contract terms, obligations, and risks.
- DocuSign CLM: Extends beyond e-signatures to offer end-to-end contract management, including automated workflows and compliance tracking, integrating with over 900 services.
- Juro: An all-in-one contract automation platform designed for in-house legal teams. Combines contract creation, negotiation, and e-signing in a browser-native, collaborative interface — perfect for startups and SaaS companies.
- Ironclad: Built for legal teams at fast-growing tech companies, Ironclad offers modern, customizable workflows, seamless integrations (like Salesforce and Slack), and strong AI contract analytics.
What's the Leading CLM Solution for Remote Teams?
- ContractPodAi: A cloud-native platform designed for legal and procurement teams, offering contract authoring, approval routing, and document automation—ideal for remote collaboration at scale.
- Gatekeeper: A vendor and contract lifecycle management platform that offers automation, AI data extraction, and a secure solution for managing contracts and vendors, making it suitable for remote collaboration.
- Evisort: Provides AI-powered contract analytics, real-time collaboration, and cloud accessibility, enabling legal and procurement teams to manage contracts efficiently from anywhere.
Challenges with Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Software
CLM products can come with its own set of challenges. A few of them are listed below.
Security: Contracts are extremely sensitive as they may contain financial information, personally identifiable information (PII), or other contract data that are a key target during data breaches. Ensuring security is of utmost importance when leveraging a CLM tool, and businesses should be aware of industry standards in terms of security, implementation, and operations. As most CLM tools are cloud based, companies may not be able to control and secure the cloud environment independently. Additionally, as contracts are frequently collaborated on throughout multiple business units, ensuring that they are worked on in a secure environment is essential.
Compliance requirements: As CLM solutions manage each stage of the contract process, it is pivotal that businesses understand the various standards and regulations that they must adhere to, which may be dependent on industry and location.
Complex integrations: CLM tools often integrate with various systems, leading to cumbersome integrations. Businesses selecting CLM tools should ensure that the chosen tool can integrate into their existing IT infrastructure and understand the detailed processes for ensuring its compatibility and workflows. Companies should also be aware of the required workflows for their CLM software as it may conflict with existing business processes and require internal adjustments.
Accessibility and adoption: A challenge that some organizations face when leveraging a CLM tool is adequate accessibility. CLMs manage the entire contract process, from presignature to post-contract execution. Thus, it is crucial to ensure that all relevant business units access the system and have appropriate controls. For CLM products to be most effective, they need to be widely adopted across the organization, as without user adoption, the system cannot perform to its full capabilities.
How to Buy Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Software
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Software
Requirements gathering for CLM tools is critical to ensure that the business is leveraging a product that meets its needs. To do so, companies must evaluate the software based on their critical needs, as provided below.
Compare Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Products
Create a long list
Long lists are created by eliminating software solutions that do not provide critical functionality. To make a long list for a CLM product, a buyer should assess the essential functions and analyze which products provide the necessary functionality. CLM software provides functions throughout the entire contract lifecycle ranging from contract creation and templatization to reporting and analytics. A typical long list should not contain more than 10 products unless there are many similar options. In this case, buyers should consider a product’s ability to integrate with existing software, scalability, customization, mobile accessibility, and any relevant industry regulations or standards to eliminate products.
Create a short list
From the long list of CLM vendors, it is helpful to narrow down the list and develop a shorter list of contenders, preferably no more than three to five. With this in hand, businesses can produce a matrix to compare the various offerings' features, compatibility, and pricing.
Conduct demos
To ensure the comparison is thoroughgoing, the user should try a demo or free trial for each software solution on the shortlist with the same use cases and criteria. This will allow the business to evaluate like for like and see how each product stacks up against the competition.
Selection of Contract Lifecycle Management Software
Choose a selection team
CLM software impacts a variety of business units within an organization, highlighting the importance of selecting a critical selection team. It is vital to consider input and qualification criteria from each business unit member that will leverage the software, as needs and use cases can vary. The selection committee for a CLM tool may consist of a member from each department intended to leverage the software, such as a legal representative, HR employee, sales leader, and IT professional to ensure software compatibility. The selection committee will be responsible for assessing each use case of the software and ensuring compliance with organizational and industry standards.
Negotiation
When negotiating a software contract, it is critical first to ensure that the software will meet industry regulations and standards and provide a secure medium to manage the entire contract lifecycle. This is imperative as the cost of CLM tools can vary tremendously. The price depends on the size of the business, the amount of storage needed, and the number of licenses, among other factors. Additionally, since CLM products extend across multiple business units, buyers should also determine if they need assistance implementing or integrating with other business support systems. Lastly, businesses should consider the contract duration that is most appropriate for their needs to negotiate longer-term contracts better.
Final decision
Buyers should make the final decision based on all the information gathered previously. Businesses should rank their needs in order of importance and select the tool that meets their most critical needs first, then assess which software best fits their business needs.
