I agree… some of my highest paying jobs as a newbie have come from snap docs.
I live in Maryland. I’ve seen too many requests come in for $75-$85 for refinancing. I always counter with a higher amount and get passed over. Notaries are taking these orders at these low amounts. I’m through Snapdocs.
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I can’t screenshot my SnapDocs screen but my lowest pay is $100.
utube! Bill Soroka, Carol Ray 
#notarytitans
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Sound advice, huh! I notice the notifications from snapdocs, last minute, long drive loan don’t know about docs and they are offering $70. Why is anyone accepting? Annoys me other notaries won’t bring the standards up.
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This is how snapdocs operates :
https://support.snapdocs.com/hc/en-us/articles/115012713188-Locally-Adjusted-Pricing
They encourage lowering prices.
Three months and no one signing from them.
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WOW - In CA none of the offers that were sent via snapdocs were over 90. Not that I managed to get any of them.
Quite shocking . . . Thank you for the url, Karen. I heard via multiple forums about this years ago when they launched their business. Great to actually see it on their website in writing.
FYI: For my business plan, their pricing structure has always been too low to be profitable at all, so no direct experience with them.
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"Locally Adjusted Notary Fees is included in the Enhanced Automation Suite. If you have the Enhanced Automation Suite as part of your company plan, you can set controls for Locally Adjusted Notary Fees from your company settings.
What are Locally Adjusted Notary Fees?
Where appropriate, Locally Adjusted Notary Fees will automatically revise the notary fee on outgoing signing requests to better match accepted rates in the signing location.
Before contacting notaries about your signing request, Snapdocs will calculate how likely notaries in the area will accept that fee. If your offered notary fee is outside a high-likelihood range, our software will adjust the notary fee by $10 to increase how likely you can find a notary. Snapdocs will never change the notary fee by more than $10 in either direction.
To better illustrate how this feature works, let’s walk through an example:
Imagine that you have a Refinance signing in Dallas, Texas, and that your offered notary fee for a Refinance signing is $100.
When your offered fee is within $10 of the high-likelihood fee range:
If the highly accepted fee in Dallas is $105 (within $10 of your offered fee), Snapdocs will not make any fee adjustments. Notaries will receive signing opportunities as normal for $100.
When your offered fee is more than the highly accepted fee:
Let’s suppose that Snapdocs finds that the highly accepted fee in Dallas is actually $85. Accordingly, our software will adjust the notary fee from $100 to $90 before sending messages to notaries about the signing opportunity.
When your offered fee is less than the highly accepted fee:
Now, let’s instead imagine that the highly accepted notary fee in Dallas is actually $135. In this situation, Snapdocs would automatically adjust the notary fee upwards from $100 to $110 before contacting notaries. (Not comfortable with upwards fee adjustments? Continue reading to learn how to configure your settings accordingly.)
How do I use Locally Adjusted Notary Fees?
First off, you must have the Enhanced Automation Suite feature turned on. If you do not have this feature but would like it, please email support@snapdocs.com.
Go into your General Company Settings (Admin → Company Settings → General Settings) and scroll down to your Enhanced Automation Suite settings. You should see a checkbox to turn on Locally Adjusted Notary Fees. Check the box and click save.
Once the setting is turned on, you will have the ability to turn locally adjusted notary fees on for individual signing products. When you add a new signing product or edit an existing one, you should see a checkbox to turn on locally adjusted notary fees.
There is an additional setting in your company settings that you can turn on if you choose. With locally adjusted notary fees, a fee can be adjusted up or down. If you wish to only have the notary fee adjust down, you can select this option in your company settings."
SOURCE: https://support.snapdocs.com/hc/en-us/articles/115012713188-Locally-Adjusted-Pricing
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I read the info on SnapDocs with some interest and must admit coming away confused. Perhaps those of you with more experience in finance can shed some light. What is the benefit to SnapDocs to be able to make an offer within $10 difference of what the company will pay and the listed rate of a notary? For these companies this is not even enough to be considered a rounding error. If a company has in their budget $200 for a signing, why list it as a $100 offer? And the title company has to have an enhanced membership in order to get this “adjusted control” benefit. I assume this type of membership comes at a higher rate. So, you are paying more for a membership to give SnapDocs the ability to haggle within $10 on your behalf to hire a notary at a lesser rate? I don’t get. Does that mean that SnapDocs gets to pocket the $90-$100 difference? If so, isn’t the company still paying the same $200, regardless of how it’s split, and ultimately they are only saving perhaps $10? What am I missing here?
On some level their algorithm is working though. I’ve noticed that companies I worked with directly just a year ago are listing more of their signings through the SnapDocs signing service. I need some help understanding this. Huh!
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I don’t know what is going on either, so if someone is informed we all want to know! But yet you got it, SnapDocs and signing companies are stuffing their pockets. I just saw a sign in my snow county with a travel for $70, pathetic!
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I agree that it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense (or is that dollars & cents). However, I’ve always questioned ‘algorithms’ in general. They ‘assume’ too much wrong info which skews the results. For example, SD calculates mileage ‘as the crow flys’…oops.
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I concur, Arichter! The mapping system that some utilize is quite ‘abbreviated.’
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In the past I have replied with a broad smile:
"My helicopter is in the shop for maintenance this week. So, I’ll be travelling by car. The drive one-way is 95 miles, not 70 . . . "
I will then state my fee for the respective amount of Time & Travel plus Turnpike Fees (if utilized).
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Thank you for laying it out so all can read.
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I won’t get started on ‘algorithms’ because we’re supposed to keep this clean.
As far as the sense goes, I do believe it completely breaks down to dollars and cents. Snapdocs is the big dog with over 100 million invested into it. They have managed to drive many smaller companies onto their platform because they cannot compete with the investment money. There are many title companies hiring directly through Snapdocs as well. There is a great deal of refinancing going on and great deal of competition. Lowering the pay for the signing agent does allow the company to pocket the money. Ten dollars was just an example. More than a few have seen the signing agent fee around $300 while they were being paid $110.
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Yes, I believe they are. They succeeded in obtaining an additional 150 million in May 2021. They are no valued at 1.5 billion.
This is surprising. My notion of how SD worked was that the member signing/title services paid a fixed fee for platform use to SD. The platform fee was SD’s source of income. The total fee paid to the NSA was determined by the service, but their platform fee stayed the same.
It’s a tiered platform. Basically, the more you use it, the cheaper per use it is. Don’t know, but it figures that if a paying enitity wants ‘advanced’ capabilities, they most likely pay extra.
By a lot. Snapdocs is worth over $1.5 billion, as of their latest funding round in May, 2021.
Smaller platforms like Signing Order and Notary Dash aren’t even in that same universe.
A key point to understand is that the notary platform is not the primary part of Snapdoc’s business. Their goal is to be a one-stop shop for everything related to mortgage technology in general, and digital closings in particular.
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If you opted out of snap docs so soon, how did you get your experience as a new notary?
Is there something to know about your statement to opt our of snapdocs soon? As a new notary I had joined the NNA and used their platform for exposure. Just worked from there. Snapdocs is relatively new for me, focused more with it when I moved to Shasta County. One of the title companies I am with for several years doesn’t do much work here.