The Forrester Wave™: Contract Lifecycle Management Platforms, Q1 2025

Contract Lifecycle Management Platforms Vendor Product Comparisons 2025

Key features and pros and cons of top Contract Lifecycle Management Platforms products:

Agiloft - Leaders

Pros:

Data-centric vision and approach to connecting CLM to business strategy
Active customer community with highly engaged regional user groups
Diverse partner ecosystem including industry associations and integration hub
Extensive integration, reporting, and visualization options
Superior buy-side contracts, continuous improvement, and obligation management features
genAI Prompt Lab feature to analyze clauses and provide ideal versions

Cons:

Recent pricing changes create high entry cost for AI features, putting them out of reach for most customers
Workflow requires configuration effort
Lean on out-of-the-box functionality
Advanced AI features are cost-prohibitive for many customers
Customers expressed need for improvements to commercial model and better alignment of product releases to customer needs

Icertis - Leaders

Pros:

Superior vision to leverage genAI to capture contract value with maturity-based approach to innovation
Roadmap differentiates with industry-specific models and workflow for federal contracting, investment banking, and healthcare
Robust and diverse ecosystem includes partnerships with several industry associations
Engaged customer advisory board meets bimonthly
Ability to discover commercial terms, compliance obligations, and risk markers and match with invoices for buy-side contracts
WCAG-compliant interface with AI-driven in-app chatbot
Ability to support multiple AI options including industry-specific models
Customers praised platform stability, performance, and multimodel approach to AI

Cons:

Base pricing is transparent, though packaging of AI makes it cost-prohibitive for many customers
AI support does not extend to postexecution management
AI gets confused between payment terms and discounts
Customers would like to see better APIs, faster and easier contract digitization, and less cumbersome administration panel

Ironclad - Leaders

Pros:

Clear vision and forward-thinking approach to innovation
Innovation supported by incubation team and metrics on value delivery
Transparent pricing model
Superior support for sell-side contracting and legal operations
Flexible workflows with native integrations with multiple CRM systems
Native e-signature capability
Jurist proprietary legal AI assistant answers questions with source document references
Self-service features improve efficiency
Digitization can pull from storage providers, perform deduplication, and extract handwritten notes
Customers praised self-service capabilities and speed of creating workflows without IT resources

Cons:

Roadmap is light on table-stakes features such as enterprise instance and streamlined approvals
Price can add up for more complex use cases
Lacks guardrails to prevent overengineering
Needs to better support customers migrating multiple repositories into single enterprise instance
Customers noted product flexibility and lack of guardrails make it easy to overengineer
AI-generated contract summaries cannot be shared with counterparties, limiting their value

Sirion - Leaders

Pros:

Unambiguous vision focusing CLM on relationships, regulations, and operations
Balances AI features with customer-requested features
Superior support for customer adoption including Whatfix integration for tailored guides and tutorials
Innovation strategy backed by budget and resources
Excels at contract digitization, negotiation, and postsignature management
Powerful extraction engine supports nine languages including Asian characters
Natively extracts 50 metadata fields including obligations and regulatory language
AI-based playbook review and sentiment analysis
Breadth of functionality to manage contract renewals, amendments, and addendums
Customers gave superior feedback on contract digitization and breadth of pre- and postsignature capabilities

Cons:

Innovation strategy is overly tailored to high-maturity customers
Configurability and self-service capabilities are below par
Search is not as intuitive as others evaluated
Customers want better search capabilities for nontechnical users
Customers want more self-service options for dashboards, reports, and new template design
Customers using multiple Sirion products want better integration between modules

CobbleStone Software - Strong Performers

Pros:

Exceptional digitization, search and analysis, and buy-side contract support
OCR supports tagging and classification, recognizes Arabic characters
Creates visualization of contracts and amendments indexed by company name or owner
Wildcard search helps users who don't know what they're looking for
Buy-side contracts track payments against budget and calculate percentage used and remaining
Customers pleased with breadth of features and intuitive navigation

Cons:

Vision focuses on current trends rather than future needs
Customer community program is weak
Lacks digital features to support customer adoption
Workflow lacks visual builder
Light on system admin features
Areas of application feel disjointed
Platform configurability can lead to overengineering
Modular pricing keeps some customers from using more of the platform
Customers want improvements to native e-signature tool, visual workflow builder, and platform performance

ContractPodAi - Strong Performers

Pros:

Differentiated approach to innovation with investment in data scientists and legal experts
Powerful AI infused with governance and guardrails
AI assistant Leah is bundled into the platform
Superior contract creation, workflow, and self-service features including AI-powered help desk
Leah analyzes contracts against playbook, performs conversational redlining, offers clause recommendations
Previously executed contracts inform preferred contract positions
Edge use cases include DORA requirements support and M&A language/template harmonization
Customers laud advanced automation, ease of use, and high level of service
AI's ability to easily upload contract playbooks

Cons:

Vision and roadmap are on par with market, not differentiated
Consumption-based pricing of AI features can quickly add up
Must make improvements to customer community program
Support for buy-side contracts is relatively weak
Lacks desktop Word integration
Customers want more flexible access management and streamlined PDF document upload

Evisort - Strong Performers

Pros:

Unique pricing strategy offering full CLM platform with AI bundled at no cost or standalone AI contract intelligence product
Differentiated innovation focused on building proprietary technology optimized for accuracy
Solid vision and roadmap
Strengths in contract analysis and search, configurability, and legal operations
Proprietary AI orchestration layer
Deduplicates contracts, retrieves images, supports fuzzy match search
AI searches easily turned into dashboards
No-code builder for templates, forms, workflow rules, and postsignature activities
Customers praised configurability and quality of AI

Cons:

Degree of Workday's influence over Evisort's priorities could impact execution (acquired October 2024)
Must shore up presignature features
Needs to automate linking of amendments to original contracts
Customers want more out-of-the-box reporting
Customers want project management features to assign and prioritize tasks
Customers want e-signature tool options

LinkSquares - Strong Performers

Pros:

Roadmap, vision, and innovation approach on par with others
Powerful AI automatically renames, type-classifies, and tags contracts based on language
Flat data structure with standard naming convention enhances ease, speed, and accuracy of analytics and search
Bulk import supports duplication detection
OCR recognizes handwritten notes
Salesforce integration allows contract requests and intake forms housed in CRM
Customers value self-service capabilities and flexibility
Superior customer service

Cons:

Primarily targets general counsel and legal operations at midmarket companies
Velocity of innovation appears to have slowed from early innovator status
Customer community program lags relative to others
Must regain innovation momentum and expand strategy beyond legal
Struggles with contract review and negotiation
No ability to bypass negotiations when counterparties accept terms
Continuous improvement features focus exclusively on efficiency, ignoring quality
Customers noted AI-based innovation no longer ahead of the market

Zycus - Strong Performers

Pros:

Excellent adoption due to ease of use and training quality and accessibility
Pricing model is detailed, transparent, and inclusive of most AI capabilities
Native genAI agent bundled into per-user cost structure
Ability to support data residency with flat implementation fee
Superior interoperability with flexible data model and iSaaS solution
AI Insights recommends process improvements and identifies recurring delays
Confidentiality setting can hide contracts from all users except general counsel
Robust security features adhere to best practices by default
M&A Synergizer feature identifies duplicate contracts from M&A
Customers confirmed ease of use and learning, high adoption

Cons:

Vision, innovation strategy, and roadmap on par but not differentiated
Roadmap overly focused on procurement users, counters goal of enterprise contracting
Weaknesses include legal operations support and contract creation
Customers want easier approval workflow
Customers want improved interoperability between iContract and iSupplier modules
Customers want timelier bug fixes

Coupa - Contenders

Pros:

Robust partner ecosystem
Engaged customer community
Vision on par with others
Preconfigured templates, workflow, and reporting for buy-side contracts
Ability to link procurement contracts to spend management
Generates secure email link to invite counterparties into contract
Solid product security and privacy features
Customers pleased with usability and ability to identify conflicting contracts and obligations with same counterparty

Cons:

Despite significant investment in R&D, innovation lags
Roadmap includes features others already have
Must fast-track genAI and prioritize features for sales and legal
Lack of AI capabilities
Limited features for sales and legal users
Minimal preconfigured integrations limit interest to existing Coupa customers
Limited integrations beyond own suite hinder adoption
Customers want better legal dashboard and feature parity across Coupa product suite
Customers universally highlighted need for better AI that works as advertised

Docusign - Contenders

Pros:

Strong name recognition and community
Partner ecosystem and pricing model on par
Legal Queue is unique, centrally consolidating legal requests
Contract digitization is on par
Conditional workflow triggers approvals based on standard and custom fields
Customers appreciate central contract repository and support for multiple approvals

Cons:

Continues to struggle to integrate recent acquisitions
Vision is uninspiring, viewing CLM as legal efficiency tool
Innovation focuses on IAM at expense of CLM where most customers reside
Roadmap lacks differentiation
No AI for workflow, workflow creation is painstaking
AI Insights only supports extraction in English
Reporting is difficult to execute and excludes obligations
To access latest features, customers must upgrade to new IAM platform
Customers cite reporting limitations, issues with custom workflows, support challenges, and poorly handled releases
Unclear whether Docusign plans to consolidate CLM and IAM platforms

GEP - Contenders

Pros:

Strong customer community including innovation advisory council
On-par adoption and commercial models
Takes product security and privacy seriously with preconfigured security settings aligned with industry best practices
Extensive documentation and attribute-based access controls
System suggests most effective prenegotiated language from previous contracts or standard templates
Can ingest third-party contracts for review
Supports obligation management with dashboard and AI-based extraction
Customers note price flexibility and willingness to partner to solve specific challenges
Customers praise visibility into spend by contracts

Cons:

Vision for CLM based on its products, not market's direction
Innovation is feature focused and lacks strategic direction
Roadmap is light on details and timelines
Messaging is specific to procurement and supply chain despite maintaining CLM for sales and legal
Configurability is limited
Light on tools and materials to train users
AI model must be trained for obligation extraction
Customers note shortcomings in AI accuracy
Customers note lack of real-time guidance and training
Configuration comes at extra cost

FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2025?

A: Agiloft, Icertis, Ironclad, Sirion

Q: What does "Leader" mean in Forrester Wave terms?

A: Leaders demonstrate excellence in both current offering and strategy. In the context of Forrester Wave evaluations, Leaders offer the strongest combination of product capabilities and strategic vision. They show strong execution across the evaluation criteria and maintain forward-thinking approaches to innovation and market direction. Leaders typically have mature products, robust partner ecosystems, engaged customer communities, and clear differentiation in key capabilities. They represent the top tier of vendors in the market evaluation.

Q: How do I interpret a Forrester Wave?

A: https://www.forrester.com/policies/forrester-wave-methodology/

Report:

Top Vendor Products for Contract Lifecycle Management Platforms in 2025

Contract Lifecycle Management Platforms Vendor Product Comparisons 2025

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FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2025?

Q: What does "Leader" mean in Forrester Wave terms?

Q: How do I interpret a Forrester Wave?

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