7 Myths About HotDocs (and Why So Many “Expert” Reviews Get It Wrong)

Summary:

HotDocs is one of the most powerful document automation tools on the market—but you wouldn’t know it from the online reviews. Many articles comparing HotDocs to newer solutions repeat the same tired myths: it's only for big firms, it’s too complex, it’s outdated. The catch? Most of those claims come straight from competitors’ marketing content, not real-world experience.

In this myth-busting post, we challenge seven of the most common misconceptions about HotDocs. Drawing from over a decade of hands-on experience—including helping small firms in New Zealand, Australia and the United States achieve enterprise-level automation—we explain what HotDocs really offers, where the criticisms fall short, and why trusting AI-generated comparisons without context could steer you wrong.

Introduction

I’m generally loving using Perplexity AI for research, and have come to trust a lot of what it tells me because it’s referenced back to credible sources on the internet.

However, I recently found reason to question its answers in one area, and more generally.

I was filling in some time and asked it how HotDocs (a document automation software that we use a lot) compares to another solution in the market.

It quickly came back with a number of common strengths and weaknesses that we regularly see cited about HotDocs. Because Perplexity is good at showing sources, I was interested to see where the information was coming from, and (perhaps naively) surprised that much of it was from fairly superficial reviews written by….. competitors of HotDocs!

Several of these competitors refer to the same concepts in very similar terms, suggesting that at least some of the content may have originated from the same sources.

By contrast, most of the information about the newer entrant was sourced from testimonials and other information on its own website.

I’ll certainly take more care to check AI generated answers in general, but there was also enough misleading information in what I read to justify a myth-busting blog post.

Here are the top 7 myths about HotDocs that are not correct:

Myth 1: HotDocs is only suitable for large law firms or enterprise teams with technical/developer resources:

While HotDocs has been successfully adopted by large corporates, such as banks and insurance companies – and is better suited to large-scale enterprise processes in those areas than purely “legal tech” solutions - it’s also very well suited to the needs of small law firms that are prevalent in smaller markets, such as New Zealand and Australia.

We have managed to overcome some of the challenges that smaller firms face in adopting technology - any technology, not just HotDocs - by agreeing our own publisher contract with HotDocs. This enables us to provide HotDocs solutions to our customers as a supported service through our own customer portal. We can provide a higher degree of customisation and support for the small local markets than customers can get directly, with lower costs through being able to pay to use the solution rather than set up and maintain it. Small firms can get the same outcomes as big firms, at costs aligned to their smaller volumes.

In any event, whether you license HotDocs directly or through a partner such as LawHawk, there is no greater need for separate developer resources than with other solutions. You get all the tools you need out of the box to automate and use HotDocs Advance.

If you do want developer support for integrations or other customisations, we recommend ProLegalTech, who we work with a lot. Again, you don’t need your own developer resources but can call on expertise and proven solutions as and when needed.

Myth 2: HotDocs has a steep learning curve and requires knowledge of proprietary scripting for advanced use.

Of all the criticisms of HotDocs, this one I struggle with the most.

We learned HotDocs ourselves, relying solely on the extensive training resources provided by HotDocs. The first document I automated in 2012 was a complex cash advance facility. The first document Allen did in 2016 was an ISDA. We were just lawyers who understood the documents and the outputs we wanted to see. If there was a steep learning curve, there’s no way we could have done this.

Now that we understand the product, we can do things better. However, from the outset, we were able to accomplish most of what we needed with simple IF – THEN – ELSE logic in a manner that many newer solutions on the market are not even capable of achieving (particularly having multiple levels of repeats).

Perplexity praises other tools for having a visual builder and word integration, but these are things that HotDocs also has. You can more easily read and understand a HotDocs word template than many other templates.

HotDocs Author has comprehensive guidance, which you can assess for yourselves here: https://help.hotdocs.com/author/current/HotDocs_Author_Overview.htm.

As with any software, including any of the Microsoft suite, if you are prepared to put in a bit of time, you can figure it out.

It’s also important to note that the premise of many alternative tools (that they are easier to learn and adopt) is based on a lack of advanced features. You may learn all of the product more quickly, but if you want to do more than basic automation, that’s when you will really appreciate the additional functionality that HotDocs offers, and which is absent in alternatives.

A lot of lawyers don’t actually want to become experts in automation. They want to use the software and get the benefits from it to grow their practice. Even the simpler solutions that marketed themselves heavily on a “you can do it all yourself” basis now offer professional services teams and partners to build solutions. The advantage of a market leading solution such as HotDocs is that there’s a larger number of HotDocs experts globally who can do the automation for you, or offer you assistance where needed.

Myth 3: HotDocs is only suitable for highly complex workflows and large-scale automation.

Because HotDocs is exceptional for the most complex workflows and can handle large-scale business processes that other solutions are not equipped to handle, it does not mean it cannot also produce simple documents.

It is also extremely fast to do simple documents.

One advantage of HotDocs’ licensing model is that you don’t pay extra for additional templates added, so once you have it, you may as well add as many documents as you can. The smaller documents that are used most frequently can often be the most valuable.

Once we have our customers set up, we enjoy being able to add additional templates of any complexity quickly.

Myth 4: HotDocs Template Management setup is time-intensive.

Again, I have no idea where this came from. We have a large number of templates stored in multiple HotDocs Author workspaces. These cover multiple customers and use cases, and I have never considered this a problem.

While the other solution was praised for being no-code, point-and-click, and featuring reusable automation objects, these are also true of HotDocs. A key to our ability to build new solutions so quickly and cost-effectively is that we reuse large chunks of pre-built HotDocs automation that has been tried and tested across multiple projects. We keep a lot of our automation components in a separate file and can copy them into new projects in seconds.

Myth 5: HotDocs doesn’t integrate

While Perplexity didn’t say HotDocs doesn’t have a tight integration with Microsoft Word, it made a big deal of the other solution’s deep Microsoft Word integration, but made no mention of HotDocs.

To be clear, one of the main advantages of HotDocs is that, as we build the template using the Word add-in, it constantly checks in real time for errors across all the Word templates within a package and lets us know if any errors are found. HotDocs’ capability in this area far exceeds the Word add-in offered by one of the competitors that Perplexity relied on for its evaluation.

HotDocs also has robust APIs and can integrate with other systems. We now offer an integration with ActionStep, for example through ProLegalTech – the developer mentioned above.

Myth 6: HotDocs is a legacy/desktop-based solution

This one was a very self-serving statement by a competitor solution, describing HotDocs as “Best for legacy document automation users”.

We’ve been working with HotDocs’ cloud solutions since 2015, and have been using the new HotDocs Advance cloud solution almost exclusively since 2019.

While many firms started with HotDocs on the desktop and haven’t made the upgrade, in my opinion, they should, and are long overdue. See our guide here: https://blog.lawhawk.nz/blog/how-to-migrate-from-hotdocs-classic-to-hotdocs-advance

Myth 7: HotDocs is expensive.

Perplexity says that HotDocs remains the most powerful solution, but expect a bigger upfront investment and ongoing maintenance. I’ve addressed some of the ways costs can be greatly reduced in Myth 1, but there’s a broader principle to focus on – value over cost.

There is no doubt that HotDocs is not the cheapest solution, but we believe it offers excellent value, where the extra benefits exceed any extra costs.

Last year, we conducted a thorough investigation for a customer, comparing HotDocs against another well-known document automation option that offered significantly lower pricing. The intention was to opt for the other solution if it could meet the needs, but it came up significantly shorter than we had expected, given its initial positioning.

There was no value in a cheaper solution that could only deliver the most basic documents and would take a lot longer to build. HotDocs was ultimately selected because the value of the outcomes it enables is so much superior.

In another use case, we regularly encounter larger organisations that plan to utilise the contract management modules in an ERP system, such as Oracle or SAP. One told me last week that they would be spending a lot more than my estimated $1m a year for it, but I believe it won’t generate documents as well as HotDocs can at a fraction of the cost. The far better option would be to integrate HotDocs, so that HotDocs can be prepopulated with existing data, and then documents and more complete data can be returned to the ERP.

Before making any assessment of cost, you need to assess value, the outcomes you need to achieve, and the real costs if you fail to achieve those outcomes because you’ve chosen the wrong software and support.

Of course, you may think that this article is no less objective than the ones I have criticised above. The key difference is that we do not have an exclusive relationship with HotDocs. It’s not our software, and we can work with any technology we want. You can see on our website that we work with a range of technologies and partners. These have different strengths – and weaknesses – that make them more suitable for particular situations. We regularly evaluate new technologies to determine if they are superior to the ones we currently use. If the other solutions were better than what we can do with HotDocs, we would be using them ourselves and telling everyone about it!

The source of the problem

It seems likely that one reason for the negative general perception of HotDocs in these results is the numerous published articles that contrast their solutions with HotDocs as the market leader. You can do a Google search yourself for “HotDocs alternatives” to see how many there are. These guides, being published by newer-entrant competitors seeking to position themselves as “like HotDocs but better”, of course focus on the perceived negatives, but also repeat and amplify each other’s comments on the same points.

Perplexity’s Response

I thought it would be interesting to get Perplexity’s response to my suggestion of inaccuracy and unfairness, so I uploaded a draft of this post with the prompt “Please read the attached draft blog post I have written. How would you respond to the suggestion that Perplexity's evaluation of HotDocs vs a competitor ([Name of competitor]) was inaccurate and unfair to HotDocs?”

It responded:

“The suggestion that Perplexity’s evaluation of HotDocs versus [Competitor Name] was inaccurate and unfair to HotDocs raises several important points about the limitations and potential biases in AI-generated product comparisons, especially in niche markets like legal document automation.

Key points in response:

• Source Quality and Bias: Your blog post correctly highlights that much of the information surfaced by Perplexity came from competitor-authored reviews or marketing content, which are inherently biased. This is a known risk in AI-generated research: when objective, third-party analysis is scarce, large language models often rely on the most readily available online content—even if it’s promotional or adversarial. In the legal tech space, where competitors frequently publish “comparison” articles to position themselves against incumbents like HotDocs, this can skew perceptions and lead to the repetition of myths or exaggerated weaknesses.
• Depth vs. Superficiality: Your observation that Perplexity’s evaluation leaned on “superficial reviews” is valid. AI tools can summarize what’s most visible online, but they may not adequately reflect the practical realities experienced by experts and daily users. As you note, many of the supposed weaknesses of HotDocs (such as steep learning curve, lack of integrations, or being suitable only for large firms) are not borne out in practice, especially when the software is implemented by knowledgeable partners or through tailored service models.
• Feature Parity and Misconceptions: You point out that many features praised in competitors—such as visual builders, Microsoft Word integration, or reusable automation components—are also present in HotDocs, but often omitted or downplayed in competitor-authored reviews. This selective comparison can mislead readers unfamiliar with the product’s full capabilities.
• Value vs. Cost: The perception that HotDocs is expensive or only for large enterprises is challenged by your real-world examples, showing how value and outcomes should be the primary focus, not just upfront costs. This nuance is often lost in generic online comparisons.
• The Role of Expertise: You correctly note that, in practice, few lawyers want to become automation experts themselves, regardless of the tool’s theoretical ease-of-use. The availability of a global community of HotDocs experts and partners is a significant advantage that’s often overlooked in online reviews.

In summary:

Perplexity’s evaluation was not intentionally unfair, but it was limited by the nature and quality of available online sources. In markets where competitors dominate the online conversation, AI-generated answers can reflect and amplify these biases. Your blog post provides valuable myth-busting and context that is missing from most online summaries, and highlights the need for prospective buyers to seek input from independent experts with hands-on experience across multiple platforms—not just rely on AI or SEO-driven web content.

If challenged on accuracy or fairness, it’s appropriate to acknowledge these limitations and emphasize the importance of consulting practitioners who have implemented both solutions in real-world environments. This approach ensures a more balanced and nuanced evaluation than what’s possible from AI alone.”

If you’d like an expert opinion on the best options for your situation and a fair comparison of the options, we can provide a quick assessment that will help you avoid costly mistakes. Get in touch any time.