ContractSafe vs. ContractWorks: Which CLM Delivers Better Value for In-House Counsel

The contract management landscape has seen a growth in innovation 2025. Where previously firms could only choose from expensive enterprise CLM software or a basic contract repository, AI, cloud storage, and other technology advancements have made large firm capabilities possible for less. This is clear when comparing ContractSafe and ContractWorks. If you’re looking for a CLM with a lower starting price, an advanced feature set, and a commitment to innovation, ContractSafe is the best option. 

For years, ContractSafe and ContractWorks competed as simple, affordable alternatives to heavy enterprise CLMs. But as innovation redefines contract management, the space between both tools has widened.

ContractWorks, acquired by Onit in 2022, has seen only incremental updates, primarily focused on auto-tagging improvements, template automation, and API connectivity. While functional, its pace of innovation hasn't kept up with modern CLM expectations — especially for in-house legal teams who need scalability, speed, and cross-department adoption.

ContractSafe, however, has leveraged the Intelligent Age to become a full contract lifecycle management platform with AI-powered search enhancements, in-app contract editing, Word integration, automated review workflows, and a rapidly expanding suite of AI-driven capabilities.

For legal teams evaluating long-term value, the key question is simple:

Do you want a platform that’s actively innovating, or one being absorbed into an enterprise ecosystem with a more uncertain standalone future?

ContractSafe and ContractWorks are two popular CLM software options for in-house legal teams moving off spreadsheets and shared drives. Both offer centralized storage, basic automation, and an easier way to manage renewals and obligations.

But they differ in several areas that matter deeply to legal teams: ease of onboarding, search accuracy, AI capabilities, pricing structure, and pace of innovation (especially in light of ContractWorks’ acquisition by Onit).

In short:

• ContractWorks is simple and quick to set up, but it relies heavily on manual tagging, has a dated UI, and now sits within a larger enterprise ecosystem with an uncertain standalone future.

• ContractSafe offers a more modern UI, faster company-wide adoption, unlimited users, practical AI built in, affordable pricing, faster implementation, and a clearer roadmap designed specifically for lean legal teams.

This comparison gives in-house counsel the clarity they need to choose a CLM that aligns with workflow, budget, and long-term goals.

ContractSafe vs. ContractWorks: What CLM Performs Best?

For many in-house teams, the CLM decision often comes down to ContractSafe vs. ContractWorks. Both tools solve the foundational problems: centralizing contracts, reducing risk, eliminating missed renewals, and getting teams out of shared drives. Both platforms provide an affordable option when compared to traditional enterprise CLMs.

But as legal teams evolve, so do their needs. Search accuracy, visibility, reporting consistency, pricing transparency, and AI maturity increasingly shape buying decisions. And with ContractWorks owned by Onit, many legal departments are evaluating how stable its roadmap will be over the next several years.

While evaluating a CLM takes many factors into consideration, ContractSafe comes out ahead across categories, including features, ease of use, innovation, AI, and implementation.

ContractSafe vs. ContractWorks: What Each Platform Is Known For

ContractSafe is known for providing simple, affordable, and user-friendly contract management software that helps businesses organize contracts, track key dates, and manage workflows without the typical complexity or high costs of enterprise systems. As the platform has evolved, it now features:

• Clean, modern UI with fast adoption

• A user-friendly design so that legal, operations, and admin teams get value immediately

• Fast, accurate search across keywords and understanding natural language

• An AI chat that answers questions about your contract

• AI contract reviews that automatically identify risks, obligations, and non-standard clauses

• In-app editing and Word integrations for seamless contract workflows

• Unlimited users included

• Clear, contract-volume-based pricing

• Human-in-the-loop AI for metadata extraction and search

• Secure repository with audit trails, user permissions, date tracking, and versioning

• “Easy everything” CLM: minimal setup, minimal IT involvement

ContractWorks provides simple, affordable, and user-friendly contract management software that also helps small teams organize contracts, track dates, and manage workflows without the typical complexity or costs of an enterprise system. Part of Onit, the ContractWorks roadmap is increasingly influenced by enterprise-level priorities

ContractWorks Is Known For:

• Simple interface designed for basic contract storage and management

• Very fast initial implementation

• Tag-centric contract organization, with tags playing a central role in structured search, filtering, and reporting

• OCR and keyword search included, with structured reporting dependent on consistent tagging

• Strong customer support reputation

• Unlimited users, but only 10 e-signature licenses included on the base plan

• A UI that feels older compared to newer, modern CLM platforms

Together, these differences set the stage for how each tool performs in real workflows.

ContractSafe vs. ContractWorks: Feature-by-Feature Comparison

If you're an in-house counsel moving off spreadsheets or evaluating your current CLM, you're probably looking at ContractSafe and ContractWorks. Both claim to be "simple, affordable alternatives to enterprise CLM. 

But here’s what matters: one platform is actively building features for teams like yours, while the other is now part of a larger enterprise suite with an uncertain standalone future.

When comparing base features head-to-head, it can seem like ContractSafe and ContractWorks achieve the same goals. But small details set them apart. While ContractWorks is known for its out-of-the-box setup, many reviewers note there is a steep learning curve. Both platforms provide some level of data and reporting, but ContractWorks relies on dense tables that can be hard to manage.

Here are the basics:

👥 What This Means for Your Team

ContractSafe delivers more day-to-day value with significantly less effort. Its modern UI, auto-extracted fields, AI search, and built-in automation mean teams spend less time tagging, maintaining templates, or troubleshooting searches — and more time actually reviewing contracts.

With ContractWorks, someone on your team needs to manually tag every contract, maintain tagging templates, and retag documents if your system changes. If tagging isn’t perfect, your search and reporting can fall apart 

Quick Take: ContractSafe works immediately with minimal setup, leading to broader company-wide adoption. ContractWorks requires building and maintaining a tagging infrastructure that can become a second job.

RELATED READ: 16 Best Contract Management Software: Ultimate 2026 Buyer's Guide

Which CLM is easier to implement?

If your team hates the interface, they’re never going to use the platform — that’s the truth. When it comes to turning on a system, these are the factors that will keep your team from bashing their keyboard in frustration.

ContractSafe is faster to implement because AI metadata extraction and search work from day one. While ContractWorks offers AI-assisted extraction, user reviews consistently report accuracy issues that require ongoing manual review and correction.

🏁 What This Means for Implementation

ContractSafe gets your organization productive dramatically faster. Because metadata extraction, search, and reminders work out of the box, teams can migrate and start using the system in days — without IT, custom templates, or heavy configuration.

ContractWorks is also quick to get up and running, but long-term usability still depends on building and maintaining a tagging structure. While the platform offers AI-assisted metadata extraction, user feedback indicates that extracted tags often require manual review and ongoing cleanup to ensure accuracy for reporting and search.

That means more hands-on work, more training, and more administrative oversight as contract volume grows. For stretched in-house teams without dedicated legal ops support, that ongoing maintenance is often the deciding factor.

Which CLM Has More Advanced AI & Automation?

AI won’t be taking your job, but it can make it easier. If CLMs save you from scaling a mountain of file cabinets, AI helps you turn those contracts from static documents into living, searchable, intelligent business assets that drive strategy, not headaches.

ContractSafe has launched extensive AI updates in 2025 and is looking to continue improving. Where ContractWorks does offer AI meta extraction, users report it still requires manual review.  

✨ What This Means for AI Capabilities

ContractSafe gives legal teams AI that works immediately — without additional tools, configurations, or dependencies. Extraction, search, reminders, and AI chat are all built in, accurate, and easy for the entire org to adopt.

ContractWorks is part of Onit’s broader legal operations portfolio, alongside tools for spend management, document automation, e-signature, and matter management. While ContractWorks includes AI features like AI-assisted tagging/metadata extraction within the ContractWorks product today, its roadmap will naturally be shaped within Onit’s wider platform strategy and unified legal ops ecosystem. 

For legal teams evaluating CLM platforms, this creates an important planning question: do you want a CLM that stays focused on lightweight, standalone workflows — or one that may increasingly emphasize cross-platform alignment as part of a broader suite?

ContractSafe takes a different approach, delivering practical AI features like natural-language search and in-app AI assistance directly within the CLM, without requiring separate modules or ecosystem adoption to get day-to-day value.

RELATED READ: Contract Lifecycle Management in 2025: How AI is Changing the Game

How Does Search & Visibility Stack Up?

Of course, you would never fail to tag something — but on the off chance you’re less than perfect, search and visibility is what saves your team stress and time. A robust search functionality and easy-to-see data are vital to a growing organization.

ContractSafe uses AI tools to make search as seamless as possible, including natural language search, boolean operators, and filtering capabilities.

🔎 What This Means for Visibility

ContractSafe is designed so visibility doesn’t fall apart the moment tagging slips. AI-powered search, OCR, and automatic metadata extraction make it easy to find what you need, even when tagging isn’t flawless.

While they do offer keyword search, ContractWorks is more tag-dependent. Search and reporting rely heavily on consistent tags, which can create more work as teams grow and the repository expands.

Quick Take: Both platforms offer keyword search and filtering. ContractSafe adds two powerful capabilities that ContractWorks lacks: natural language search for conversational queries and Boolean operators for precise searches. This means you can find contracts faster and more accurately without depending on perfect tagging.

Comparing Pricing & Total Value

Let’s get down to brass tacks. No software platform gets used if you can’t fit it in the budget. While sometimes a higher price tag means more features, more often than not, you need to dig deeper. 

Both ContractSafe and ContractWorks offer a volume-based pricing model that expands with growth. However, ContractSafe offers unlimited users with no caveats for all plans. ContractWorks offers unlimited seats with a starting price, but only 5 e-signature licenses, which severely limits usability for larger teams. 

💰 What This Means for Your Budget

ContractSafe stays affordable as you grow because the whole model is designed for scale — unlimited users, predictable pricing, and zero “surprise, that’s extra” add-ons. You don’t need to buy more seats, bolt on extra modules, or hire someone just to babysit tags. While there are optional advanced features for an additional price, ContractSafe provides real value up front. 

ContractWorks costs more and offers less right out of the box, requiring ongoing manual tagging upkeep and admin effort that can cause total cost and complexity to grow quickly as teams scale. By the time you factor in that overhead, many in-house teams find that ContractSafe delivers far more value with significantly less headache.

RELATED READ: How to Choose the Right Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Software: The Ultimate Checklist

Which Platform Is Investing in Innovation?

When you onboard with a company, it’s hopefully for a long time — who wants to learn a new platform year after year? Paying attention to a company’s roadmap and vision means you’re choosing the right platform for today and tomorrow. 

ContractSafe is committed to creating a modern, scalable CLM solution that provides the powerful features you need to solve real-world problems. 

☑️ What This Means for Long-Term Confidence

ContractSafe gives legal teams a stable, future-ready CLM that’s actually growing with them. Our roadmap continues to accelerate, with new AI, workflow, and editing features rolling out throughout 2025 — all designed with mid-market in-house teams in mind. Over the past year, we launched Smart Search, AI Chat, AI Contract Review, In-App Editing, Word Integration, expanded AI extracted fields,  upgraded e-sign flows, Contract Lifecycle Tracking, and redesigned contract pages — and we’re not slowing down. 

ContractWorks is still a functional tool, but its direction is now shaped by Onit’s broader enterprise priorities. That usually means fewer mid-market-friendly updates, slower product velocity, and a higher chance that the product becomes one piece of a bigger suite rather than a standalone focus.

For legal teams planning the next 3–5 years, ContractSafe delivers a lot more predictability — and a lot more momentum.

Which CLM Is Best for In-House Counsel?

ContractSafe is the better choice for mid-size in-house teams that need broad, cross-functional adoption. We deliver AI you can trust, search that actually finds what you need, and easy implementation that works for Legal, Operations, Procurement, and Finance—all at a price that makes sense for growing organizations.\

Why Teams Choose ContractSafe:

• AI That Helps (Including AI Contract Review): All our AI features are built to support real work—not just to say “we have AI.” AI-powered extraction, contract review, search, reminders, and AI chat are built in, accurate, and designed to be easy for the entire organization to adopt.

• Search That Finds What You Need: ContractSafe offers multiple ways to search your contracts, including keyword search, OCR-powered full-text search, filtering, and natural language queries where applicable, so users can find what they need using the method that works best for them.

• Easy to Get Started, Easy to Use: Because metadata extraction, search, and reminders work out of the box, teams can migrate and start using the system in days.

• CLM Without the Complexity: We believe your CLM should deliver complex results without being hard to use. We focus on an intuitive UI and a modern workflow, which means anyone can use the system.  

• Affordable Pricing That Scales With You: We want you to have what you need. Unlimited seats are available immediately, while volume-based pricing means costs grow at your pace. While there are optional advanced features for an additional price, ContractSafe provides real value up front.

Choose ContractSafe if you want:

• A modern, intuitive interface

• Faster onboarding with less configuration

• Unlimited users

• More accurate search, better visibility, and stronger automation

• Practical AI built in

• Predictable pricing as your team grows

• A stable roadmap designed specifically for in-house counsel

  

RELATED READ: Your 2026 Guide to the Best Contract Lifecycle Management Software Features

A Smarter Path to Long-Term CLM Value

Both platforms aim to simplify contract management, but they do so in different ways.

ContractWorks is a lightweight, straightforward tool for basic needs, especially for very small teams with static workflows.

ContractSafe, however, is built for legal teams that need easy adoption, better search, more automation, unlimited users, and a CLM that scales without adding administrative burden.

For most in-house counsel evaluating value over time, ContractSafe offers a modern, dependable, and future-ready path without complexity, heavy onboarding, or hidden costs.

See how ContractSafe simplifies contract lifecycle management.
Book a demo to explore AI-powered search, automated workflows, unlimited users, and fast implementation — all in one easy-to-use platform.

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