Even after more than four decades, e-mail remains the backbone of business communication. And IT knows this better than anyone. Eighty-nine percent of IT leaders say direct, one-to-one e-mail is essential, ranking it above collaboration tools and video conferencing platforms. But while systems have evolved, e-mail signatures still require manual handling that IT teams can’t afford.
That’s precisely what Exclaimer was built to solve.
We spoke to Vicky Wills, CTO at Exclaimer, about how the company started, the challenges IT teams are still facing and how Exclaimer is helping them take control.
Let’s start at the beginning. How did Exclaimer come to exist?
In the early 2000s, our founders worked at a software company where they kept receiving a recurring request from customers – a way to automate adding disclaimers to e-mails sent through Microsoft Exchange. Back then, Exchange didn’t support it, and there was no other way to do it. So, they set out to create a solution themselves.
By 2001, they created the first ever e-mail signature software. It gained traction quickly, and by 2003, demand had grown to the point where it became necessary to create a standalone company, Exclaimer.
We’ve evolved a lot since then, from providing on-premises software for Exchange to a cloud-first platform for Microsoft and Google e-mail services. But solving e-mail signature challenges has always been at the centre of what we do. What we offer is scalable because it works across organisations of any size. But even better is the fact that it’s built to deal with a common, yet complex task IT teams deal with regularly.
Why are e-mail signatures such a challenge for IT teams?
On the surface, it looks simple. You build a signature in your e-mail client like Outlook or apply it server-side through something like Microsoft 365. But the moment you need that signature to look consistent across different devices, e-mail clients and platforms, the real issues start.
Let’s say you’ve got a custom HTML signature. You’re going to need to send test e-mails back and forth to make sure it renders correctly. Using Microsoft 365? Then the signature will stack at the bottom of a thread. That means multiple signatures end up flooding a conversation. Google Workspace? You’re stuck working with strict character limits and a clunky editor.
Then you add rules into the mix, trying to make sure the right signature hits the right people. Suddenly you’ve created a complicated mess for yourself.
And if something breaks, you’re back to square one. That complexity eats time. Time that IT professionals just don’t have. In our recent State of Business Email 2025 report, 35% of IT leaders told us that e-mail signature management is one of their most time-consuming responsibilities. It’s the kind of repetitive task IT shouldn’t have to waste their time on, especially when they’re responsible for keeping the entire company running.
So why not just let employees manage their own signatures?
That causes even more chaos. At least with the earlier examples, IT has some control. Once you hand that control over to individual employees, suddenly everyone’s making their own tweaks. Fonts change. Logos vanish. Legal disclaimers get lost. Job titles become outdated before they hit send. And IT is left picking up the pieces.
Now, you might think IT can solve this by just sending around an approved template. But getting every employee to copy and paste it correctly is a long shot. Some won’t bother. Others will edit it. And asking IT to audit signatures across dozens or hundreds of inboxes? Not realistic.
So, without centralised control, e-mail signatures become a chore. And IT ends up spending time on a task that really offers no strategic value.
How does Exclaimer take these problems away?
With Exclaimer, all e-mail signature updates run from one centralised platform. IT sets the rules and owns the roll-out. There’s no need to rely on users or install anything locally. Updates go live automatically, so e-mail signatures stay consistent and compliant without the manual overhead.
Our platform’s drag-and-drop designer makes building templates straightforward, whether you’re managing contact blocks, banners or legal disclaimers. And with real-time previews, you can check how everything renders before deployment.
Once signatures are live, they look exactly the same no matter where an e-mail is sent from – desktop, laptop or mobile. It’s one less task for IT to worry about.
Can the platform tailor signatures for different audiences?
Absolutely. Exclaimer gives IT the flexibility to apply different templates for internal users, external recipients and even tailor them specifically for replies or certain departments.
You can assign templates using user attributes taken from Entra ID (Azure AD), Google Directory or Okta, and organise them into folders using rule-based access controls. That means you can ensure the right signature hits the right audience every time, without overcomplicating things on the backend.
We like to see this as flexibility with guardrails. This is exactly what IT teams need to stay in control without getting bogged down in the minutiae of constant updates.
How do teams beyond IT use Exclaimer?
From an IT perspective, one of the biggest benefits of using our platform is being able to hand over day-to-day e-mail signature updates to other departments like marketing without sacrificing control.
Let’s face it, marketing is usually the team driving the e-mail signature requests. This might be to refresh branding, launch new campaign banners or promote content through e-mail. But in most cases, IT are the only ones with the access and technical skill to implement those changes.
Exclaimer changes that. It lets marketing teams own visual and messaging elements that naturally fall within their remit, without ever needing access to sensitive systems. They get to build, preview and publish updates with IT not needing to be involved.
It also makes campaign execution faster. Marketing can quickly run time-sensitive promotions, swap banners by segment and launch product updates. And for IT, it means fewer support tickets and no manual work, meaning they can focus on more important projects.
Let’s talk security. What does Exclaimer do to keep customer data secure?
Security is the foundation of everything we do at Exclaimer. We recognised the importance of security, scalability and resilient service delivery from day one. As we built the Exclaimer platform, we knew it needed to meet the demands of data protection and global regulations like GDPR and CCPA right out of the gate.
Today, Exclaimer is hosted across 14 Microsoft Azure data centres spanning Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia. That’s more than all of our competitors, and our usage has scaled by over 2 500% in the past five years. This global footprint gives us the ability to deliver 99.9% availability, supported by 24/7 monitoring and 24/5 technical support.
We were the first e-mail signature solution to achieve the ISO/IEC 27001 certification – still the highest benchmark in cloud security – and we’ve added more credentials since, including SOC 2 Type II and Cyber Essentials.
What’s been new for Exclaimer in 2025?
Beyond improving the functionality and feature set of our platform, we’re dipping our toes into video branding. This will mark our first expansion into a new communication channel. With this release, we’re testing on whether we can turn Exclaimer into an omnichannel brand governance platform.
By using our expertise in brand protection and promotion, something we’ve been doing for years with business e-mail, we can deliver even more value to customers and differentiate ourselves from competitors.
Exclaimer’s been in this space a long time. What’s kept you ahead?
Even though we created the first e-mail signature solution nearly 25 years ago, it doesn’t guarantee we’ll always be the leader in this space. More competitors have appeared over the last decade, so we can never take our position for granted.
But what sets us apart is the depth of what we offer. We offer the most feature-rich experience that we say is built for IT, yet powerful for business. As of 2025, we deliver 20 billion e-mail signatures from 9 million e-mail accounts annually. Our customer retention rate is above 95%. And our CSAT consistently sits above 96%, far beyond the software industry average. So, when a company chooses Exclaimer, they tend to stay with us.
For IT teams looking to try Exclaimer, what’s the next step?
Exclaimer is proud to partner with Prodata, a leading value-added IT distributor, to deliver our solution across Africa and Europe. As one of our most trusted partners, Prodata is perfectly positioned to support those in South Africa wanting to try our e-mail signature management solution.
You can get a product demonstration by clicking here. You’ll then see how Exclaimer’s features simplify e-mail signature management and make it hassle-free.
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