Simplifile vs PPDocs

A national recording rail against a Texas law firm’s doc shop

Simplifile is an eRecording and collaboration network owned by ICE. PPDocs is a document preparation company wholly owned by Michael H. Patterson, P.C., a Texas law firm.

One moves paper to the courthouse and the other writes it. These two almost never reach the same shortlist.

The buyer who would hold both quotes is standing up a closing operation from nothing. That firm needs documents produced and then recorded.

Everyone else already owns one half of that problem.

Simplifile has belonged to ICE Mortgage Technology since 2020, beside Encompass and MERS. PPDocs answers to a single law firm owner.

Where the two genuinely collide

PPDocs sells eRecording as an add on service. That is where the products touch, and the overlap stops there.

PPDocs describes itself as an aggregator for counties accepting electronic recording. It does not name its recording partner on that page. Ask who actually sits behind the service before comparing coverage.

If PPDocs routes through Simplifile, the comparison collapses into a margin question. Ask directly rather than assuming.

PPDocs prints a recording price and ICE does not

PPDocs quotes $10 plus the county filing fee per successful transaction, with monthly billing. That number is published openly on its own site.

Simplifile publishes no pricing on its ICE pages. Ask for per submission cost, rejection fees and any monthly minimum. Ask whether failed submissions are billed.

ICE prices Simplifile through sales conversations only. A title shop recording thousands of documents a month should expect tiered pricing.

Coverage claims and how they are sourced

Simplifile says its network covers more than 90% of US residents. A sponsored HousingWire article from April 2023 cited over 2,400 counties. Both figures are vendor sourced and neither carries an audit.

PPDocs gives no county count at all. Any buyer with concentrated volume should test coverage county by county. A population percentage tells you nothing about the three counties where your loans close.

Simplifile says it eRecorded nearly 150 million land records over its history. That figure appeared in a 2021 ICE post and is now dated.

Document preparation exists on one side only

PPDocs prepares residential mortgage packages across all 50 states. It also handles construction, one time close, mechanics lien, master guidance line and loan modification documents. Its Express tier covers initial disclosures, TRID forms and Farmer Mac documents.

That tailoring is the reason community banks buy it. Non-secondary market and in-house loan structures are covered explicitly.

Simplifile prepares nothing. It transports, tracks and returns what someone else produced. Nobody replaces a document engine with a recording network.

PPDocs also sells hybrid and full eClosing, notarization capability and MERS eVault integration. Simplifile sells eSign and collaboration, not loan documents.

Neither vendor publishes a rating or review count on G2, Capterra or TrustRadius. Buyers should ask for reference customers of similar size instead.

Attorney review changes the buying question

PPDocs names staff attorneys on its site. Texas Attorney Legal Review is sold as its own service with a two to three hour turn. Review is a purchased line item, not a default on every file.

Simplifile has no equivalent. Recording rejections there are procedural, not legal opinions. A buyer worried about title insurability is asking a PPDocs question, not a Simplifile question.

PPDocs is wholly owned by that law firm, which cites more than 40 years of practice. Simplifile has belonged to ICE since 2019.

Which one to pick

A title agency, servicer or settlement firm recording at volume should buy Simplifile. A lender needing compliant consumer closing packages should buy PPDocs.

Ask Simplifile which counties in your footprint are live and what happens on a rejection. Ask PPDocs which eRecording network it routes through and whether the $10 fee applies to failed submissions.

A lender needing both should buy the document side first. Recording is easier to swap later than a document engine.

Also in this category

Also in this category: DocMagic vs Docutech and DocMagic vs Lightning Docs.