
HelloFax (YC W11): Sign And Send Faxes From Your Browser, Without The Hassle - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/21/yc-funded-hellofax-sign-and-send-faxes-from-your-browser-without-the-hassle/
======
pg
YC has switched over to HelloFax and we love it. With 250 companies we have to
deal with a _lot_ of faxes, because every later funding round or acquisition
means we have to sign stuff. So not having to deal with actual paper faxes
makes a big difference for us.

~~~
cabinguy
I dont' want to come off as a naysayer - I can see this taking off - but I do
have some real questions. Maybe someone can enlighten me.

Don't you keep hard copies of these documents? Just wondering. For us, if it
requires a signature, we usually need a hard copy (original) for our records.

Since we are printing it out (or receiving via fax in the first place), it
seems just as easy to walk over to our $40 fax machine and send it (via our
$9/mo Vonage fax line).

I am sure I am missing something here.

~~~
pg
No, we just use Dropbox.

~~~
icode
If Dropbox looses your data, all company documents are gone? Or just all faxes
you sent?

~~~
kingsidharth
There is no end to what if's.

What if Dropbox screws up? Data is gone!

What if your building catches fire? Those documents will burn with pleasure!

What if your hard-drive decides to get a heart-attack [crash]?

What if world ends?

Paper is so 90s thing. Even in offices, yes.

~~~
Splines
Don't be silly. It's reasonable to plan for disaster scenarios, especially in
this case where it's something important, and the probability of disaster is
unknown. Do you look both ways across the street, even if you have the walk
sign?

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allangrant
I love HelloFax. Really, I do. Started using it a few weeks ago, and
discovered undocumented features that were EXACTLY what I wanted. Before when
I ran a web dev company I had to sign contracts all the time, and this was my
process: save from email -> word -> enter text / insert image (signature) ->
print to pdf -> efax. Now I can do it via HelloFax in about 1 minute.

~~~
old-gregg
+1 We got a chance to use HelloFax very early on, and we never actually sent
any taxes - we were using it to sign documents: vastly superior to my old way
of scan&convert to PNG, open in Gimp, paste my signature, merge layers,
convert to PDF... Ughh. So it's not just about faxing.

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jasonkester
So the only thing that differentiates it from the thousand-odd online fax
services that have been around since the 90s is that it lets you skip the
"photoshop my signature onto this image" step?

I'd say this would be a tough business to be in, unless of course you had the
schmooze power of YC behind you. Amazing how that can transform a site like
this that would otherwise live out its life in a little crack on the 3rd page
of Google for "online fax" into a viable business.

(I suppose it also helps if all your competitors stop improving their products
in 1998.)

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dirtae
As co-founder of an online fax service[1], I'll be watching HelloFax closely.
It's a mature market, but most of the existing players are crappy, so I think
there's a big opportunity here. It's a difficult marketing problem, though.
AdWords advertising for fax related keywords is very expensive, and there are
services out there that offer completely free faxes (even if they are
cluttered with ads). Perhaps the signing functionality offered by HelloFax
will give them enough differentiation to generate good word-of-mouth
awareness.

[1] <https://www.faxfresh.com/>

~~~
nhebb
_Perhaps the signing functionality offered by HelloFax will give them enough
differentiation_

I think the editing capability is key. The signature feature might work for a
device with a stylus but is difficult with a mouse. I opened up an image
editor and wrote my signature with a mouse. The result wasn't legible (at
all), and more importantly, it didn't match what I consider to be my legal
signature. So users would probably need access to a scanner to upload the
signature image.

~~~
guiseppecalzone
Hey nhebb, Joseph here, co-founder of HelloFax. Check out the third option for
signing, which is taking a picture of your signature and emailing it to
sign@hellofax.com. Then, we automatically place it on top of your document.
That skips the scanner :)

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100k
Yes, a thousand times, yes. This is great, I hate having to dig up a fax
machine when I want to fax something. Unless I can find one at an office, I
have to go to Kinkos, because I don't even have a phone line.

~~~
hartror
Every time someone asks me to fax I have this same problem. Though it is
normally a paper form someone has given me to fax, and without a scanner I
would still be stuck.

~~~
tomjen3
I am terribly sorry but due to the need to get a green image my company has
forbidden the use of paper. It's totally stupid but my boss is a complete
environment nut and I could get into real trouble if I broke the rules.

I sorry the fax machine is busted. We are required to attempt to have it fixed
before we can get a new one, but the repair guy won't get here until Monday.

Big companies do stupid stuff all the time. Take advantage of this.

~~~
hartror
Sure that would cover 1% of the reasons I have to fax. Normally I am dealing
with someone like a real estate agent or a government department or something
I have to have witnessed etc I can't do that.

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yarone
Just a comment on HelloFax.com: the headline says "Throw away your fax
machine!"

I don't have a fax machine. I'd guess lots of visitors don't either. Just
saying, maybe there's a better headline to be written.

Good luck guys, efax is terrible!

~~~
robryan
Possibly they could go with something along the lines of "Never have to find a
fax machine again", as I see it useful for when your dealing with some large
company one off with crazy old processes that require you to fax something
through.

~~~
nickconfer
How about "Goodbye Fax Machine, HelloFax!"

I know... way too corny and confusing :)

~~~
fuzzythinker
I upvoted you, but that won't let others know which part of your comment I
liked (the "Goodbye Fax Machine, HelloFax!" part), hence this reply.

~~~
nickconfer
ha, thanks. I'll leave out my opinion on my own slogan idea next time.

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JunkDNA
This is great. I have a fax/printer/scanner at home for this purpose, but I am
lucky if I send 5 faxes a year. Plus, if I ever drop the landline, it won't
work. I really like the idea of paying per fax. None of the subscription
services make sense for a casual user. Good luck HelloFax.

~~~
euroclydon
If the casual user has to ever receive a fax, then I don't see how to get
around a subscription, after all, you have to have your own fax number to
receive a fax, right? There isn't some technology by which users could share a
number and use an extensions as a discriminator, right?

~~~
corin_
Sure there is, as long as the reciever can give instructions to the sender. It
wouldn't be too hard to OCR a customer number.

Or, more likely, very short term number rental. Pay $1.95 to be able to
recieve faxes on a particular number for a period of an hour.

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cmer
If you could allow me to receive fax with the same kind of pricing, that'd be
awesome.

Whenever someone ask me for my fax number, I start sweating. It rarely
happens, but when it happens, I'm stuck.

Let me buy a "disposable" fax number for 12-24 hours for $2. I don't want to
pay monthly for something that I rarely use, but I'd be happy to pay a flat
fee to receive a document.

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johnrob
This is a very crowded and somewhat mature space, which makes for an
interesting marketing problem. I'd love to hear about how you guys approach it
in some future blog posts!

~~~
thenbrent
For starters, their marketing strategy included:

\- not requiring a 37 step signup process

\- not requiring a user to choose between a dozen different monthly plans
_before_ being able to sign-up

\- not requiring a monthly subscription just to test and send the odd fax

It's been a while since I looked at the available options, but the few I
previously evaluated required far too much overhead to make them effective.

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jtagen
Little misleading... it says "throw away your fax machine" but has no support
for receiving faxes.

I'd love to use a service like this, even at $1.99 per fax, but without
receive support (so sad that companies sign first and want to fax to you) it's
no good to me....

~~~
pg
That's coming very soon, I believe. I just nagged them to launch when they had
a quantum of utility.

~~~
burnout1540
Yep, that's coming very soon! We'll keep HN updated :-)

~~~
catch23
Are you using freeswitch to send & receive faxes? I've been using it for
almost 6 months now and it feels much more robust than asterisk's system.

~~~
guiseppecalzone
Hey, we're actually using Asterisk. Out of curiousity, what are you using your
fax server for?

~~~
catch23
we use it to send & receive faxes because we don't want to buy a fax machine
:-)

I have a small 50 line ruby script that converts attachments from emails into
outgoing faxes, and a 10 line ruby script that converts incoming faxes into
emails with a pdf attachment.

You should try freeswitch instead -- the rxfax thing from Asterisk would
sometimes truncate incoming faxes. Not sure why.

------
leek
If you're like me and looked to cancel your eFax subscription, here is the
related URL: <https://www.efax.com/cancelLiveChat.html>

------
il
Congrats on the launch! HelloFax is a fantastic product, and an excellent
example of launching an MVP when you have just enough features to make some
group of users very happy.

The ability to sign documents within the app alone has been an incredible time
saver. It makes you think "How is this not the default way to send faxes yet?"

------
damoncali
This is awesome. Now if we could just get people to accept these electronic
signatures reliably, things would be golden.

Yes, I'm talking to you, Wells Fargo.

~~~
burnout1540
That's one of the problems we solve. That's a big differentiator between us
and other electronic signature companies. With HelloFax, the other party
doesn't have to accept electronic signatures - just faxes.

We've actually used HelloFax ourselves to fax Wells Fargo.

~~~
damoncali
Yes - it just occurred to me after I wrote that that my good friends at Wells
probably would never have known...

Good stuff. This is a major annoyance for me.

------
kevingao1
Congrats guys - huge moment and just a sign of bigger things to come

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dctoedt
Not to be a downer, but this brings to mind Fred Wilson's warning the other
day about bridge-technology startups: "Most of the time they do really well
while the transition pain [from old- to new technology] is high but once most
individuals and enterprises have made the change, their business slowly
disappears." <http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/02/bridge-technologies.html>

~~~
burnout1540
We plan on bringing some innovation to the electronic signature side of this
as well. We won't be resting on on laurels. :-)

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ylem
Will you guys have an API? Also I guess the problem for the infrequent user
who wants to receive a fax is the id problem...Say for example that I want
state farm to fax me a document. If you go with a pool approach and match by
phone # expected, then there could be interceptions. The safest way seems to
be to have a dedicated # (if it were always from a savvy source, you could
have them post a unique code that you could ocr to identify, but you can't
rely on that for the general case)....How much does it cost for that? The
other difficulty is what happens if I use the service, get my state farm fax
and stop using the service. If the number is then recycled, then if state farm
decides to fax me something else without notifying me, it then goes to someone
else (and may have data in it)...A difficult problem. Good luck!

------
jabrams2003
These guys really identified a pain point. This is hands down the most useful
application I've used.

------
Sandman
Really one of the most useful startups I've seen in a while. I would
definitely use their service.. but, unfortunately, I usually need to send
faxes to non-US numbers and that is, at this moment, still not supported.
Still, great job, you guys, I wish you all the luck!

------
mahmoudimus
Everytime I have to fax something, it used to be such a huge hassle.

Here's the heuristic:

1\. Find the nearest Kinko's/FedEx Store

2\. Find my old or get another Kinko's card Kinko's/FedEx Store card

3\. Put 1 dollar on it

4\. Fax for $0.25

Two or three months later, repeat the same process.

HelloFax is a great example of a solution to serious pain point.

Good luck and congratulations!

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aymeric
Hey guys, I love how each page has a clear goal. I'd suggest to add a call to
action at the end of this page: <http://www.hellofax.com/content/learnMore>

~~~
guiseppecalzone
You absolutely right. I think in our rush to launch, we missed out on some
important polish.

------
yayitswei
We used HelloFax to sign our incorporation documents- was a real timesaver!

------
steve918
What's a fax? Wasn't that my grandmother's email provider or something?

~~~
rokhayakebe
My company spent maybe $1500 last year in fax marketing.

~~~
ck2
Isn't fax spam illegal in the USA? Or are you elsewhere?

~~~
rokhayakebe
Legal loopholes.

------
mcculley
D'oh. I was excited that I might actually be able to throw out my fax machine.
I just sent a fax through HelloFax and the service seems to be very useable. I
went through the interface trying to figure out how to add a credit card to my
account and determine how expensive the service is. But they don't have
pricing yet.

My small business uses Packetel for incoming fax-to-email and a real fax
machine for outgoing faxes. I would love to get rid of the fax machine and the
stupid copper phone line it requires.

------
ylem
All I have to say is, Thank God! I look forward to using this the next time I
have to deal with sending a fax. And once you can receive faxes and do
everything in one place...For the dedicated fax #, do you have any plans to do
this for infrequent users who don't need a regular #?

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niccolop
I used hellofax recently for the first time, much better than pamfax, and no
hidden charges like efax.

------
jlgosse
Amazing looking service. However, there's a typo on the "About us" page, which
I thought I'd bring to your attention.

"Joseph Walla Enterepeneur with a soft spot for the public sector."

Good luck with everything though, you guys are going to kill it.

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Groxx
I love how this could essentially be used as a way to bypass physical
signatures which are still required by some painfully-useless laws. I shall
keep this in mind if I'm ever required to fax something.

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RK
I have previously used the subscription-less <http://payperfax.com>

Anything I should know to make me use hellofax? (20 free faxes is definitely a
nice start!)

~~~
burnout1540
We're great for when you need to fill-out or sign a document. You can upload
it (we support all common file types), sign it, fill it in, and fax it within
minutes. Much faster than printing, signing, and scanning.

I hope you get to give it a try soon. Let us know what you think!

~~~
gst
Is it possible to print directly to the fax service? That's what we've did
once for a very similar service: Provide a server using the Internet Printing
Protocol (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Printing_Protocol>) that
clients configure as remote printer (this works fine in Windows and Linux, we
didn't test OS X at this time). The things that a user has printed are stored
in an "outbox", where the user can just click on an item and specify where it
should be sent. The advantage of this method is that you don't need the upload
step and that you are able to support any application (without requiring users
to convert the data to PDF first).

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d0m
You know the "Try it" in the learn more section, I found it a little bit
annoying that it takes you to the homepage instead of back to the learn more
section.

~~~
burnout1540
Yep, I hear you. It was a late addition to the site and we didn't have time to
fix the issue. We'll fix it soon :-)

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sandipagr
signed up for the 20 free fax! would last me a lifetime :)

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nailer
Aren't web to fax gateways a 'bridge technology' as recently discussed
(interms of avoiding investment) on HN?

Ie, immediate use, dwindling long term prospects?

------
6ren
Will it send faxes internationally, i.e. outside the states?

As a specific example, if I'm in Australia, and I want to send a fax locally,
can I use HelloFax?

~~~
burnout1540
Unfortunately, not yet. But we do have an eye on the international market and
would love to support faxing internationally.

~~~
maguay
It will work to send a fax to a US number from another country, right? I only
need to send 2-3 faxes a year, and currently do it from a dial-up modem on an
ancient computer over my US VoIP line that I have overseas. I very rarely need
to receive faxes, so sending is all I'd need. This would really take the pain
out of those occasional faxes!

~~~
burnout1540
Yes, you can send a fax to a US number no matter where you are located.

------
quickpost
Have you figured out your pricing yet? It bothered me that I couldn't find any
pricing info before signing up for the service....

------
jefe78
You have a typo on your sign-up page:

"Get 20 fax fages free"

Otherwise, cool idea.

~~~
burnout1540
Nice catch! Thanks!

Fixed.

~~~
kefs
great job guys! btw.. another typo at the bottom of the learn more page "now
do do both".

~~~
burnout1540
Thanks for catching that! Clearly we need to be checking our copy more
carefully.

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davidmurphy
Congrats! This is awesome. Looks like a GREAT idea and looks like you executed
really well. High five!

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edna_piranha
thank god i don't have to worry about buying that blasted fax machine!

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alienreborn
Neither did I send any faxes in the last few years nor did I use any other
online fax services, so I refrain from commenting about your site but please
do change the favicon to your site logo. :)

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nhangen
It will take a lot of work to steal me from Faxzero.

~~~
burnout1540
We've built the editor/signature tool to try and add value. Are there any
other features you'd like to see that might persuade you to switch over?

~~~
nhangen
You know what - I concede. I had a 2nd look, and I don't think I fax more than
20 pages per year, and with your editor, there is zero reason not to use you
over faxzero.

I'll have to test out the validation process, but on _2nd_ glance, it looks
good.

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ditojim
does it have google docs integration like echosign?

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mkramlich
faxing? talk about early adopter!

