

Introducing the HelloSign API: Hassle-free eSignatures (YC W11) - guiseppecalzone
http://www.hellosign.com/info/api

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anandkulkarni
Wow! This might have deeper implications than you imagine.

Have you guys thought about the outcomes for ballot initiatives, or for
enterprise sales?

In particular, this kind of tech might have a disruptive impact on the
initiative process in California (which costs around $1M-10M in signature-
gathering costs to bring something to the voters), and on the enterprise sales
cycle (which involves exchange of PDFs between multiple parties, at a lower
conversion rate than a streamlined web process).

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gojomo
I doubt a cheaper, easier system for filling the California ballot with
propositions will improve things.

(There's a good case much of the current budget mess and general non-
accountability of elected officials is the result of constraints added by
prior populist initiatives.)

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sgrove
This looks awesome, and something we'd love to have in Zenbox. To that end,
just two requests:

1.) Any chance of OAuth support? Our users are in general not technical, and
in any case they all appreciate one-click integrations over copy/paste API-
key, or even worse, username/password ones.

2.) Can we retrieve a list of documents that have been signed (or sent to be
signed) given an email address?

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burnout1540
1) Absolutely. We'll be adding OAuth support shortly. 2) We don't have any
filtering by signer's email address at this point but I like the idea.

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bryanh
Zapier seconds both of ZenBox's requests! :-)

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pbourke
Just some friendly feedback that I found it hard to discover what this service
is all about. I hit the index page to get an overview, but it took clicking
through to the Real Estate and Mobile sections to piece it together - I would
normally not do that, but I was extra curious in this case. I think you might
want to make some of the overview/intro content available on the index page.

Also the FAQ has a very prominent "How does HelloSign work?", but doesn't seem
to answer that question. (ie: "HelloSign lets you upload your signature and
quickly apply it to documents", or whatever it actually is)

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sergiotapia
We use HelloSign at your company for easy contract signing - best of all it's
free.

The ONE thing that I feel is missing is letting people use a purchased
certificate from a trusted provider. We need that little extra "formality"
before we use this for actual legal documents.

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meriksson
Besides being a well-established startup in the digital signature space and
writing all their software in Haskell, Scrive has a good API. I have used it
myself for a small project, to build a petition service, and it was very
straight-forward. Of course, their typical API user is a large organization
with a lot more complex requirements.

Fancy marketing presentation: <https://scrive.com/gb/en/scriveapi>

Documentation for devs: <http://api.scrive.com>

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burnout1540
Scrive looks like a good product but is not free after the initial 3
documents. HelloSign is completely free.

I believe the HelloSign API also covers most, if not all, of the same use
cases.

NOTE: I am a HelloSign co-founder

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paulsutter
I'd avoid it.

I tried using HelloSign and HelloFax to take care of some contracts while
travelling, but the messages sent look like spam (heavily branded, with almost
no control over the content of the message), and the document is not sent as
an attachment but requires the recipient to register and login to the service.

They're so focused on their viral coefficient that the service is miserable to
use.

I dont mean to be so critical, but I exchanged a number of messages about this
with their support line, and all I got back was bullshit answers, such as
requiring a login gives "better security!" and so forth.

EDIT: The key word I'd use is that the messages are unprofessional. If you're
trying to conduct serious business, it's not really suitable, because of their
attempts at virality. When it comes to using an API, do you trust these guys
to make customer-centric decisions or will you get stuck with something else?

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EmmaHelloSign
Hi Paul, I'm sorry if you felt my answers were insincere. Many of our users
are dealing with their client's confidential information so security is a big
issue for us. I get several questions about this everyday.

We realize that the need for custom branding is great, and have plans to give
our users control over of that, it just hasn't happened yet.

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joelandren
Here's the blog post announcement: <http://blog.hellosign.com/?p=65>

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sinzone
Hey guys,

I would love have your API on Mashape! We have a lot of queries for signature
APIs

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kirillzubovsky
Thanks guys. I am definitely going to use this, provided it is indeed a simple
and straight-forward API. Much better than having to deal with existing
solutions, trying to build HelloSign from scratch.

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thesorrow
Be careful your icons background don't match the website background color

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spking
I've now used HelloSign for client SOWs, tax stuff and divorce paperwork.
Absolutely awesome service and I can't recommend it any higher. Crazy that
it's free.

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sakopov
I think you desperately need a quick video demoing this service w/o having the
users jump right into API reference. Neat idea, btw.

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troels
How are you going to make money? Edit: I ask because it says that this is a
free service on the site.

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burnout1540
We'll eventually add in more advanced API features like embedded signing,
customizable branding, etc. We may charge for some of those advanced features.

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pinheels
ick. I don't love the send workflow. Lets say I send I need to send a course
override form to my academic advisor and she opens the document and all of a
sudden has a "hellosign" account? That download link is a little misleading.

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tehwebguy
Awesome! I'm going to put this to use for the contracts for my convention :)

