

Ask HN: Internet-scale fax service w/ API? - ghurlman

My business partner &#38; I are building a web application to drag the construction industry into the 21st century.  They'll come, kicking and screaming, but not without their fax machine.  I've found a couple fax services that provide an API, but they all seem to aim their pricing model towards companies building an internal app that will send fax pages on the order of 100s, not 1000s a month.<p>Are there any service providers out there that get it, or is this something we'll have to build for ourselves?
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brudgers
> _"a web application to drag the construction industry into the 21st
> century"_

Given the effects of the current economic cycle on construction, I'm somewhat
dubious regarding the marketability of SaaS because it is a recurring overhead
expense...and minimizing overhead is one reason faxes are so popular (the
others are traditions of craft, computerphobia, and the ability of office
staff to triage faxes more easily than emails).

In my experience in the US, businesses in the construction industry are as
invested in technology as other companies of comparable size in other
industries (IT excluded). Those firms with high volumes of faxes often have
hardware capable of document management and many firms utilize it.

I'm not sure that I see a clear market segment for a web app because tech
savvy contractors already have tools and methods, and the others aren't
because they can't or won't spend time and money to obtain digital tools and
learn them.

For construction companies, the key issues are book keeping and scheduling. In
my opinion, faxing is not a 1.0 requirement.

Good Luck.

~~~
ghurlman
Construction in the commercial space has picked back up - not as much new
structures as improvements on existing properties. Residential is still at a
standstill.

Our target user isn't the company owner, it's the GC Project Manager working
at a small-midsize GC company. My cofounder has been doing this work for
years, developed a v0.1 himself, and asked me to see if I could bring it
large.

We'll see! Thanks for the input.

~~~
brudgers
As GC's get larger, they tend to have the leverage to require their subs to
use email...when they get really large, they often have the leverage to
require the use products like Buzzsaw.

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briandoll
A while back there was a startup with this exact idea from the HN community.
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1294079>) I love the idea, and said so
then.

I talked with the developers a few times and learned recently that they had
shelved the product. There are some existing enterprise solutions for
electronic faxing. While building a service for smaller companies (and
individuals that have the need to fax now and then) seemed to be a very
difficult market to penetrate.

I'm not suggesting that their decision to shelve the product indicates it's
not possible for you to succeed, but I do know they gave it a good shot and
couldn't make money at it.

Perhaps going after a single industry, as you're suggesting, and vetting the
idea (and price point) with them ahead of time, could get you closer to
understanding if this is sustainable or not.

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rifus
You could integrate the Internet fax service into your web interface and
manage it as you like. There are no sending limits, more information is
available on: <http://www.popfax.com/index.php?action=partners_new>

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jeffmould
Not familiar with it, but I believe drop.io offers some form of fax ability.

EDIT: Guess that won't do much good as I just read that drop.io was acquired
by Facebook and they are discontinuing the service. Oh well.

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byoung2
This should work: <http://www.programmableweb.com/api/ringcentral-fax>

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rishabhverma
I recently read about one(Chandigarh, India) about one which lets you send a
fax through an email, but I am not sure if it provides an API or not.

