Send faxes & sign documents from Google Drive… powered by HelloFax | Hacker News Reader

Send faxes & sign documents from Google Drive… powered by HelloFax

hellofax.com

I recall using HelloFax to sign and fax legal/tax forms, an upgrade from having to do it physically. This takes it to a new level of convenience; now one may apparently sign/fax docs, clicking right through docs stored on Google's cloud, which is a pretty nice reduction in friction.

EDIT: I'd also add that when you have a busy day, having a simpler way to manage/deal with periphery tasks like faxing, makes a significant difference to your workflow. I don't have a need for faxing people right now, but bmarked for when I do.

HelloFax engineer here... we also can take any incoming faxes you get and put them right in Google Drive.

Hello Fax is the YC product I rave about most often to people. Fanatically, too. I can't describe how much I hate printing, signing, scanning/faxing documents. Now I just use you guys. Thanks.

So, I'm going to be the one to say it. I love you after reading this.

off to play with HelloFax

Do you guys support Chrome for Android?

BTW, I just checked out the application for the first time. The [Fax Document] [Request Signature] page is lovely-- Yes, those are exactly the two things that I this to do. There's no doubt I'll be using it at work.

I adore HelloFax — talk about a well-designed product that solves a real problem.

Props to you guys for being so on top of things to have your Google Drive stuff ready to go on day 1!

HelloFax seems like a great company. I gained a lot of respect for them during the SOPA ordeal. They let me send a free fax to my representative!

Ok, this is much more compelling than Google Drive alone.

Herein lies the promise of Drive SDK.

Kudos to HelloFax for being on top of complementary product releases and using the release of gdrive as marketing fuel.

I believe they also did something for SOPA to spur letters to Congress. That was a clever, good-for-the world marketing move, too.

why does it need access to manage my contacts? I'm pretty sure they're trying to take advantage of the hype to spam my address book. not positive though as I'm not going to sign up.

Your contacts are used for auto complete, they won't be spammed.

pdenya, can Hellofax do without the auto-complete feature? I rather sacrifice that so I don't have to give up my personal contacts.

Plus... most of the people I am faxing won't be in my contact address book. Those are usually to some random numbers. If you guys can remove the request for address book, it'll be a no brainer to sign up.

Agreed. I signed up anyway to try it out before recommending it to some people, but the request for contacts will be a dealbreaker for some.

FYI, I was about to join up, but I declined because it wanted my contacts.

For the most part, contracts are signed by relatively new contacts (people not yet in my address book). E.g. new customers, partners, contractors, or employees.

I hope you'll get rid of this unnecessary intrusion into my privacy in the future. And, for what its worth, people who send around lots of NDAs, LIOs, term sheets, employee agreements and other sorts of contracts usually value their privacy.

And yes -- I understand that you say you won't be spamming my contacts or mining it for data. It's just that I don't know you.

We're not just talking about viewing contacts, we're talking about managing contacts.

I don't trust you to be able to see my contacts, and I surely don't trust you with making changes to them.

Good luck with your service, I'm sure it's nice.

Faxes are probably one of the most annoying things I have to deal with since I don't have a fax machine. Next time I need to send a fax I'll definitely try out this service - anything beats traipsing over to Albertsons!

Just a head up: looks like the promotional subscription they are offering ends Oct 20th. Not sure if it "renews" oct 20th or we get put on their standard free plan http://www.hellofax.com/content/pricing

Plan: Google Drive

Price: $0.00 per month

Fax pages per month: 50

Ends: October 20th

Cancel subscription

Hi Urgo, cofounder of HelloFax here.

We may extend the offer. But, if we don't, the system will just put you on the free plan.

What about those of us who are already paying customers? A few extra pages, for loyalty?

(I understand the need to market. Nonetheless, it's difficult at times not to feel a bit irked when "the new guy" is getting for free what you're paying for.)

Are you coming out with an API for requesting a signature on a document?

Would be cool if I could receive faxes through Google Voice and saved them to my Google Drive. No more fax machines.

This would probably be difficult. Google Voice can't know if it's a person or a fax machine calling until you pick up the phone and start talking, so if it offered this feature, you'd have to deal with your phone ringing whenever you were receiving a fax. (I suppose Google Voice could answer "Hello?", make the decision, and then ring your phone if the person at the other end started speaking in a non-fax-machine voice. But that would also be a shitty UX.)

HelloFax mentions in a post above that they can already receive faxes to your Google Drive, so the only compromise is that you have to have a separate phone number and fax number. Which is what most people do anyway.

Sure, but an exclusive fax number could work.

Google voice already picks up the phone for you, prompts the caller for their name, then rings your actual phone. Adding fax detection in there doesn't seem like it would be that hard to do.

Or, they can answer the phone, listen for any fax modems, then continue to play their own ring sound.

How do you assign a local fax number? Is there any way to associate it with an existing number? Small businesses might start leaping for joy...

Hellofax engineer here... just click Upgrade Now at the top of any page once you've logged in. You'll be able to pick a phone number for just about any area code.

We do not currently have a way to port an existing number that you have. We hear the feedback loud and clear.

I don't have an Upgrade Now button available...

I'm trying to test the receive faxes into gDrive function, but every time I try to get a fax number it brings me back to the main screen.

Anyone else get this to work?

Seems to download all your Google Contacts. Quality is low, almost unreadable.

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