Introducing the HelloSign API: Hassle-free eSignatures (YC W11) | Hacker News Reader

Introducing the HelloSign API: Hassle-free eSignatures (YC W11)

hellosign.com

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).

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.)

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?

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.

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

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)

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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

Hey guys,

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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