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Show HN: PDF API – Generate, convert, and modify PDF documents

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Re: Show HN: PDF API – Generate, convert, and modify PDF documents

#41

Post by cinntaile »

gyulai wrote: post #27
arkgil wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great point. For folks that have strong privacy needs, we do have an on-premise product that provides the same functionality [1]. [1] https://pspdfkit.com/server/processor/

So what exactly does that leave? A wrapper that you've created around weasyprint, pandoc, latex, ghostscript, imagemagick, and stuff like that? Sounds to me like an unnecessary extra expense for an unnecessary extra layer of abstraction. And there's a risk factor that comes with it: Say I make a nontrivial investment, like write a book that I'm planning on typesetting with this, or write a reporting infrastructure th…

It's unclear what you're trying to say. They've been around since 2010 and they have quite a large team, why would they suddenly disappear? Also what do you want them to do?

Re: Show HN: PDF API – Generate, convert, and modify PDF documents

#42

Post by hackernewds »

cucho wrote: post #18
lgvld wrote: post #4

Very useful product, congratulations. ;-) Quite expensive though. When I use an API, I usually assume (1) there will be some significant base volume, and (2) this volume has no upper bound, depending on my users behavior. For ~750 € you can only process 1k documents during the month... hard-capped? The price schemes seem to target entreprise but entreprises usually have bigger volumes than that. (But maybe I confuse…

For higher volume, but simpler operations (merge, watermark, encrypt/decrypt, etc.) you can try https://www.pdfblocks.com/api . You get 10K docs processed for $29/mo, and 1M for $99/mo. We don't have conversion, OCR, generation, or chained operations though. Source: I work at PDF Blocks

Is it appropriate to have multiple competitors pitch their own products in an Ask HN? this should not be such an opportunity

Re: Show HN: PDF API – Generate, convert, and modify PDF documents

#43

Post by user_7832 »

ianhawes wrote: post #30

Just an FYI but PSPDFKit has a very predatory sales model. Our organization received pricing that was generally very high and we pushed back on it because we were a startup and it was outside of our budget. I've connected with several other customers of PSPDFKit over the years and they almost all have much more reasonable pricing. Beware!

I've always wondered (as someone who hasn't made corporate purchases), wouldn't there be a point where it would be easier to teach all employees LibreOffice (Draw) instead of buying proprietary/expensive software that might break/has external dependencies?

Re: Show HN: PDF API – Generate, convert, and modify PDF documents

#44

Post by servytor »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #25
lgvld wrote: post #4

Very useful product, congratulations. ;-) Quite expensive though. When I use an API, I usually assume (1) there will be some significant base volume, and (2) this volume has no upper bound, depending on my users behavior. For ~750 € you can only process 1k documents during the month... hard-capped? The price schemes seem to target entreprise but entreprises usually have bigger volumes than that. (But maybe I confuse…

Wow so if I’m reading this they charge about $1 USD per “document”? I’ve been looking for an easy OCR solution considering I have about 10,000 one-page documents a month (invoices). For comparison, Amazon textract is ~$0.05/pg for key-value pairs, but it involves more programming to set up.

I think you might like fintract[0]; never tried them just stumbled upon them.

[0]: https://www.fintract.io/en/

Re: Show HN: PDF API – Generate, convert, and modify PDF documents

#45

Post by gyulai »

cinntaile wrote: post #41
gyulai wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what exactly does that leave? A wrapper that you've created around weasyprint, pandoc, latex, ghostscript, imagemagick, and stuff like that? Sounds to me like an unnecessary extra expense for an unnecessary extra layer of abstraction. And there's a risk factor that comes with it: Say I make a nontrivial investment, like write a book that I'm planning on typesetting with this, or write a reporting infrastructure th…

It's unclear what you're trying to say. They've been around since 2010 and they have quite a large team, why would they suddenly disappear? Also what do you want them to do?

What I wanted to say was: "PDF processing is something where I wouldn't want to rely on an online API over something local. And it's also something where I wouldn't want to rely on a small commercial company over an open source project".

I once worked for a software company where non-tech clients would have custom-made software developed for their exclusive use. Half the projects we did were "We're relying for one of our business functions on this software that we bought from this company that's now out of business. We need you to reimplement it from scratch, because we need a tiny change."

Re: Show HN: PDF API – Generate, convert, and modify PDF documents

#46

Post by gyulai »

chrisseaton wrote: post #39
gyulai wrote: post #19

Not a good usecase for an online API. To the extent that those PDFs could include sensitive information, there's a huge security/privacy headache there, with no real benefit when compared to performing these functions offline. It also seems to me a lot more expensive than alternative ways of doing the same thing.

Vast majority of organisations already store all their working documents and data in the cloud.

"The cloud" is not one thing. Each additional company in "the cloud" that gets to see your data increases the attack surface.

Re: Show HN: PDF API – Generate, convert, and modify PDF documents

#48

Post by ethotool »

ianhawes wrote: post #30

Just an FYI but PSPDFKit has a very predatory sales model. Our organization received pricing that was generally very high and we pushed back on it because we were a startup and it was outside of our budget. I've connected with several other customers of PSPDFKit over the years and they almost all have much more reasonable pricing. Beware!

I experienced the same. We ended up developing our own solution and no longer have to rely on any 3rd party framework.

Re: Show HN: PDF API – Generate, convert, and modify PDF documents

#50

Post by cinntaile »

gyulai wrote: post #45
cinntaile wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unclear what you're trying to say. They've been around since 2010 and they have quite a large team, why would they suddenly disappear? Also what do you want them to do?

What I wanted to say was: "PDF processing is something where I wouldn't want to rely on an online API over something local. And it's also something where I wouldn't want to rely on a small commercial company over an open source project". I once worked for a software company where non-tech clients would have custom-made software developed for their exclusive use. Half the projects we did were "We're relying for one of…

To me it makes sense to buy this functionality instead of building it yourself, the upfront cost involved with building it yourself will likely be much higher even if you manage to chain together a bunch of open source tools.
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