5 ms·

Show HN: Identify company type by IP address

6 points by kevinjyc 7y ago

polyterative 7y ago
how is this in the front page?
- oops 7y ago
  Good question. Only 3 points. User has 6 karma and is only 65 days old. And there are other posts around the same time with more votes on /newest that aren't on the front page. At first I thought it may have been a second-chance resubmission by a moderator[0], but it has a recent submission id so that's probably not it. I guess one of the other two points came from someone with a lot of karma, or there's not a lot of new posts right now? 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20206120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20206120 Edit: And now it's gone entirely from / and /show, but is still on /shownew ...
joshmn 7y ago
What was the sales process like for the FBI? Apple? NASA?
- guessmyname 7y ago
  > What was the sales process like for the FBI? Apple? NASA There was no sales process with any of the linked companies. The logos are used simply as a marketing strategy to create hype.
  - joshmn 7y ago
    I was being more subtle.
benjojo12 7y ago
Is this a clone of ipinfo.io?
- joshmn 7y ago
  I mean, probably. But there's also ip-api.com, ipapi.co, ipstack.com, ipgeolocation.io, ipinfodb.com, ipify.org... List goes on and on. Most of these providers just package MaxMind data and send it back. Some of them have more data that they inject themselves.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - wakatime 7y ago
    We use ipstack.com, I'm curious which have the most accurate and complete data?
    - kevinjyc 7y ago
      We offer additional datapoints which ipstack doesn't. We expose high detailed ASN data which include company name, company type, ASN network, web domain. Also we expose a crypto datapoint, which flags if an IP is an active Bitcoin node.
- folkhack 7y ago
  It is - if you compare the sites it looks like ipinfo.io is doing a grab for a multi-branded approach by changing the design of the site up JUST enough so it looks like another org.
  - joshmn 7y ago
    They are definitely separate organizations.
kichik 7y ago
Would have been cool if it gave the actual type of the company as a result. Like if someone from Toys R Us visits your page, you could give them a retail use case front and center. Is that planned?
- kevinjyc 7y ago
  That's a very good point. We constantly try to improve the data accuracy of our API. We currently support the following company types: "education", "isp", "hosting", "government", "business". We also expose the domain assigned to the ASN of the IP currently looked up, this would probably give you enough info to implement the logic you are suggesting.
somada141 7y ago
I know products like this are ubiquitous but I really like the response one gets. Kudos on launching! The pricing, however, is a little confusing. A seemingly very-generous free-tier (though the "Up to 250,000 IP requests / mo" is a little confusing, what dictates whether one gets the full quota?) and the next tier-up at 250$/m is a bit too rich for my blood. Wouldn't it make more sense to have some in-between tier where you charge per 1000s of requests or something? I fear the jump will preclude people from going to the 'Pro' tier.
- kevinjyc 7y ago
  Thanks a lot @somada141! Apologies for any confusion. Let me clarify: the Free tier covers the first 250k API requests made in a single month. If the number of requests in a month goes beyond the threshold, the API will start returning Forbidden errors. The counter gets reset at the first of each month. If your service gets more than 250k hits a month, then you will be a perfect match for our "Pro" tier. This pricing structure, puts us on a league of our own, offering to the developers a huge package of free API calls every single month. Nobody else does it!
  - somada141 7y ago
    Hm a 403 when one runs out of credit can be misleading as one would expect that for an authorization error. You may want to consider the `402 Payment Required` status code instead which seems to be used by some big players [0]. Best of luck with your launch! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#402 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#402
    - kevinjyc 7y ago
      This is a great suggestion! We will definitely consider it! Thanks for your support.
    - kevinjyc 7y ago
      I confirm we updated the API to return a 402 error message when the user reached the limit of the her pricing tier. Thanks again for this suggestion.

6 points by kevinjyc 7y ago

polyterative 7y ago

how is this in the front page?

oops 7y ago
Good question. Only 3 points. User has 6 karma and is only 65 days old. And there are other posts around the same time with more votes on /newest that aren't on the front page. At first I thought it may have been a second-chance resubmission by a moderator[0], but it has a recent submission id so that's probably not it. I guess one of the other two points came from someone with a lot of karma, or there's not a lot of new posts right now? 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20206120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20206120 Edit: And now it's gone entirely from / and /show, but is still on /shownew ...

joshmn 7y ago

What was the sales process like for the FBI? Apple? NASA?

guessmyname 7y ago
> What was the sales process like for the FBI? Apple? NASA There was no sales process with any of the linked companies. The logos are used simply as a marketing strategy to create hype.
- joshmn 7y ago
  I was being more subtle.

benjojo12 7y ago

Is this a clone of ipinfo.io?

joshmn 7y ago
I mean, probably. But there's also ip-api.com, ipapi.co, ipstack.com, ipgeolocation.io, ipinfodb.com, ipify.org... List goes on and on. Most of these providers just package MaxMind data and send it back. Some of them have more data that they inject themselves.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- wakatime 7y ago
  We use ipstack.com, I'm curious which have the most accurate and complete data?
  - kevinjyc 7y ago
    We offer additional datapoints which ipstack doesn't. We expose high detailed ASN data which include company name, company type, ASN network, web domain. Also we expose a crypto datapoint, which flags if an IP is an active Bitcoin node.
folkhack 7y ago
It is - if you compare the sites it looks like ipinfo.io is doing a grab for a multi-branded approach by changing the design of the site up JUST enough so it looks like another org.
- joshmn 7y ago
  They are definitely separate organizations.

kichik 7y ago

Would have been cool if it gave the actual type of the company as a result. Like if someone from Toys R Us visits your page, you could give them a retail use case front and center. Is that planned?

kevinjyc 7y ago
That's a very good point. We constantly try to improve the data accuracy of our API. We currently support the following company types: "education", "isp", "hosting", "government", "business". We also expose the domain assigned to the ASN of the IP currently looked up, this would probably give you enough info to implement the logic you are suggesting.

somada141 7y ago

I know products like this are ubiquitous but I really like the response one gets. Kudos on launching! The pricing, however, is a little confusing. A seemingly very-generous free-tier (though the "Up to 250,000 IP requests / mo" is a little confusing, what dictates whether one gets the full quota?) and the next tier-up at 250$/m is a bit too rich for my blood. Wouldn't it make more sense to have some in-between tier where you charge per 1000s of requests or something? I fear the jump will preclude people from going to the 'Pro' tier.

kevinjyc 7y ago
Thanks a lot @somada141! Apologies for any confusion. Let me clarify: the Free tier covers the first 250k API requests made in a single month. If the number of requests in a month goes beyond the threshold, the API will start returning Forbidden errors. The counter gets reset at the first of each month. If your service gets more than 250k hits a month, then you will be a perfect match for our "Pro" tier. This pricing structure, puts us on a league of our own, offering to the developers a huge package of free API calls every single month. Nobody else does it!
- somada141 7y ago
  Hm a 403 when one runs out of credit can be misleading as one would expect that for an authorization error. You may want to consider the `402 Payment Required` status code instead which seems to be used by some big players [0]. Best of luck with your launch! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#402 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#402
  - kevinjyc 7y ago
    This is a great suggestion! We will definitely consider it! Thanks for your support.
  - kevinjyc 7y ago
    I confirm we updated the API to return a 402 error message when the user reached the limit of the her pricing tier. Thanks again for this suggestion.