5 ms·

MailALetter.com - Mail a letter online...are there other services like this?

10 points by brandnewlow 18y ago

cschneid 18y ago
Somebody asked about a similar service. I think it's probably a viable business, providing web-service enabled letter printing and mailing. Send a chunk of XML or a PDF up to the server, and it gets printed, and sent out. Hmm, I should think about it more, might be possible to do it in my spare time. Then if it grows, hire temps or other low cost labor to do it.
sil3ntmac 18y ago
Yes, and free* too... http://www.esnailer.com/ http://www.esnailer.com/ *Except it works by making you complete terribly spammy advertisement surveys: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9739899-2.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9739899-2.html
RK 18y ago
This looks like a pretty decent site. Are you planning to compete with it? I was recently looking for something related: an online fax service. Most of those sites seemed to ooze sleeze and required a subscription. I finally decided on http://payperfax.com http://payperfax.com which looked much less cluttered and is pay-as-you-go. Much better if you only need to fax a couple times a year and is platform independent (there is a decent looking windows-only Skype plugin service called PamFax) For whatever reason, some markets seem to get filled with crap. Just do a search for "online fax" if you want a taste.
- brandnewlow 18y ago
  I'm working on a project (announcing it in about 8 hours on here, actually!) that would benefit from giving users an easy way to mail a letter while sitting at their desk. We're just poking around to see who's out there. Ideally our users would be able to click a link, fill in a form and have a letter mailed a letter to an address autopopulated from our service.
  - RK 18y ago
    I was just looking around and was thinking that the money was probably to be made in (gulp) enabling junk mailers. But it looks like the US Postal service already has that down: http://www.click2mail.com/how_it_works http://www.click2mail.com/how_it_works In any event, good luck.
  - idophir 18y ago
    You can use PostalMethods' Web Services to complete your work in a few hours.
shrike 18y ago
oldgregg provided this list to me last week in a different thread - http://postful.com/ http://postful.com/ http://click2mail.com/ http://click2mail.com/ http://www.viapost.com/ http://www.viapost.com/ http://www.postalmethods.com/ http://www.postalmethods.com/ http://www.cfhdocmail.com/ http://www.cfhdocmail.com/ http://www.l-mail.com/ http://www.l-mail.com/ http://www.pc2paper.co.uk/ http://www.pc2paper.co.uk/ I'm in the process of integrating my app with Postful's via their API. So far, so good.
seiji 18y ago
World's Smallest: http://www.worldssmallestpostalservice.com/ http://www.worldssmallestpostalservice.com/ (as referenced in http://qwantz.livejournal.com/104142.html http://qwantz.livejournal.com/104142.html )
chandrab 18y ago
Before spending a lot of time with this - have you thought out your customer acquisition strategy? At such low price points Adwords will be very expensive. How are the others in space doing promotions?

10 points by brandnewlow 18y ago

Somebody asked about a similar service. I think it's probably a viable business, providing web-service enabled letter printing and mailing. Send a chunk of XML or a PDF up to the server, and it gets printed, and sent out. Hmm, I should think about it more, might be possible to do it in my spare time. Then if it grows, hire temps or other low cost labor to do it.

sil3ntmac 18y ago

Yes, and free* too... http://www.esnailer.com/ http://www.esnailer.com/ *Except it works by making you complete terribly spammy advertisement surveys: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9739899-2.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9739899-2.html

RK 18y ago

This looks like a pretty decent site. Are you planning to compete with it? I was recently looking for something related: an online fax service. Most of those sites seemed to ooze sleeze and required a subscription. I finally decided on http://payperfax.com http://payperfax.com which looked much less cluttered and is pay-as-you-go. Much better if you only need to fax a couple times a year and is platform independent (there is a decent looking windows-only Skype plugin service called PamFax) For whatever reason, some markets seem to get filled with crap. Just do a search for "online fax" if you want a taste.

brandnewlow 18y ago
I'm working on a project (announcing it in about 8 hours on here, actually!) that would benefit from giving users an easy way to mail a letter while sitting at their desk. We're just poking around to see who's out there. Ideally our users would be able to click a link, fill in a form and have a letter mailed a letter to an address autopopulated from our service.
- RK 18y ago
  I was just looking around and was thinking that the money was probably to be made in (gulp) enabling junk mailers. But it looks like the US Postal service already has that down: http://www.click2mail.com/how_it_works http://www.click2mail.com/how_it_works In any event, good luck.
- idophir 18y ago
  You can use PostalMethods' Web Services to complete your work in a few hours.

shrike 18y ago

oldgregg provided this list to me last week in a different thread - http://postful.com/ http://postful.com/ http://click2mail.com/ http://click2mail.com/ http://www.viapost.com/ http://www.viapost.com/ http://www.postalmethods.com/ http://www.postalmethods.com/ http://www.cfhdocmail.com/ http://www.cfhdocmail.com/ http://www.l-mail.com/ http://www.l-mail.com/ http://www.pc2paper.co.uk/ http://www.pc2paper.co.uk/ I'm in the process of integrating my app with Postful's via their API. So far, so good.

seiji 18y ago

World's Smallest: http://www.worldssmallestpostalservice.com/ http://www.worldssmallestpostalservice.com/ (as referenced in http://qwantz.livejournal.com/104142.html http://qwantz.livejournal.com/104142.html )

chandrab 18y ago

Before spending a lot of time with this - have you thought out your customer acquisition strategy? At such low price points Adwords will be very expensive. How are the others in space doing promotions?