7 ms·
Show HN: EasyPost - the Stripe for postage
- shiftb 14y agoInteresting. I could immediately use the simple address verification. I wonder what the return value of a purchase call is?
- jstreebin 14y agoI'm planning on making it a URL to a pdf of the postage...that work?
- waterside81 14y agoI think USPS labels are returned as PNGs - would probably be easier to just shoot that back, no? At least our method of generating USPS labels (Stamps.com API) shoots back PNGs.
- jstreebin 14y agoAh, okay. Yes, that'd be easier. Other services provide PDFs but agree PNGs better
- biot 14y agoYou could bake this into the REST API via the "Accept:" header. The default when not specified is whatever you set, but the caller can specify "Accept: image/png" to get a PNG image, "Accept: application/pdf" for PDF, and so on for whatever other types of output you support. The advantage of PDF (or SVG even) is that, if it was constructed using text/vectors, the output resolution is limited only by the capabilities of the printer.
- jstreebin 14y agoAh, great idea. I like that
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- striglia 14y agoLove the presentation of the various API calls in each language. My only nitpick is one I have for a lot of code displays like this -- selecting the code also selects line numbers =)
- jstreebin 14y agoHa! I was just thinking I should get rid of those :)
- stefanobernardi 14y agoMissing a comma in the first screenshot ;)
- jstreebin 14y agoack! fixed!
- highace 14y agoUgh, I'm starting to get sick of Bootstrap. You've got a great idea and you remove value from it with bootstrap... How integral can your product be if you can't even give it a unique UI?
- crcsmnky 14y agoI disagree. Given what the app is about, I don't care about the UI. In fact, I'd rather they spend more time on the backend than on the website - at least to get started. Bootstrap is familiar, it's not bad - there's a difference. Once the service is proven to work and they've got customers, I'm sure a UI refresh would happen. At this stage it's probably more important to worry about the things that matter most to the longevity of the project.
- jstreebin 14y agoAgreed. Stuck between working on the product and working on UI I chose an admittedly weak UI (I'm not crazy about it but it works) so I could work on more important, for now, pieces of the product
- highace 14y agoI respectfully disagree with both of you. This shouldn't be a case of not having enough time, make time and get both parts to a decent level. Creating a bespoke splash page should be the easiest bit. You need to take your developer hats off and put your salesmen hats on if you want to sell your product.
- girasquid 14y agoI respectfully disagree with you. :) When I encounter a site with Bootstrap showing, I don't think "oh, this person doesn't care about the value of having a custom UI, or doesn't know how to sell their product" - I think "this person knows where their priorities lie, and has optimized their effort towards the things that provide the most value for their business". I'm sure when a custom UI becomes something more worth prioritizing, it will be moved up the list of things to do.
- kmfrk 14y agoCould you add syntax-highlighting to the examples? Using httpie as an alternative to curl would also make that easier. :)
- jstreebin 14y agoGreat feedback, thanks!
- chao- 14y agoAs someone who is just now tackling USPS integration for the first time on behalf of a client, you certainly have my interest.
- jstreebin 14y agoCool! Exactly what I've seen with my own integration. Huge pain points here
- patrickod 14y agoIs anyone else experiencing DNS issues resolving api.easypost.co? ; <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> @8.8.8.8 api.easypost.co A ; (1 server found) ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 20795 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;api.easypost.co. IN A ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: easypost.co. 1667 IN SOA dns1.web-hosting.com. hosting-notifications.namecheaphosting.com. 2012091008 86400 7200 3600000 86400 ;; Query time: 44 msec ;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8) ;; WHEN: Tue Sep 18 09:48:17 2012 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 128
- jstreebin 14y agoAPI not up yet, sry
- zachwill 14y agoReally interesting idea. Could seriously see myself using this.
- jstreebin 14y agoGreat, what's your use case?
- waterside81 14y agoFor Canadian customers, Canada Post has finally added an API to create & print labels. My company uses Stamps.com's API to print USPS labels (I have Django code if anyone's interested) but this would definitely have saved us some development time.
- jstreebin 14y agoExactly, that's what I"m hearing from a lot of potentials--too much dev time to get postage working
- frankdenbow 14y agoWould love to use this for my ecommerce site (StartupThreads) as we move to a custom system. Most interested in the shipping price comparison: what providers are you supporting?
- jstreebin 14y agoI'm looking at starting with USPS, FedEx, and UPS
- Aqua_Geek 14y agoOut of curiosity, how are you doing this? IIRC a few years ago when I was playing around with the FedEx API it explicitly forbade using it for price comparison with other carriers. Are there aggregator APIs that you're using? Or have the T&C changed?
- marcrosoft 14y agoIt is still the same, you can't even have other carrier rates near UPS rates.
- meritt 14y agoExtremely interested in address verification. Please tell me it does normalization/correction that is able to take fuzzy/dirty/invalid data and yield a proper and well-formatted address into standard fields?
- avidal 14y agoThis is exactly what I'm looking for. I'm really hoping I don't have to integrate with FedEx web services for address verification. If the price is right, my company will gladly pay for this service over the free service provided by FedEx.
- jstreebin 14y agoExcellent. Yes, I'm hearing from a lot of potential customers that they're having to pull in address verification from one source, labels from another, and all hacked together in Magento.
- meritt 14y agoWe're currently using Google's Geocoder and Yahoo's Placefinder, which work okay, but they both have numerous flaws and various TOS policies we're ignoring for the moment. Would happily pay for this service as well.
- marcrosoft 14y agoJust as an FYI UPS and FedEx both use the USPS address verification API in the backend.
- mindslight 14y agoSomewhat related question - are these types of services capable of printing first class letter postage ie something to use in place of a "forever" stamp?
- jstreebin 14y agoThe closest I've seen/done for this is a $1.64 stamp for first class 1 oz. Agree, this would be very nice to have
- shreep 14y agoVery nice. Would you plan to offer international shipping options ? Just out of curiosity, what mapping engine are you using to geocode?
- jstreebin 14y agoPlanning on offering int'l but starting with domestic
- jontas 14y agoI've been using this for years now and love it: https://rocketship.it/ https://rocketship.it/ It is a slightly different concept, you pay once and get code that gives you a uniform interface for communicating with the different carriers (USPS, FedEx, UPS, etc.). Since it is a one time fee I didn't expect support, however, the developer has been very responsive and helpful whenever I've run into a problem.
- marcrosoft 14y agoDeveloper of RocketShipIt, thanks for the kind words!
- erikpukinskis 14y agoI don't know if I'd say it's a "slightly different concept"... EasyPost is an API. RocketShip.it is downloadable software. It's like comparing a Roomba and a vacuum cleaner.
- philip1209 14y agoIntriguing. What would HN think of an API for physically printing and mailing things? i.e., an API where you pay ~$0.50 per postcard, and it is printed and deposited in the mail autonomously. You could use it for CRM applications, address verification (like Google Adwords), etc
- johns 14y agohttp://www.postalmethods.com/lp/postcard-api http://www.postalmethods.com/lp/postcard-api http://www.viapost.com/ http://www.viapost.com/ I know there are others too but I can't find them at the moment.
- scottmotte 14y agohttp://dev.sincerely.com/ http://dev.sincerely.com/ is another.
- mikle 14y agoI'd use it, especially if you can somehow connect it to HelloSign. This is something older people really need, at least from my limited view of my grandparents. They get so many forms and if I could help them fill them out and send them remotely this would be worth real money to me.
- vyrotek 14y agoA few API's like this have been posted (ha) before. I investigated this just a little bit since at one time I had an idea that upload a postcard image and mail it to anywhere in the world but I never really found something I liked. http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=postcard+api http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=postcard+ap...
- jstreebin 14y agoI thought of this one, too. It'd be great for a higher touch marketing message.
- russnewcomer 14y agoNot exactly the same thing, but I am building a site for my wife to do custom greeting cards. It's not really at a stage where it is designed to be used automatically, but if someone was interested, we'd be willing to look at it. The current site is the product of a couple days of teaching myself how to use Stripe, Bootstrap, and PHP, since I'm not really a web developer. http://www.heartstoheartscards.com http://www.heartstoheartscards.com
- fuzzythinker 14y agoOn signup: Maybe more wording to indicate I've signed up for beta instead of just a check mark? Since I don't know if the check mark means I've signed up or just the email is verified. On "using": Slightly confusing to put it after the first drop down. It took me a few seconds to get it, I would put "using" in between the 2 drop downs instead.
- jstreebin 14y agoMaybe just get rid of the validation altogether? Fixed -- how's that look? put the 'using' before second drop down
- fuzzythinker 14y agoOh, so the check mark really just means it's valid? So I haven't signed up for beta? If so, it really needs to be fixed. On "using": I would align the 2 drop downs, either with just empty space in front of first, or put some text like "Let me", or just put "using" on a line by itself.
- jstreebin 14y agoYeah, initially had both name and email so was using the validation. Will just get rid of the validation altogether. thanks for the heads up!
- jstreebin 14y agoFixed!
- fuzzythinker 14y agotypo on signup form: Shipping price "comparison"
- sophiabatka464 14y agohttp://freemoviesite24.blogspot.com/2012/09/tim-and-erics-billion-dollar-movie-2012.html http://freemoviesite24.blogspot.com/2012/09/tim-and-erics-bi... http://freemoviesite24.blogspot.com/2012/09/tim-and-erics-billion-dollar-movie-2012.html http://freemoviesite24.blogspot.com/2012/09/tim-and-erics-bi...
- kaolinite 14y agoOne of the ideas in my ideas file is a service that provides an API for sending letters. You simply send a PDF/DOC/etc along with address information, your API key, postage type, etc, and then the letter is printed (by myself) and posted. Possible uses of the service would be automatic sending of invoices or mailing out payment reminders or contracts that need to be signed, etc. There are a few companies that provide similar services but I haven't found one that does it in a particularly nice way. They often require using SOAP and don't have modules for common frameworks and SDKs for common languages. Would any of you use this or are letters completely dead to young companies?
- nulluk 14y agoInternational is where this could really shine, print out at the location closest to where the letter needs delivering & avoid international prices
- gsibble 14y ago.....nice idea!
- jonchris 14y agoBharat Mail or similar service exists for years in India. It's like doing VoIP call to landline.
- bobbles 14y agoThat would be great as if there was no one servicing your area you could potentially sign up as a 'poster' allowing more remote areas to be connected if someone was available.
- dagw 14y agoavoid international prices For many pairs of countries the price of sending a letter from A->B is less than sending a letter within B. In addition I imagine the labor costs of having people stuff envelopes will a significant source of costs. So you're probably better off picking 3-5 central points with cheap labor and cheap postage, rather than opening dozens of small centers all around the globe
- robomartin 14y agoDo any of these services have the ability to optimize packaging of goods? Say you sell physical goods. A customer buys multiple items. They each have known shipping dimensions. The question is: How do you consolidate the shipment into one or more boxes in order to optimize for minimum shipping costs? Keep in mind that minimum shipping costs could also include the cost of shipping supplies as well as packaging and handling labor. The most basic problem is fitting n packages of m[i] dimensions into the available stock of standard boxes and pick the arrangement that provides the least postage cost.
- ajryan 14y agoYou realize this is basically the same as the NP-Hard Knapsack problem?
- jplewicke 14y agoIt may be infeasible at massive scale, but many systems do it right now with approximation algorithms, heuristics, and integer programming. Fedex, Walmart, Amazon, and most other industrial or logistics corporations have teams of people with a background in discrete optimization or operations research building and improving similar systems. I'm not aware of any public APIs for this at present.
- robomartin 14y agoRight, but that wasn't the question. Having done a lot of work with genetic algorithms, among other things, I have no doubt that I could sit down and write a reasonably useful solution. However, it would be absolutely brilliant if this was already part of an existing shipping API. I think it would be very useful if these shipping API's accepted package specifications and helped optimize final packaging while in the process of providing a quote. If you want to talk about differentiating a solution, this, most definitely, would.
- NSAID 14y agoI'm in charge of IT for an ecommerce company, and I just wrote code for this last week. We wanted to speed things up by packing product directly into our shipping boxes instead of boxing it up after the fact, and it was a lot of fun solving this problem. I specifically wrote very generic code, so there's no reason why it couldn't run off of any list of products/boxes. If there was interest into this sort of thing, it probably wouldn't be terribly difficult to turn it into some sort of API over the next few months.
- jjohn 14y agodid a kind of similar project a few weekends back: http://scrubmyaddress.com/ http://scrubmyaddress.com/ :)
- benlower 14y agoI didn't realize Dirk Diggler lived in Half Moon Bay.
- jstreebin 14y agoWord, Reed and Dirk had to get out of dodge
- lbotos 14y agoLooking at your images of code they look blurry on Mac. Just a friendly heads up. :) Besides that, Looks like a great idea. Cheers!
- jstreebin 14y agoThanks! I noticed that, too, but was thinking it was a Retina issue. Apparently not. Will fix
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- thibaultj 14y agoIn France, you can connect to « La Poste »'s website to send letters from the web. Problem is this site is particularly painful to use. UX is awful, error messages are useless, and so on. I could totally use a simple rest api to print and send a pdf as a physical letter
- nchuhoai 14y agoWould totally use this for address verification. Wonder what the pricing is.