Today we’re going to look at a few criteria, which we use to measure ourselves against the competition. We do not only believe we ARE the best HTML to PDF conversion service out there, but we’ll try to explain in this post why we feel that way and which criteria we use to try to improve our service.
We use the following criteria to judge our own HTML to PDF conversion services:
- Functionality
- Ease of Use
- Performance
- Value for money
We pay attention to all these four criteria and we often notice that whether or how we add certain functionality, is affected by implications to ease of use or performance. As an example: when we recently added our ‘merging’ functionality (see our blog post for the SDK and the one for the API), we made sure it would not affect performance in any way and it would not affect ease of use at all, by adding it as a complete new function.
Now let’s look at these criteria in more detail.
Functionality
As you’re reading this post you’re most likely aware that there are more html to pdf conversion services out there. Most of these do some part of what we do (reasonably) well, but what we take pride in is that we do all parts well and that there are many parts that we do.
We actually offer FOUR distinct services, which is already more than any other competitor:
- Save as PDF functionality – this allows visitors of a website to save a webpage as PDF with just one click
- HTML to PDF API – this easy to use API allows developers to convert HTML to PDF
- HTML to PDF SDK – this powerful development toolkit in PHP allows developers to convert HTML to PDF with great power and flexibility
- HTML forms to PDF – our other service pdfmyform.com allows visitors of a website to save a webpage WITH form content as PDF with just one click
Now right of the bat, no other conversion services offers this many choices and none (currently) offers a service that can convert filled-in HTML forms to PDF. We’re the first in that – worldwide!
Second, we offer the following other features, that you can not find in any other service or certainly not in combination:
- Merging of multiple sources – we are the only provider that will allow you to create PDFs, by merging together other PDFs you created with our service; This is great if you’re making catalogs, e-books, brochures or other – bigger – PDFs.
- Stationary – we offer the possibility to add a (full) page background to your PDF, which you can use for example as company stationary
- Watermarking & stamping – we offer two different ways of watermarking: adding a text or adding an image. You can control all characteristics of these watermarks as well.
- Rights management – you control many Adobe Rights Management options, such as encryption, copy protection and print protection.
- Single page PDF – you can convert your documents into one long PDF page, without page breaking. Your PDF is automatically clipped to the right length.
And then of course there are all the standard options such as page sizing, margins, header and footer and what not. You will also find that using these options is very straight-forward.
Ease of use
Our goal is that all our services should be ready to use out of the box. That’s why we created a members area, that allows you to set all your defaults with a few clicks and without confusion. In most cases this already makes sure that you don’t have to use any of the parameters of the services itself.
But if you still want to control more options, we at least make sure that they’re easy to use AND that they’re well documented. Each service has extensive documentation pages and we try to make all the options self-explanatory and the same across all our services.
On top of that we offer examples in our documentation that will help you be on your way instantly. It really doesn’t get easier than this!
Performance
Whenever we try to improve performance we think of the following characteristics:
- Speed
- Reliability
- Scope of use
In terms of speed we make sure of a few things. First we ensure that we have the right hardware running at all times and it’s tuned to convert your HTML as fast as possible. For that we make use of the newest processors and we have enough CPUs and memory to handle the highest loads possible. Our average server load is less than 10% of the maximum capacity.
Another, just as important part of speed, is the conversion tool itself. Our conversion tool is developed with performance in mind and is optimized as much as possible for speed.
Our service’s reliability is ensured by hosting at the right provider (in our case Linode) and by meticulously planning upgrades in advance. You can rest assured that we will not have unplanned downtime and that we will inform you on our blog and over twitter of any upcoming upgrades. Whenever we do have server upgrades we try to limit the downtime to a maximum of 5 minutes and execute these at times where usage is the least.
Scope of use is another thing that we’re very concerned about. We want our services to be usable by anyone in any country. Although our website is in English only, we also are able to respond to inquiries in other languages such as German, Spanish and Dutch. And our conversion service is equipped to convert documents in as many character sets possible (Asian, Cyrillic, Arabic etc.). Also, we’re supporting as much HTML5, CSS and JavaScript as Webkit can comfortably handle.
Value for money
We strongly believe that a good service warrants a price and that’s why all our services (except the free conversion service on the homepage) have a price tag. We also believe that this price tag should be fair and represent the service that you receive and the market value of that service.
The criteria above are all reasons why we believe that our pricing is more than reasonable, but there’s one more that I’d like to mention: CUSTOMER SERVICE. Whenever you ask us questions, we will respond to you within the shortest of time frames. Usually this will be within an hour or two, but certainly within 24 hours. And when we do respond you can rest assured it’s with information that you can actually use and are helped with.
Hopefully all the above will help you take a decision in choosing your HTML to PDF service and hopefully the choice will be for us. If so, we’d be very happy. But if you disagree with any of the points we mentioned then we definitely would also love to hear from you. We are committed to continuous improvement and will take any help we can get!
One last thing – if you want to sign up – you can do it here!