PDFShift

The HTML to PDF conversion API.

14 followers

The HTML to PDF conversion API.

14 followers

An API to convert HTML/CSS documents to PDF. PDFShift is the reliable, Up-to-date and high-fidelity conversion API with no maintenance costs.

Launch tags:Productivity•Developer Tools

Launch Team

ArticosTest your messaging on your audience, right inside Claude or ChatGPT

Promoted

Can you also provide a URL to PDF converter? Such that pdfshift.io?website=mywebsite.com will give me a PDF of mywebsite.com based on the print stylesheet? This will be really nice. You can still filter the traffic to authorized users only by providing a script that needs to be embedded with the API key before the link works

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8yr ago

ImprovMX

Maker

@joerex101 That's something I'm trying to figure out. Many users requested me that feature (or the possibility to do the conversion from the client side using Javascript request). My main issue here is that the API key will be public and might be abused. Filtering by website is one possibility, but can be easily spoofed so not secure at all. I'm working on how to do that best, but it will be possible in a near future for sure! Thank you for your message :)

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8yr ago

@cx42net You can request users to enter the website/host that'll be making the request into your platform. That way you only respond to requests from a legitimate host or list of hosts even if the API key is stolen. An extra plus if the user obfuscates their use of the key on the web client but shouldn't matter.

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8yr ago

ImprovMX

Maker

@joerex101 That's the issue :/ Filtering by the host isn't secure, it's really easy to spoof that value. I need to find a more secure way to do so. (you can add a "Host: the-host.com" header in a request, and it will work)

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8yr ago

ImprovMX

Maker

Hi everyone! Really excited to be here today! I’ve been building stuff for the web and when I started charging for it, I found out that generating an invoice in PDF was a pain in the … well, it was not that easy. I used to work with libraries but they were always missing a few things and took some server resources that could have been better used to serve my visitors. That’s why I came up with the idea of PDFSHift. I know I’m not the first - and certainly not the last - but after looking at the alternatives online, I thought that the current offer was out of date and a new, more up-to-date, services, could be useful. I focus a lot of efforts on offering a great customer service, ready to help anyone to make their PDF awesome and I already received a few great feedbacks from my users :) I’m here all day to answer all your comments and question, and happy to chat!

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8yr ago

@cx42net Congrats :) Didn't had the time yet to build, what i've planned. But will do soon and then use your great product :)

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8yr ago

ImprovMX

Maker

@softcreatr Thank you! :) Take your time, and you know you can reach out if you need help!

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8yr ago

Calcapp

@cx42net Hi Cyril, PDFShift looks nice. We're considering moving away from our home-grown solution (which uses the Flying Saucer XHTML renderer in conjunction with a PDF back end: https://github.com/flyingsaucerp...). However, Google introduced headless Chrome support in Cloud Functions and App Engine less than a month ago (https://cloud.google.com/blog/pr...). How does Google's offering compare to PDFShift in terms of pricing, availability, customizability and rendering fidelity? (If you're also using Chrome or Chromium, rendering should be identical.)

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8yr ago

ImprovMX

Maker

@davidpolberger Hi David, that's an awesome question! I was working on PDFShift when I saw the release and was a bit stressed when I learned about it. But I tested it, and I understood we aren't in the same market: Google AppEngine is a IaaS and as such, it's much harder to setup a system to convert HTML to PDF using their tool. It's not the direct aim, and it will require a bit of work. With PDFShift, you just have to make POST call to make it work, so there's less work involved :) Also, after testing it, I realized it's awfully slow, at least for now (I hope they'll improve it. If it becomes really efficient, I might switch the backend to their). It took 20s to convert the front page of ProductHunt :/

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8yr ago

FYI on Chrome 69 / Mac, the product hunt bar overlaps the logo and the main nav, the close button is not clickable. See screenshot.

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8yr ago

ImprovMX

Maker

@tostartafire Nice catch! It's fixed :)

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8yr ago

Riddler

Super neat product, will definitely be trying this out! Btw @cx42net, looks like there's some `z-index` issues with your ProductHunt banner on the homepage (Firefox 62.0, macOS 10.13.6).

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8yr ago

ImprovMX

Maker

@cedricamaya Oh yes! I was so excited to release it that I didn't scoll.. It's fixed now :)

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8yr ago

ImprovMX

Maker

@cedricamaya By the way, if you need any help while setting up PDFShift, you can always reach me out, I'll be happy to help; one of the core motivation of PDFShift is to provide an awesome customer experience ;)

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8yr ago

We are currently using PDFShift to automate the creation of service contracts. I tried so many converters and after some mails back and forth, PDFShift does exactly, what i need. The support is super friendly and very quick, so it didn't take long to integrate PDFShift into my existing workflow. The only thing i noticed when discovering PDFShift a few months ago is, that they include a meta comment that says "Created by PDFShift" (or similar). While this might be okay in most cases, there should be an option (paid?) to remove this information. Not every company (especially those, which are located in the EU) don't want to disclose, that they are using an external service to create their documents (e.g. invoices or other documents, including sensitive informations).

Pros:

Easy to use, nearly no costs and (my favorite feature) it also allows you to embed vector graphics in your PDF document.

Cons:

No cons that are worth mentioning here.

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8yr ago

Been done long before, many companies have this as internal API in their cloud service or it’s own servers already at a marginal cost near to 0. Start thinking again about the value of your proposition.

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8yr ago

ImprovMX

Maker

@abetancort You are forgetting about a whole market that found this API useful. My proposition has been validated, I'm not worried about this ;)

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8yr ago

@cx42net If there’s enough people that are willing to pay for something, even if they have alternative solutions that are near free, be happy 😃

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8yr ago

ImprovMX

Maker

@abetancort Thanks! I am right now :)

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8yr ago

Could you please make subscribe service. I send web addres with article you prepare PDF and delivery to eBook by address or email or by application. It offline reading article.

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8yr ago

ImprovMX

Maker

@vit1251 That's interesting. How would you send it? Via a POST request? Get request? via email? I'm curious to know the intricacy of it. But it wouldn't send an ebook, but a PDF (that's the purpoes of the service ; making a PDF, not an ebook ;) ).

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8yr ago

@cx42net right now I use Instapaper for deffer reading article but service unable to convert some page and sync is require time and wakeup. You may make UI or extension for browser and email address on start for send message with PDF of article. It some think like newspaper subscribe service. Another one is create RSS with article inside PDF.

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8yr ago

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Reviews

Pros:

Easy to use, nearly no costs and (my favorite feature) it also allows you to embed vector graphics in your PDF document.

Cons:

No cons that are worth mentioning here.