Hacker News users celebrate milestone and share personal usage stories
2 Nov 1 2:12 AM · 12d ago · 3 posts · 7 comments · 2 sources · development 2 of 2
Comments on the Hacker News submission expressed gratitude, shared personal experiences using the service, and praised the bootstrapped business model. Users highlighted Zamzar's reliability for specific tasks like epub-to-pdf conversion.
“Really happy for you. It's my dream to run such a business for so long, as a side, with a real user base, and not for money.”
theanonymousoneZamzar founders (two brothers) Co-founders and operatorsVint Cerf Internet pioneer
The whole story postscomments the bright band is this development · numbered dots are the others · click one to jump
What people said 11 voices · verbatim
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Is it bad that taking a look at the homepage: https://www.zamzar.com/My first thought was "imagine the astonishing amount of private documents and PII you could collect and store if you ran something like this for free as a honeypot". People just blithely uploading any document from their personal data to convert to another format.And if I would…
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I use this all the time, especially for epub to pdf.Tried doing it with pandoc and the result was similar but less good. (I like it when the result is more good.)It's amazing how many formats they support. It's kind of strange that this isn't built into the computer, though. Without Zamzar, the computer still lives in the pre-Babelfish era...
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Congrats!Would you consider a pay-as-you go option, perhaps with a deposit?Right now, I won't subscribe for $12 per month (or $25 for API). But I have some use for both the interactive and API conversions and am happy to pay per conversion, so a pre-paid version (like OpenRouter) would be great.
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try .scn files from SoftImage XSI. Need a way to convert them to a format that can be used in Blender or Maya/FBX without losing any of the structure. Autodesk basically told the old users to bugger off leaving them with Gigs of files they can't use anymore.
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How has revenue changed during the AI period? Are you guys able to maintain or grow with the rise of coding agents?[edit: what’s with the downvotes? I love the story and am curious if Claude etc have affected their business.]
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It’s a beautiful story. Having a business like this in the AI era is VERY inspiring. I see you as a small business, like the butcher or the fishmonger, selling good products to the public. Congratulations, and keep it up.
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Thanks for your comments - PAYG is something that we can offer - feel free to drop me a message at chris [at] the domain and I can provide some more details.
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Hi. Congratulations and thanks; it just happened that today I needed an .mp3 to .txt conversion and used your site. Nice to see it here now. All the best!
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Really happy for you. It's my dream to run such a business for so long, as a side, with a real user base, and not for money.
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Wow I have used this a long time ago and happy to find the origin story on HN.Great job and thanks!
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Are you noticing much of a hit from people using claude code/ desktop etc to do conversions?
All 2 developments of Zamzar hits 20 years bootstrapped: 550M users, 766M files… →
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