https://www.airdropper.com
AirDropper is a Dropbox companion app for requesting files from anyone with an email address. You just authorize your Dropbox account, make a request, and we put the file the person uploads into your Dropbox. Everything's secure in transit, we can handle larger files than most email services, and it's really easy for the person sending the file.
To provide some context, I started my own law firm this year, and I immediately ran into some friction in trying to securely get files from clients. Many clients were uncomfortable sending sensitive documents as email attachments. I walked a few clients through signing up with Dropbox and sharing a folder, but that caused a lot of back and forth with creating an account, setting sharing permissions, etc. I talked through the issue with my perennial side-project partner and AirDropper is what we came up with as a solution. We made a "two week" version a little while ago and we got some great feedback, especially from designer friends who need to get files from clients that are too big to email. Today's version incorporates their feedback, along with some improvements we've stumbled into along the way.
What do you think?
I have a couple questions/comments:
- It's not exactly "secure", right? AirDropper has access to my file while it's "in transit" so AirDropper's really only "secure" if I trust AirDropper. You could, for example, be keeping a copy of everyone's files. So who are you, and why should I trust you?
- When I linked my Dropbox account I just gave you full access to my whole Dropbox. Ugh. Is there a way you can just get access to the directory in question?
These seem like obvious new user questions so you might want to add an FAQ, perhaps.
As far as who's behind AirDropper, my name is Jesse Lamb and my co-founder is Nick Stamas. I'm a Florida attorney that works with tech companies on business formations, contracts, and intellectual property. I also blog at http://www.notmylawyer.com, which has been on the front page of HN a few times. Nick is a designer/developer who just moved to NYC. We've known each other our whole lives and we've been on various teams together for the past 6 years. The name of our company is Gruntverk, LLC. We don't have a site for the company yet, but our information is on file with Florida's Division of Corporations.
A FAQ is a great idea, and I really appreciate you bringing these issues up.
Thanks!
Like I said, it's slick app and I totally see myself using it, so this is just icing on the cake.
However, apart from the privacy/security concerns I can see this service having a lot of potential.
Firefox 3.6.8, Windows 7.
Otherwise, great design and idea.
notice how the r and l characters seem to be a bit higher, and (at least in my opinion) the b and o chars seems to be too "fat", especially relative to the e. also, the bottom part of the a looks too thick...just overall looks a bit weird, definitely not like what nickstamas posted above.
this is in FF 3.6.8 on XP with cleartype enabled, btw.
- If I check the checkbox, I have to input a valid email or I get a something went wrong error. (bug) - The person received an email even if the checkbox was checked (bug) - I have to input a description of the file requested (not needed)
(Nice idea by the way.)
One thing I don't see is a price list. How do you plan on making a business out of this? Monthly subscription on top of dropbox?
Out of curiosity - were the files you needed from clients PDFs that required signatures? That seems to be the primary use case. There are some interesting startups around this area, but I haven't seen someone nail it 100% yet.
I've been thinking through the signed documents problem, but I'm not sure the market is ready yet. We've had legislation in the U.S. that legitimizing electronic signature for about a decade, but there's a comfort to a signed physical copy that is hard for people to give up for big contracts. I'm wondering what user affordance will finally break through that mental barrier, but I haven't come up with anything yet.
Like a page of screenshots of the actual service UI and some details as to how everything is set up (for example, I initially thought that the uploader would also need a dropbox acount. After looking again, I'm pretty sure that's not the case).
It just seems rather jarring that the only thing you can do from the home page is give airdropper access to your dropbox.
That said, it looks like an awesome service; I'm sure I'll be using it.
Sceenshots and maybe a screencast is a great idea. I think we'll start with a FAQ since the implementation cost is so much cheaper and go from there.
Thanks for the feedback!
If I want a file from someone, the easiest thing is for me to email him and say "send me file X" and he will reply with file X attached.
If he's hesitant to send file X because it contains sensitive information, he can encrypt it first.
If the file is sensitive, I have to decide whether I trust the person asking for it, but assuming I do, I also have to decide if I trust AirDropper and Dropbox? If I don't, then I encrypt the file anyway, at which point I might as well just email it directly.
Taking file encryption as an example, you can certainly encrypt a file before sending it, but that depends on the sophistication of the sender. They may not be familiar with how to encrypt a file. And if they are, it's kind of a hassle dealing with encrypted files on both ends. You have to transmit the password in some separate medium from the file itself, and now you have to decide whether to keep both the encrypted and unencrypted versions. It's friction that our solution obviates.
Likewise, you can send an email attachment for non-sensitive files, but every email provider has differing file size caps. We're still testing the limits of our service, but we've already successfully handled files more than double Gmail's size caps, which are among the highest in the industry. Right now most of the alternatives to attachments require a fair amount of setup for the sender. Ours just requires they visit a page and upload the file.
Coming back to the issue of trust, that's definitely going to be a challenge for us as a company just starting out. If you have any ideas about how we can develop that trust I'd welcome them.
Thanks for the awesome feedback. :)
Currently, uploaders can't use the same request link twice so the requester would need to send 3 requests if they wanted 3 files.
It seems like the solution might be to have a "send another file" link, after the uploader has chosen their first file.
All in all, really slick tool.
Cheers!
Thanks!
One question: Have you given any consideration for sending files the other way - in other words, from you to a less-sophisticated client? That's the other side of this equation.
might want to make it clearer that the person you're trying to get the file from doesn't need a dropbox account, as that seems to be the big idea behind this.
I think you need to take the time to explain who would use this and why on your front page a lot better from the beginning. I also don't think the diagrams are descriptive enough, for example I didn't really understand how exactly steps 2 and 3 worked until I read your post in detail.
So in closing ... market this more explicitly to devs/graphic designers/lawyers etc (folks who need to get files from non-technical people) and do a better job of explaining exactly how the product works and it could turn into a nice stream of passive income.
PS: An idea would be to allow your subscribers brand the upload page with their logo and colors then use their domain/subdomain names for it. This would make their clients even more comfortable with uploading sensitive information.
Good luck with your project!
