Gillian Morris

Courier Chatbot - Create and mail your own printed postcards from FB Messenger

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Elliott Golden
Hey guys. I built Courier because sending postcards while traveling (or anytime) sucks. Kiss the hassle goodbye. Turn your photos into beautiful printed postcards and have them mailed anywhere in the world with the Courier chatbot on FB Messenger. Seriously, this is as easy as it gets… I’d love to hear what you guys think. Thanks!
Robert
@elliottgolden Love it :) I'm missing one thing for addresses outside the u.s. Would be cool to send a postcard to a company :)
Elliott Golden
@cptmuh Hey man. You can send postcards to any address in the world. Companies included, just use their name when prompted instead of an individual's. Does that help?
Gillian Morris
I'm totally in love with this, have sent several, and just saw the result in person for the first time (one that I sent to a friend arrived). I've been sending postcards for years but end up sending them in batches sometimes months apart because tracking down postage and a post office is such a pain. I hope this spurs more people to send postcards - I know how special they are to the recipients - and it will be my preferred way to go from now on.
Elliott Golden
@gillianim Glad you're diggin' it Giilian. Thanks for Hunting Courier btw! Yeah, Courier def removes the hassle and people do enjoy receiving something that will outlast a scroll on social media.
Lex
Like the idea, but wasn't this part of iOS a couple of years ago? It isn't anymore. That might be a sign. I like sending post cards because it is something special nowadays though. Not sure if the market will be big enough, but credits for trying!
Elliott Golden
@loudijk Thanks Lex. That rings a bell. Can't recall the specifics of the service though. I wonder if the operation is just a bit to messy for larger Co's to deal with? IE even if there's some money there, is it worth it for them in the bigger picture? The market is def big enough to get a slice. Courier won't be a $B biz, but that's fine.
James Wahba
@loudijk If it was built into iphoto/ios in 2014, I bet the experience was "rough" to say the least. ;)
Lex
@jameswahba couldn't resist looking it up. It was a standalone app apparently. http://9to5mac.com/2013/09/10/ap...
Halyna Tarasenko
It works only for USA, right?
Elliott Golden
@galeriks You can send postcard to and from anywhere in the world.
Halyna Tarasenko
@elliottgolden You see, Ukrainian address contains street, a number of a house and a flat. And there are no such fields in Courier.
adrian sanders
this gonna be goooood.
Sean Freidlin
I've used this a few times and its fantastic
Elliott Golden
@freidlin Glad you're feelin' it. Thanks for the support Sean!
Dan Gurney
Love the idea of sending my pics as physical postcards. I've used Courier quite a bit already. Also good for anonymously pranking your friends.. shhhh!
Amrith
What did you use to build the bot? Love this :D
Elliott Golden
@ambonium Thanks man. It's a Rails backend with conditional logic and a state machine implementation.
Jeffrey Wyman
This is neat.
Dmitri Cherniak
If this is completely automated that's pretty cool
Carleen Pan
Love this! Such a simple idea and well executed. Could see this catching on with the travel crowd.
Sal Conigliaro
Great idea! Would love it if it wasn't tied to Facebook.
Ian Nappier
Looks cool! How do you guys handle all of the printing / mailing? Are you doing it yourselves or have you connected to some other service / api to handle this? I've been tinkering with some ideas for physically mailing emails (just for fun) and have been looking into printing/mailing services.
Elliott Golden
@nappy hey man. We use lob.com. They're great.
Deborah Kay
Does this get postmarked from the country that you are in? Oh mailed from SF.
Elliott Golden
@debbiediscovers Hey Debbie. I only now noticed this... There's actually no postmark. I assume the presorted nature of the item has to do with this.
Deborah Kay
@elliottgolden Thanks! Was looking a this a while back (And a number of other companies that offered a similar service) but it was the inability to get a local postmark that limits the international potential of such apps. So FB does the local fulfilment?
Luke Frye, CPA
This looks like a great idea!