There are hundreds and thousands of file conversion program available on the internet that can assist you with fulfilling any kind of conversion needs. That being said, there are two things that all of these tools lack:
File Conversion Program (Tools)
Reliability
Most of the online solutions available are simply not efficient in handling most of the files thrown at them. While they can easily convert the small, simple files, they fail big time when they have to deal with complex and big files. They simply cannot understand the structure of the file and after hours of work, you are still at square one.
Scalability
These conversion solutions have a limitation when it comes to handling the formats. They can handle the popular formats but there are days when you are dealing with not so popular formats but still need conversions. Which God do you worship during those days?
While there are no doubts that most of the conversion tools available are stable and out of beta but when you consider things like reliability and a business deal at stake, you cannot settle for anything less than a perfect solution!
Who do you trust then? Well, if you ask me, you need a service that is more than just word to PDF conversion or a video to mp3 conversion. You need something that can be your go-to conversion solution for any file type; something that will never put you in jeopardy and have your back all the time.
While investing in a desktop application of some kind is a good idea but given the cost of implementing combined with the cost of running software on your machine makes this solution pretty much a costly affair. Thus ruling out an application for converting files is an obvious decision.
However, lately, file conversion technology has been moving a lot towards the cloud and as a result many efficient websites like Convertio.co have come up. What makes these websites different from the traditional file conversion websites is the fact that these websites boast of powerful conversion algorithms and use state of the art server architecture for top notch file conversion quality.
However, the question still stays the same – are they reliable? A close look at the new file conversion websites gives me a fair amount of confidence to try and stick to these cloud based resources. However, there are 3 things that you should consider before investing in any file conversion service.
Multiple Needs. Single Solution.
Documents will not be the only thing that will need conversion. In the long run you will be converting videos, archives and even vectors. Now in a normal scenario, you will be investing in multiple websites but with a strong cloud based file conversion system, everything is under one single roof. Find a service that supports more than one file conversion.
Developer Friendly API
Remember what I said about scalability and how the tools available online fail at it? Well, the new age web services are equipped with ready to use APIs for developers to scale them for big enterprise. If your organization is serious about using a file conversion service, you should probably check the availability of API.
Additional Tools
Now that you are willing to invest in a cloud based service, it is a good idea to look for additional features and tools that you would get along with the service. For example, a few websites provide a few GBs of storage space on Cloud and then there are other services that provide free email alert service when the conversion completes. These little things add up to the value of the cloud based service and if you are not considering them, you might lose out on some real nice tools. 🙂
1 Comment
Hey Erich,
Great posts on using a good file conversion program. I also agree that is important to use this for company documents.
Thanks,
Dennis