Rendin: we needed a document template editor that any user of the system could use.
Rendin is a startup that has set out to be the safest and most convenient rental agreement platform in the world. Rendin offers a modern, safe and efficient solution for long term home rental agreements for signing, managing and securing tenants liability with insurance. Furthermore, landlords can take advantage of their pre-screening of possible tenant candidates.
Having been in operation now for about a year and a half, Rendin today serves hundreds of clients in multiple markets. Today, their number of templates has grown to an impressive 50–60 templates.
The struggle: avoiding involving a developer
In order to enable the growth, those templates have to be in various languages, have different layouts and contain various data. The types of documents include contracts, certificates etc. To accelerate the speed of growth they needed to modify these templates without the need for developer involvement.
Before choosing PDF Generator API, Rendin tested one other solution, but one of the upsides of our product, according to them, was its straightforward pricing and a high degree of flexibility. Using PDF Generator API helps them to keep their fixed costs under control due to our transparent pricing setup as it gives them the possibility to keep their fixed costs under control, at the same time giving them the flexibility to scale up as the business grows.
One of the main requirements Rendin had for their new solution was that it had to be a service a non-technical person would be able to use. Another one is a simple-to-use and reliable API — so that they could send the data and get the final document back — without having to worry about what goes on under the hood.
Initially, Rendin considered building something similar themselves, but after evaluating the resources needed and our already-mentioned transparent and simple pricing logic — they opted for an external service. They were looking for a browser-based template editor that any user of the system can handle on their own.
As security is on top of everyone’s mind these days and large-scale data breaches have become a regular part of our lives, they wanted to find a solution that would let them sleep at night knowing their clients’ data is handled with care and is safe. This applies especially to data that is considered delicate.
How was the set-up?
Most of Rendin’s systems are based on Google Cloud, similarly to PDF Generator API, so all that had to be done was to format their existing data from Google Firestore according to set guidelines, send it over along with the template JSON file, wait for a reply and save it back into their Google Cloud storage. The process, for them, was very well streamlined — getting to know the editor was more time-consuming.
On the technical side, about five people were involved in the implementation, and another 5–6 are inputting data — so altogether, around ten people were involved in implementing PDF Generator API.
The implementation process itself took about a week, but most of the time for Rendin was spent trying to figure out how to implement the product on their own side — how to build the queries, where to save the received document and issues related to making it work in our Google Cloud. The rest was easy.
As it was only at the beginning of trying to figure out how to build their product technically, then there were no processes at that time that were already set in stone. Rather, implementing PDF Generator API allowed them to build their own processes on top of it.
“Implementing your product allowed us to build our own processes on top of it along with the rest of the stack.” — Alar Mäerand, CTO
PDF Generator API is genuinely a flexible product. We do all we can, to adapt to the needs and requirements of our customers, regardless of the sector — independent of whether it is implemented on top of an existing stack or used as a building block for something entirely new.
If this sparked an interest in you, feel free to get in touch with us or have a look at our API documentation.
