HelloFax: With 51K Installs, We’re King Of Google Drive Apps

When Google Drive launched at the end of April, a wave of partner apps launched too. Now Y Combinator-backed HelloFax, the startup behind one of those apps, says its Google Drive app has seen rapid uptake, with 51,000 installs in about two weeks.

In fact, the company says that number makes it the most-installed of the Google Drive apps. The claim seems a little odd at first, since there are other apps in the Google Drive section of the Chrome Web Store that show a much higher user count — LucidChart, for example, for example, has 332,930. However, HelloFax says those user counts don’t show an app’s strength on Google Drive specifically, because some were previously available as Chrome extensions.

So to get the true “lift”, HelloFax looked at the competition’s user numbers on the day Google Drive launched, and tracked how much they’ve grown since then. On that front, the company says it comes out as the winner by a strong margin — the runners-up are Pixlr Editor and SlideRocket, which have supposedly grown by 33,000 installs each. (I emailed Google last night to see if those numbers sounded right. I haven’t heard back yet, but I will update this post if I do.)

As for the app itself, it sounds like it mirrors the general HelloFax goal of enabling users to send, receive, and sign faxes online — just, in this case, from Google Drive. It includes 50 free outbound faxes a month, as well as unlimited signing and unlimited signature requests.