Scaling for success: How SaaS partners are supercharging Lumin

Lumin is a proudly bootstrapped company, but that doesn't mean we go it alone. You can't build a global, cutting-edge PDF editing and digital signature system without the help of a few friends.

We understand as well as any business the demand for easy and accessible document management. With offices in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Ukraine in addition to our headquarters in New Zealand, we are taking part in our own vision to enable businesses to fill, sign, and send PDFs in seconds. Lumin is proud to assist our users with creating as many as 700 unique annotations per second – equalling two million per day – to save on those endless emails and Zoom calls. 

Today, our challenge is to keep growing at scale and meet the demand of a growing user base. That’s why we're is embracing partnerships with like-minded SaaS companies and software solutions.

SaaS – software as a service – is more than a service industry. It's a community. Without the incredible SaaS companies we've listed below, Lumin wouldn't be the full-loop document solution it is today.

MongoDB: Supercharging developer productivity

Document storage is a central part of what we do here at Lumin, and it’s the backing of the MongoDB application data platform that has enabled us to scale PDF collaboration and sharing with confidence. 

When Lumin began back in 2016, we needed a database that would supercharge our development productivity and enable us to rapidly iterate and evolve the product. We chose MongoDB not just because it has a flexible data model, which was perfect for where we were on our journey, but also because we knew it was a highly scalable database that would support us as we grew. 

In 2019 we shifted away from a self-hosted version of MongoDB to MongoDB Atlas in the interests of increased flexibility and reduced development time. MongoDB Atlas gives our developers the ability to expand the size of our database as our user count grows.

Automated backups and advanced multi-cloud cluster management allow for precise data management, creating a firm foundation that Lumin can rely on to deliver the streamlined services our users expect.

What does MongoDB offer our customers?

Lumin users are leveraging the power of MongoDB at every touchpoint in their editing experience.

Every annotation, highlight, or comment actioned in a PDF is synced and stored using MongoDB’s database service for seamless editing and secure storage, so no one has to worry about crucial ideas going astray. Best of all, the competitive pricing of MongoDB Atlas enables us to continue offering basic editing capabilities through our free Lumin plan!

Apryse: Custom PDF solutions

Everyone who's edited a PDF knows: not all PDF editing software is created equal. Making edits to a PDF is rarely as straightforward as you'd like. That’s why Lumin licensed Apryse PDF SDK in 2019 to build the most intuitive suite of PDF editing capabilities on the web.

The Apryse PDF SDK platform equips SaaS companies with a fast and easy way to build out what they require throughout the document lifecycle, without needing to rely on third-party servers.

From document creation, page manipulation, editing, annotation and signing, Apryse provides the backbone for the entire Lumin experience. With Apryse, we're able to keep bringing our users more advanced capabilities to manage their PDFs.

What does Apryse offer our customers?

Apryse has provided Lumin with the ability to continue growing and improving our software, so users can benefit from an easy, intuitive PDF toolkit. Thanks to their best-in-class rendering capabilities, we've been able to add tools like redact and direct text editing to our product.

Watch this space for more exciting features to come!

Ory: Optimal user security

The safety of your documents matters. No matter whether you’re completing assignments or signing confidential paperwork, we take your security seriously.

Lumin uses Ory’s open-source, cloud-based identity and user management solution at scale to ensure that our user’s data stays secure – no matter where in the world they’re accessing their PDFs. 

Security continues to be a top priority for Lumin as our PDF toolkit grows, and Ory is assisting us with continuously refining our security protocols for the very best user experience. This includes powering all user logins for our apps to ensure a cohesive security approach across all of our services. 

What does Ory offer our customers?

Ory is helping us to support integrations between our open API and other Lumin systems, including our eSignature platform Lumin Sign, so that users won’t lose productivity from switching constantly between platforms.

What’s next for Lumin?

As Lumin continues to scale and support new users, we are pushing the envelope to develop fresh features and capabilities that elevate the user experience. Part of this means cultivating new partnerships with fellow SaaS companies.

For example, we've just released a Google Chrome extension, and a Slack integration is around the corner. Both these tools are a crucial part of our mission to streamline the world's work; we're cutting down on tabs you open by ensuring you can use Lumin wherever you are.

We've also just released the Lumin Sign API, an eSignature workflow API. It's designed to be picked up by enterprise developers and plugged in to their platform or app. You can request signatures, set due dates on contracts, and track the progress of forms and contracts as they travel through the cloud.

The creation of our soon-to-be-released public API will enable developers to utilize the Lumin PDF annotation toolkit to speed up workflows by using our tools inside their own product. With the backing of Ory Cloud and MongoDB Atlas for security and storage respectively, this opens up a world of possibilities for in-house development teams who are looking for smarter solutions to manage their documents.