Due to the countless file types and measuring units used across the world, online conversion tools have become a necessity in our day-to-day life. Popular conversion websites like Smallpdf have millions of users. Isn‘t it funny how many people use that stuff?
In the following article, we give you an overview of the most important conversion niches.
File Conversion
There are literally thousands of online file converters available that can be used for free, but few of them provide the level of quality the user is looking for. The truth is that good and reliable quality file conversion tools are hard to come by. A quick web search pulls up sites that are either poorly designed or extremely limited with only a few file formats supported. Most of the tools require a download, installation, and an understanding of how they work.
Another problem is that online file converters are not always equipped to handle specialized file types like AutoCAD. AutoCAD files tend to be very large and pose compression difficulties during the file conversion process. Only a handful of online file converting tools are compatible with such file formats. In most cases, you’re better off using a standalone tool that is capable of converting your original file without quality loss.
Most file converters don’t support large file sizes. The typical limit is around 50 to 100 MB. There are also additional service-level agreements that you have to adhere to when using these websites – for example regarding the number of files each user can convert through this service or the number of conversion minutes you can use per day. Special features like batch conversions are only available for premium subscribers.
When using a free online file converter, you should always make sure that the website does not store, retain or backup files on its servers. The privacy issue is especially relevant if you’re working with files containing sensitive data. If you can afford to have your file seen by others, the security aspect is not as important.
Calendar and Date Conversion
While the Gregorian calendar is the calendar used in most parts of the world, there are many other calendars that are used for religious and social purposes. Examples are the Hindu calendar, the Chinese calendar, the Hebrew calendar and the Islamic Hijri Calendar. Converters that show the current date in Western and Islamic calendar format have become increasingly popular during the recent years.
The majority of the available online tools offer two converting possibilities. There are also calendars available that can convert up to 10 different date formats at one time. Some tools even include the famous Mayan Calendar that ended (and started again) on the 21st of December, 2012.
More and more universities in Australia and the United Kingdom, especially those with traditionally high numbers of Muslim students, offer free Hijri-Gregorian date converters. Those tools are easily located on the homepage of the university and are reliable to within about a day. For best results, always enter a four digit year. For example, ’80AH’ should be entered as ‘0080’.
Case Conversion
Case converters are online tools used to convert the case of any text to either upper case, lower case, sentence case or proper case. The tools are designed to ease your work by providing most of the alternatives in one single click. All you need to do is to copy your text and paste it into the given box, and then change it to whatever case you want. Some case converters will also give you the option to download the converted content in text format or to copy it to the clipboard and directly paste it to your document.
Online case converters can be especially helpful if they include a title case converting feature. This tool is used for the headlines of articles, books, movies and other works. In title case, all minor words are lowercased, while major words are capitalized (e.g. ‘Civic Culture in Western and Eastern Europe’). A title case converter can become your reliable assistant while writing web articles, term papers, research papers, essays and other types of content.
PSD to HTML conversion
It is a funny example of a “human-driven” conversion niche, i.e. there is a real human working to convert your design template into HTML markup\live website. The same applies to you hiring developers to build your startup and so on and so on.
Currency Conversion
Currency converters are handy for checking prices in restaurants, shops, gas stations and other businesses. Many internet shopping sites will offer to do the conversion math for you, but it’s always better to double-check their math as the exchange rates tend to fluctuate quite a bit. Most currency converters will not show any difference between the buying and selling price for a given currency.
One big advantage of currency converter apps is that they don’t consume resources and memory but still launch fast when opened. For basic calculations, two decimal places usually are sufficient. Even when converting US Dollars to British Pounds which normally fluctuate between 80% and 120%, an accuracy of two decimals is completely fine. If you are exchanging currency for a profit, however, you will want to use a much more accurate tool.
Cryptocurrency Conversion
Cryptocurrency converting tools are used as a means of checking the relative cost of Bitcoin and other major electronic currencies. There are basically two different kinds of crypto converters – trading platforms and cryptocurrency calculators. The first type can be seen as a middleman that opens you the doors to the world of cryptocurrencies. In order to use a crypto trading platform, you have to register an account and verify your personal information. Some of the best cryptocurrency trading platforms include Coinbase, Huobi, Bitstamp, 3Commas, Kraken, and Binance.
Crypto exchange rate calculators, on the other hand, help you to convert prices online between two currencies in real-time. They convert a given cryptocurrency into fiat money like US Dollars or Euros (and vice versa) or into another cryptocurrency. This type of converter is much simpler to use, and you don’t need to sign up or provide sensitive information. While most people use these tools to watch cash prices on Bitcoin, they are countless other cryptocurrencies on the market. The most popular among them include Dash, Ripple, NEO, Monero, EOS, Zcash, Ethereum, Litecoin and Cardano.
