Announcing SamKnows Connect - a new suite of web services
Long time readers of the site will be aware that our Availability Checker is available as an XML web service, and this web service is used extensively by the comparison websites, amongst others. Indeed, this is primarily how we fund the operation of the website.
One flaw, from a retail perspective, with our existing Availability Checker API is that it only returns wholesale information - e.g. It will say if BT Wholesale has ADSL Max present at an exchange, but it doesn’t list any of the retail providers or the packages that are available via the ADSL Max wholesale product. For those not familiar with the broadband market this has caused some confusion when using the API.
So today we’re launching SamKnows Connect, a new suite of web services that:
- Include retail provider and product information (including pricing, caps, contract terms, hardware specifications, and a lot more)
- Allows you to check via phone number and/or postcode, bringing together functionality from the existing Availability Checker API to filter out only those services that are available
- Manages the affiliate links for you and provides an extremely competitive rate of commission
By managing the retail product tie-up to the wholesale data at the API level, we should hopefully be able to improve the accuracy of the data being presented by some affiliate websites. Of course, our existing API is going nowhere and it still provides the most flexibility for those wanting to build an extremely customised checker from the ground up.
The new service will be in “beta” until the end of July, and will officially go live at the start of August.
For more information please visit connect.samknows.com.
