Do You Use Electronic Fax?
We all tend to think of fax machines as quaint, 20th century products that became irrelevant when the Internet came along. But in reality faxes are still the most efficient way to quickly deliver a signed business document. As with most office tasks these days, you can do faxing over the Internet and in many ways it's more efficient than using a fax machine. So in this post we take a quick look at some of the electronic fax options out there.
I have to admit I've tried to route around faxes in the past, by scanning and emailing signed documents. But when it comes down to it, scanners are more of a pain than fax machines. So finally today I signed up to an electronic fax service, enabling me to send and receive faxes across the other side of the world easily.
Why electronic fax instead of faxing using a good old 'All-in-one' fax/printer/scanner machine? Well for one, it's more convenient for many people to send and receive faxes by email, which is what electronic faxing enables. Also, electronic faxing allows you to get an international fax number. And electronic faxing doesn't tie up your phone line. Bottom line: so many of the basic tasks any business has to deal with these days can be more efficiently done over the Internet; and faxing is no exception.
I asked the friends of RWW on Twitter today which solutions they recommend.
Several people suggested efax.com - and that's the one I signed up for, given that it has a 30-day free trial. It's $12.95 per month from then on, which is a bit of a premium on the other services mentioned in this post. But efax.com appears to be the market leader in this niche.
efax.com is a nice, simple web solution for faxing. There are no real 'web 2.0 frills' to it - no collaborating with other fax users, no rating faxes, no commenting on faxes, etc. It actually sounds a bit silly to suggest those features in this context. Because let's be honest, electronic faxing doesn't need any of the trendy 2.0 features - faxing over the Web is a simple and direct service that people will actually pay for.
$12.95 per month is about half the price of a basic Basecamp project management account. Although you could buy a fax machine for a one-off price of $100, so in reality you are paying a premium for the convenience of faxing over the Web.
What other electronic fax solutions are out there?
salimmitha tweeted that "the best one which i have used for ages is Maxemail - and you can easily get a US fax number - love it"
Dan And Jennifer said that "we've been using RingCentral for a few years, it's inexpensive and it just works; actually it's fax AND voicemail w / call forwarding."
Bill Mitchell suggested Faxzero.
Other options include send2fax.com, FaxMicro, smartFax, Data On Call, TrustFax and FaxItNice.
The pricing of all these services starts at around $10-15. There are a couple of free providers, but they put ads on your faxes - not a good look if you're running a business and using the service to send signed contracts. $10 per month seems reasonable for an electronic fax service and there's definitely still a business need for it.
Do you electronic fax and if so which service do you use?
UPDATE, 19 March 2009: We have updated our post to use the term 'electronic fax', rather than the term that was previously used, due to a legal letter we received.
Comments
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I use Trustfax www.trustfax.com. $30/year. Don't get a lot of faxes, works fine for what I need.
I work as a web developer and signed us up for MyFax at my job. I've integrated this into our system to send automatic Purchase Orders and Order Confirmations to our customers via e-fax. It's great because I can attach any kind of file to an email that will end up being faxed. It's only $10/month for 100 pages sent / 200 received and $0.10 / page after that, which isn't bad at all. What was really nice was they allowed us to have a toll-free number for no extra charge at all. You can even sign up and try it free for a month. I know I sound like such a commercial for them but they've really made life at the office a lot easier!
Posted by: alexplacito.myopenid.com
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December 19, 2008 4:42 PM
I agree with Alex: I have used MyFax for almost two years now and have been very pleased with the service. Not much to it: you get a toll free fax number for 10 bucks a month. I like that I can have it send incoming faxes to multiple addresses. Pretty simple stuff. Never had to call tech support so I don't know about that.
Eric H. Doss
I've used http://www.faxaway.com/ for years. They never seem to update the service, but it works great for fax, is flexible, and cheaper than the rest. They still highlight Pogue picking them as best in 2004 on the site! I guess faxes haven't changed much since then, either. I did a review of more modern services a few month back, and I ended up sticking with faxaway. No setup fees, no software, $1 a month maintenance charge, and then just reasonable charges by the minute for outbound faxes. Inbound faxes are free. I could not find a compelling reason to pay more at any of the other services. I will probably stick with faxaway until Google/Grandcentral offer a unified free/inexpensive fax option.
I used MyFax for a few months as well. The service was great, speedy and reliable, and inexpensive. I found the web interface a little clunky, but it got the job done. I only stopped using it because I stopped needing to send faxes.
Usually the point of the fax is having a "real" signature on something. All of these systems are OK for receiving something from someone, but if you have to physically "sign" something (pen to paper) you still need to scan it in and then email, or just fax it back.
We need a better system of dealing with this stuff - a basic document sharing system that would allow all parties to "agree" to the same version, then receive a copy with the "agreement" indication from each party, timestamped and recorded. At least, that's my view of the situation. :)
Thanks for the info. I've been wanting to subscribe to a fax service and you did the research for me.
Michael that's an excellent point. While you can receive faxes easily enough via e-fax, the scanner is still required for the sending part (when you have to sign a doc). If we can marry the e-faxing with e-signatures, then we'd be getting rid of the blasted scanner once and for all. Scanners are fiddly, annoying machines.
Anyone know of a product that merges the two? (e-fax and e-sig)?
I was working on the type of app I just described, mainly for my own use with agreement signing for magazine contributors. I've had to put it on the back burner for a while, but if it ever gets done, I'll let y'all know. :)
backboard.com might be a solution in some cases, as might be echosign.com I was doing my own thing cause A) I'm too cheap to spend the $xx per month and B) I wasn't sure I wanted my docs under someone else's control, then maybe just gone if I quit paying.
I never receive faxes so I use FaxZero which is free to send with ads on the front page. If its a serious matter, I pay the $1.99 fee, no sweat.
We send/receive several faxes every day with 80% or more requiring a signature. We use our old, trusty Brother® fax machine to get this done. We pay $19/mo for a dedicated fax line plus long-distance charges.
Signing + faxing is one step faster (and really, just a lot more convenient) than signing + scanning + emailing.
Suggestion: http://www.xoip.com/index.php?lang=en
It's free and does the same thing? It's a Dutch service, but it can be used internationally too I think...
www.send2fax.com is the best I found for basic use when I did some extensive research about a 1 1/2 years ago, minus the esign. It's $8.95 to start. It's simple to use by logging onto your online account or just send an email with the phone number + @fax.send2fax.com. Notifications are sent once the fax has been received or if it fails. Incoming faxes come directly to your email as well. Hmmm... for a local fax number I use www.callwave.com, but I recently tried to setup one for a friend and I'm not sure they have it anymore. Possibly time to update my research.
Send2fax.com does give you an 800 # to use as well.
"Anyone know of a product that merges the two? (e-fax and e-sig)?"
Yes at least for many uses EchoSign does that in fact -- you can get both electronic AND fax-based signatures using EchoSign. And if your scanner is on the fritz, you can even use EchoSign as a fax-in gateway and fax-back a document and it will be imaged and PDF'd for you and sent to the other party.
I looked into e-fax and decided it wasn't worth the cost. I find that incoming faxed documents that need signatures are usually available as an electronic document (i.e., PDF), so getting it to me by email covers 99% of the cases. We needed a printer, so I paid a little extra for a printer/scanner/fax unit. I didn't bother with a dedicated fax line, since I all need to do is temporarily tie up one of our voice lines for a minute to fax out the scanned doc. Had no issues with the scanner portion of my HP printer and having an electronic version of a signed document is a plus for any start-up. Selling your firm and need due diligence? No problem, just email all signed agreements to the auditor.
EchoSign does fax and e-mail signatures. But... for the people silly enough to require a "real" signature, I just attached a scanned version of my signature to the PDF that I receive from my fax provider (www.rapidfax.com) and then fax the amended PDF back. Mac OS X lets you embed images in PDFs using Preview.app.
I like that you've laid out the option for people to see what to use for fax options. Getting contracts signed is still a part of doing business. I use efax when I can and still use regular faxing too. I like when i can use an e-sig on an electronic doc and efax it back.
I have only a limited requirement for sending faxes but am a serious box.net user. They bundle eFax's send function as part of their package.
Why is e-faxing so expensive? Is faxing over VOIP still a problem?
Thanks for the comments pointing out other options than E-Fax. Their monthly charge is ludicrous. I used them about 7 years ago when I first started working from home. However, the occasional fax I sent/received just wasn't worth it. Now, I can look into some of these others that just charge based on usage.
I have used eFax for several years and I pay 16.95 per month. eFax Pro is 19.95 per month. Even the annual prices do not bring the monthly price down to 12.95. How did you manage to pay 12.95 per month (a rate that was raised over a year ago)?
Hi, here in Sydney (Australia) we are using a great eFax service from www.utbox.net. Works fantastic and is very inexpensive. I used eFax before and it had too many problems (non-deliveries etc). Utbox also let's me send SMSs from my email account.
Happy holidays, Wolf (0400 837 458)
E-fax has an account that I use where you can only receive faxes. This works great for personal use, and you can't beat the price: free. Can't complain about it too much and beggers can't be choosers.
If you want this type of account with them you'll have to do some looking. They tend to hide that option on their website.
"scanners are more of a pain than fax machines"? How do you figure? In both cases you have to scan a document. But in the case of a fax, you go the extra step of injecting obsolete technology into modern data workflow for no good reason other than a resistance to changing a mindset.
This is like having calls to your cell number forwarded to a pay phone just because you can't decide what pocket to put your Razor in.
Any modern scanner driver should let you scan to an email attachment at the touch of a button. Why is it any easier or better to scan a document into a fax machine and create an inferior printed copy on dead-tree at the other end?
Fax machines ARE in fact, as you stated, "quaint, 20th century products that became irrelevant when the Internet came along." Let them die out already.
I signed up for eFax. What they don't tell you is that there is no simple way of canceling your account - you have to ring a certain number that is fairly hidden on their site. When I did, before the end of my free trial, they clearly 'forgot' to cancel the account and charged me for the next month... Which prompted another phone call and half an hour explaining to someone I wanted to charges reversed.
Put me off eFax and that 'free trial' model.
MyFax is a great palce to start researching Internet fax providers. Take a look at the blog at http://blog.myfax.com too.
www.eFax.com offers a free application called Messenger that you can use for editing faxes, including a signature feature. It also keeps a record of all faxes, allows you to save drafts and of course send faxes. I've used it for years and I love it.
Maxemail has better quality incoming faxes, outgoing faxes are included in the package, and they are cheaper than efax!
Efax is coasting on their reputation, their billing is a mess and they have jacked up their prices far above anyone else.
I agree with many of the comments, until there is adoption for a simple esignature (which I can't understand why there isn't) paper based scanning of signed documents is still a necessity.
I use efax for inbound only (free)and a very inexpensive fax machine that has an ethernet port made by Sharp. They call it a broadband fax machine http://tinyurl.com/fxxak. There are several big differences to this devise as compared to more complex scanner solutions mentioned here. First, the broadband faxer sits directly on my home office network. It's not connected to my pc. My pc doesn't need to be on. Second, there is no client software on my pc. Scanner software is some of the sloppiest, processor sucking, buggy crap I can think of. The broadband faxer simply scans my stack of documents and converts them to a .pdf then sends them to any email account via smtp server. I have my personal email address saved to one of the 3 email "speed dial" buttons on the front. Lastly, the document feeder is simple and reliable. Less plastic moving parts than the feeders that come on all-in-one flatbed devices.
The solution is a little bit techie, but works flawlessly. I don't fax that much but use it all the time to digitize paper docs.