Hey guys,

I'm too 'young' to ever have been impressed by the poor old Fax machine. A friend of mine is starting a small business and faxing is still pretty common as a business communication tool.

I wonder if anyone has experience with things like www.efax.com which offer a software way for 11 euro per month + 9 cents per fax.

Are there any drawbacks to this method?

Hope to hear from some of your experiences!

Regards,
Niels

Software faxing is extremely handy in business but it has one drawback which reflects on why fax machines have even survived thus far. The need to grab a physical sheet of paper and fax it to someone is still best handled by a fax machine. Electronic (software) faxing allows you send digital documents and images with ease, but that piece of paper needs to be directly faxed otherwise you have to scan it (unproductive and time-consuming for a busy office).

I prefer software faxing for its efficency with digital documents but the old machine method is still necessary unfortunately. At least the multifunction devices (all in one) are inexpensive these days and add value through their other functions (scanning and printing). If I were starting a new business I'd be going for one of those.

*in larger enterprises both software and machine are often used

I haven't used efax.com, but you have to keep in mind that these providers only have a limited number of phone lines. Depending on the time of the day and the quality of the provider, your outgoing faxes may be queued for a while before they're actually sent out.
If faxes are time-critical, I'd always go with a local solution.

If not, I'd probably look into VoIP services. A lot of them offer software faxing, and they're usually a good bit cheaper than efax. sipgate.de for example charges 3,90€/mo for voice+fax service and 1ct/min for web faxing.

If you want to do it locally, you can just install some fax gateway software on a small server, put in a fax modem or ISDN card and have it act like a network printer. It'd also be possible to route incoming/outgoing faxes over VoIP, so you're not blocking any phone lines.

Quote from bal00 :

If you want to do it locally, you can just install some fax gateway software on a small server, put in a fax modem or ISDN card and have it act like a network printer. It'd also be possible to route incoming/outgoing faxes over VoIP, so you're not blocking any phone lines.

Fax over IP, which is what you're describing, is where you get a card to go in your server/computer and talks directly to an ISDN switch. Last time I checked one of these cards were in the region of a few hundred pounds.

As has been stated, its entirely possible to simply get a fax modem, and a scanner and hook them upto a PC and a phone line. Under Windows you'd simply get a Virtual Printer, which you can print items to. You'd obviously use a scanner to scan stuff in.

Personally I avoid faxes like the plague, but we do have FoIP, fax modems hanging off PCs and servers, and regular fax machines dotted around a few customers. All work, with varying degrees of expense. We did trial a third party previously, but it was somewhat irritating as they did queue quite a lot. Unfortunately I can't remember who we trialed with I'm afraid.

Quote from the_angry_angel :

Fax over IP, which is what you're describing, is where you get a card to go in your server/computer and talks directly to an ISDN switch. Last time I checked one of these cards were in the region of a few hundred pounds.

True FoIP (T.38) would be too expensive, yes, but apparently people are using analog faxes over regular T.30 connections with decent results. That may depend on the hardware and the carrier, though.

My parents just use a regular fax machine to send faxes. It works just fine, although we cannot use the phone for about 2mins/page. But, when we recieve faxes we have to get the person to call us on the phone first, so that we can pick up the fax with the fax machine.

I'm a newbie here. I would like to know more about fax online. Can you please help me to give more details?

Quote from Alexacarry :

I'm a newbie here. I would like to know more about fax online. Can you please help me to give more details?

you realise that this post is thirteen years old?

Quote from ACCAkut :

you realise that this post is thirteen years old?

You realize that it's some sort of spambot/spammer,who does not care about posts and it's age here?

Quote from Eclipsed :

You realize that it's some sort of spambot/spammer,who does not care about posts and it's age here?

Mild bump, but...

Damn! It's Niels!.... NIELS!!!



boi.

also, 1000th post. amaze

Quote from MicroSpecV :

also, 1000th post. amaze

Nub

Somewhat on-topic, Microsoft provides free fax software for Windows, including Windows 10.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Fax_and_Scan