Internet Fax Service

[MAMalody]

Does anybody use an Internet Fax Service? I would be interested in the site, your experience and how it works. Thanks for the help.

Mike

[Julie]

I have one, but I've only used it a few times. It's a bit awkward, because you send your file in an email, and the "to" address contains your username and password. You have to prepay, like internet postage, and they deduct the cost from your account. I keep losing the template I use for sending them. I have a fax machine, but only one phone line. They do the job, though, exactly as promised.

Does anybody use an Internet Fax Service? I would be interested in the site, your experience and how it works. Thanks for the help.

Mike

[Jerry W]

Does anybody use an Internet Fax Service? I would be interested in the site, your experience and how it works. Thanks for the help.

Mike

Mike,

I use Trust Fax for receiving. I send everything from my computer. Based on my monthly receive volume, I get by with the $4.95 plan, including a toll-free number.

Here's the link: http://www.trustfax.com/free_trial_30day.a...CFRUdsgod7XLPjw

Hope this helps.

Jerry W

[DevM]

Mike,

I use Trust Fax for receiving. I send everything from my computer. Based on my monthly receive volume, I get by with the $4.95 plan, including a toll-free number.

Here's the link: http://www.trustfax.com/free_trial_30day.a...CFRUdsgod7XLPjw

Hope this helps.

Jerry W

I'm using MYFAX. you can check it out at myfax.com. have been using it for over a year. Cost is $10.00/Mo with 100 send and 200 receive pages. You get a toll free number and can fax from your computer. It works great. I'm very happy with it.

[MAMalody]

I will check those out. Thanks for the input. If anybody else is out there, feel free to chime in.

Mike

[joelgilb]

I actually have 2 different services, one I use for receiving faxes and one for sending. So why would I use 2?

Well:

To receive I have had an account with www.Packetel.com which is only $3.95 per month for "Unlimited" fax receipts, but you can not send with this account at all. I like the fact that all my faxes now come to my desk in e-mail in PDF format so it is easy to save and no conversion or scanning. Much cheaper than me or a secretary taking the time to scan them. I used to use a standalone fax or my computer fax to send.

But now I am trying to sell my house and moving to NV, so had "Stage" the house. This caused me to have to rewire my lines to hide my Vonage Box and I was no longer able to tie into the house wiring for phone, so lost the ability to use my regular fax.

Then I subscribed to a temporary fax online account for sending only. Fax2mail.com or its sales company http://www.premiereglobal.com had what I thought was a pretty good deal at $8.33 per month for 350 incoming or outgoing fax pages monthly. Since I am only sending with this account 350 is usually more than enough for me. However, were I to receive I would be over in the first 10 days of the month in the slow times of year. What is really nice about this is no-one is choosing your allocation of sent vs received faxes, which most of the online fax companies do.

Have only had this new service a couple of months and did have a few growing pains, like maintaining fax logs, but support was good and setup the account on their end to give me what I needed. You do have to send via email by attaching the documents you want to send. I attach PDF's but they do accept some other formats as well (not sure which, as PDF works for me).

Once my move is complete I will reconsider going back to my old method or continuing with this or another service. Although, I am really beginning to like sending via e-mail and it leaves a nice record of what you sent this way.

I also looked at the service from Comodo at http://www.trustfax.com that is very competitively priced, posted above by Jerry. They have a Pro deal where you get 400 Receive Pages, 125 Send Pages, Faxes are Sent To Your Email, you get a Fax Inbox - Unlimited Storage and US Local Fax Number. For lighter use you can get their 100 send, 50 receive pkg. It also looks like they have far more options than the others, including the ability to maintain faxes on their server and receive them via email. This probably doesn't work for me as sending is my issue and 125 probably not enough, but it may work for others here..

Finally, when I started using fax2mail, I was able to turn off my fax telephone line that was costing me $10.00 for the line plus roughly $5.00 in taxes. Then I went and got a virtual NV telephone number for $4.95, and another Packetel NV fax line for $3.95. Net cost almost the same, but now I have 5 numbers, lots of options to expand the business in a new market while maintaining the old market and well a little extra confusion. I think am seeing extra business from the extra lines, and expect that to improve in the long run.

Hope this helps

[chadw]

I have also seen efax (www.efax.com). They have a few different types of service. They do have a free one that can only recieve about 20 per month. They are a bit pricey I think for the number of faxes you can recieve, but I think it can recieve to multiple emails and such.

[Gail in Virginia]

I love the new things I learn on this board. This looks like a great way to quit wasting paper on those ridiculous faxes that come in every night and are waiting for me in the morning, offering to buy the business and send all the employees to Hawaii for 1.99 or some such. I will have to look into this.

[joelgilb]

... This looks like a great way to quit wasting paper on those ridiculous faxes that come in every night...

It really does save paper and ink. Also it is a lot less frustrating deleting a advertising fax than crumpling that paper and throwing it away.

[NECPA in NEBRASKA]

I have used Trustfax for two years. I have a higher priced plan, because I send and receive a lot of faxes. I believe my plan is for 1200 pages a year. I love it. I just scan anything outgoing into a PDF file and they fax it. Much cheaper than another phone line and I can pick up my faxes as E-mail anywhere.

Bonnie

[Lion EA]

I used to send and receive faxes from my computer with my old SNET (now AT&T) service. Then we changed our telephone service to Optimum cable along with internet and TV; and Optimum didn't play nice with my very basic fax software that came bundled with my Gateway computer. We also had a freestanding fax machine and a dedicated fax line on AT&T, plain vanilla with no extra services, and a cheap long distance service with an 800 number, all of which we decided to keep so we'd have a land line, hard-wired, for times when the cable might go out. But, I miss being able to fax from my computer when I created the document in my computer and to receive in my computer, especially when it's junk that I don't want to waste paper and toner on. Any of you out there using Optimum? Have you found a computer fax software that works with it. The two that I've tried answer ALL calls automatically or you have to manually answer all calls. (I can manually SEND, but forget since most faxes go through the freestanding machine.) With my old AT&T, even the free fax software could distinguish between faxes and voice calls, so knew when to answer. Or, should I be looking at one of the fax services that I guess are quasi-emails?

[joelgilb]

I just remembered that "fax2Mail" can also be purchased from www.saveonfaxes.com. By going here you are able to get a different plan of 250 pages per month for $6.95 per month. If you sign up on this site you may not see at first it was a part of fax2mail.com and that you need to address everything to fax2mail and not saveonfaxes.com.

And here is a site that helps you find other providers http://www.faxbeep.com/

[kcjenkins]

I've had an eFax number since they first started out. It was the free service for a long time, until my son wanted to piggyback on to it, then the number put me into the paid volumn. But it can be sent to up to 5 different email addresses, so this is a good thing if you want to be able to get the faxes at multiple locations, or mutiple users, etc.

You can send and receive with this one.

[joelgilb]

I've had an eFax number since they first started out...

Had E-fax as well at one time (when it was free). You might want to look at the alternatives though, there are several that offer better deals today than E-Fax.

[Lila Godel]

Does anybody use an Internet Fax Service? I would be interested in the site, your experience and how it works. Thanks for the help.

Mike

We switched to maxemail (www.maxemail.com) in Atlanta from having Faxes received by a PC and routed to a laser printer because at the time we switched the cost for customers with our plan billed annually was about what Bellsouth was charging us monthly for a dedicated fax line.

We were able to get Faxes as PDFs or TIFs (we chose PDFs) and voice mails as WAVs or RAs (we chose WAVs). We had Bellsouth setup busy or no answer forwarding to the maxemail number for our voice mail. For incoming faxes and voice mails you specify up to 5 delivery e-mail address. For each address you specify whether the address should get e-mails with the faxes or voicemails attached or e-mails with links to the items.

We had it setup so that my dad would get the files attached to his e-mails so he could handle the storage of the files in client files (needed to be handled by one person). I got the e-mails with just links so I could view the faxes and process them if they were for me.

When we moved to Knoxville we could not get a number in our area code so we got a toll free number. With our toll free number they charged us $0.10 / page of each fax and would have charged us $0.10 for each voice mail had we not opted for the Bellsouth voice to avoid the $0.10 / voice mail charge.

Later when I disccovered that our copy of SBS 2003 could be used to receive faxes and route them to an e-mail box we dropped Maxemail in favor of a dedicated fax line to avoid having to pay the $0.10 / page charge. At that time we were able to get a deal to have 3 phone lines (2 voice + 1 fax) for less than what were paying for 2 phone lines (2 voice and no fax).

[kcjenkins]

Yes, I guess I should look into the alternatives, but I'm lazy about that sort of thing. And I've given out that eFax number to so many clients that I really hate to change. It's not like we get a lot of them, we are getting a lot more emails these days in place of faxes. Which I much prefer.

[MAMalody]

Well, I did it. I signed up for TrustFax today. Time will tell whether it was a good decision. I will keep my dedicated fax line for one more month, then the deep six....unless TrustFax doesn't work out.

[joelgilb]

Well, I did it. I signed up for TrustFax today. Time will tell whether it was a good decision. I will keep my dedicated fax line for one more month, then the deep six....unless TrustFax doesn't work out.

Don't personally know this service, but I think you made a good move. I think Internet fax is really a good alternative today.

Here is are some ratings and reviews of various services:

http://faxing-service-review.toptenreviews.com/

[MAMalody]

Interesting comparison site. It was interesting to note that eFax had an ad on the page yet were not listed among the ten rated. I wonder if the rating is objective or subjective, that is paid of unsolicited?

[carolynm]

I use 101fax.com. It's free to receive and you can pay as you go for sending which I like. I send most of my faxes on my Canon Pixma MP780 which allows me to fax directly from mycomputer. I like to receive my faxes in email as a pdf because then I can just save them in my customers directory. I'm really moving towards a paperless office and this was just one more step I could take towards that mission.

Carolyn