Modern Faxing - Google fax service using Ring Central?
 

Calling on people here that are using a fax service of some sort. Alternately if you are using a stand alone fax machine at home connected to e.g. the cable modem. I'm wondering what is the best method compared to buy a separate fax machine and a stand-alone hard phone line. Thanks for ideas and experience.

Do what I do: Tell them you don't fax.

Interesting. If you've got a phone line of some sort, you could probably add an internal modem to your PC. Then with (I assume these days) any one of several programs you wouldn't even have to print the faxes. you'd be able to view them digitally.

For some things, you may have 2 options, snail mail or fax. If those are my options, I prefer to fax.

I use ring central. In my industry, paperwork is a compliance issue. So fax is necessary

It's $10 a month, up to 500 pages. Uses a VoIP type system. Creates it's own number.



Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

It looks like RingCentral is the leader but is a bit pricey if I just want to fax a few pages per month.
Maybe they have a limited option. Thanks.

Modern Faxing?

uhm, yeah, MMS (cell phone picture texted)

Even banks are cashing checks this way.

As a small business dealing with some government bureaus (or a CPA) a FAX is sometimes just a necessary part of the the year 2020 business. Faxes have been around for over 140 years. Really, look it up.

My business is run from my home, and I have had a laser printer since the HP Laser Jet II of the 1980s. Currently I have a Dell E525w that is compact, and it is a color laser (not inkjet) printer, scanner, copier, and fax. It was darn cheap, and replacement toner cartridges last over a year, and are less than 25 bucks for the CMYK set. It prints great color or B&W and I can fax. It is even an Apple print ready printer so my wife can print from her iPad with ease.

I don't have a conventional land line. I do have a OOMA box that I bought, and hook up to my network. Instant VoIP phone service and we kept the old land line that my wife insists we keep. (Happy wife = happy life) and the phone line is $4 per month now.

Anyway, all I have to do is unplug the normal handset from the OOMA and plug in the Fax line, and send or receive a fax no issue.

Overall it is a great setup and very inexpensive. When the entire set of cartridges is cheaper than the little inkjet cartridges that dry up and go bad in short order. Toner never dries out.

The OOMA box must be doing the trick. My reading on the subject indicates trying to send a fax over a VOIP phone line is not reliable. For example if I hooked a standard manual fax machine to the phone connection on the back of my cable modem it would not work reliably. This is why unless you have an old standard phone line you have to use a "service". Does this OOMA box solve this issue?

Some reading on the OOMA boxes. They cover this subject and it looks like the quality of the faxing is dependent on a few things but the OOMA people are doing what is possible to make it work. The OOMA approach sounds pretty good.

I have never had any issues with a fax and my OOMA. And talking on the phone is solid high quality sound, and no difference from the old days of analog phones that always worked.

99.9% of the time I just plug in our standard old wireless hand sets and the house has regular old phone service. If I need to send or receive a fax I have to unplug or handset base station, and plug in my fax. But I send a few per year.

I had to buy that printer-scanner-copier-fax machine in the first place only because in our second year in business the IRS decided to audit our first year returns. I sent a bunch of faxes then. And in the end the IRS said there was a $28 dollar shortage, but they did not think it was even worth opening the return and making us pay it so they just said all is good and we were done.

The OOMA is not cheap to buy, but it has worked great for us, and the phone line is just taxes only the government feels is deserved for the honor of having a phone line.

We are a RingCentral reseller/Partner, great product, have had a few client switch from just fax to full product as fax is included and cheaper than landlines.

This may help: https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-online-fax-services

Thanks for that. Interesting - at the bottom of the article it states a number of the fax services are owned by ZiffDavis - ZiffDavis wrote the article. Seems a bit confusing but I'm getting more comfortable with the various options as I read more about it.

Used to use a dedicated fax machine. Now I use an all in one deal that will photocopy, fax, scan or print.