HOW TO SAVE MONEY BY SENDING YOUR FAXES OVER THE INTERNET
By: Andrea Sigler,PhD
President, Connected International Meeting Professionals Association
Sending long distance domestic and international faxes for the price of a local phone call is one of the many ways techno-savvy meeting professionals save money for their clients/employers.
Fax over the internet works on the same principle as email. The fax is sent as image data along with some data about the sending machine and destination.
Here's the difference between internet fax and regular fax:
When sending a regular fax, your fax machine goes offhook, dials and the phone network completes a circuit over phone lines to the receiving fax machine. You pay for the circuit. The two fax machines negotiate a connection, get synchronized and exchange image data.
When you send a fax over the internet, your fax machine (or PC client) transmits the image data as packets through an internet data network instead of the phone company's network. Fax over Internet servers only need the telephone company network (if they need it at all) for the local legs of calls. Thus, you save the long distance costs - and it's free if it's inside your company intranet.
Not only are faxes on the internet free or cheap, internet faxes also means smarter faxing. You never run out of paper, you can easily organize your documents by routing your faxes to specific folders in your inbox automatically, you can personalize blast faxes with fax merge and you can let your faxes be edited if you want.
Here's a roundup of fax over the internet products which CIMPA (Connected International Meeting Professionals Association) has tested:
FaxBack (Tel 503 645 1114) just came out with NetSatisFAXion 6.0. This has great features like monitoring and tracking of faxes in real time. Administrators can quickly view, edit, delete and re-send fax jobs.
Faximum Software ( Tel 604 925 3600) lets you send faxes over the internet and enables users to send and receive faxes using only their existing email program or web browser.
FaxLauncher by FaxSav (Tel 732 906 2000) lets users on Wintel or Mac machines fax anything they can print.
InfoPress made by Castelle's Ibex Product Division (916 939 8888) is an all-in-one fax delivery system. It combines fax, email, phone and web for universal access and delivery of documents. It allows users to request information by touch tone phone and receive documents by fax. They also make FactsLine, a regular fax on demand system that integrates with websites. Visit the CIMPA website (http://www.cimpa.org), click on the Send Me A Fax button, enter your fax number and receive a fax on demand document at your regular fax machine. No time-consuming downloading.
Intergram (Tel 303 741 5777) offers internet fax services over their global network. You pay on a per page basis. Prices for domestic faxes are $.11 per page, UK is $.20 and Canada is $.18.
Faxaway by International Telecom ( Tel 206 301 7000) is strictly an email to fax service. Just compose an email and send it to "FaxNumber@faxaway.com (be sure to include country and city codes). When faxaway receives the email message, it automatically converts it and sends it through fax modems to its intended destination. Faxaway charges for each fax in six second increments with a one minute minimum. There is a monthly fixed service charge of $1.00 (yes, that's one dollar) regardless of how many users are set up on your account.
Webcast by Karat Interactive network (Tel 303 605 6060) is an integrated fax and email broadcast service. Webcast can send the same fax to a hybrid list of emails and faxes you email/fax Karat. Cost is $.05 a page. Emailed faxes arrive as an email with an attachment viewed online.
ProtoFax by ProtoNet (Tel 818 876 0636) is an internet fax gateway system. Users can send any Windows document over the internet to a ProtoFax server which then sends it to the fax number you specify. ProtoFax can also deliver registration forms and other documents to companies that traditionally accepts fax orders. ProtoFax will send email to an alphanumeric pager. It can also retrieve email from existing email accounts and fax it to any fax number.
RightFax's (Tel 520-320 7000) Intelligent Least Cost Routing is truly impressive. It makes decisions about where a fax should be routed based on the phone number, day of the week, time of day, fax priority and fax source. After comparing the fax number and conditions to each rule, a "weight" or measurement is assigned. The fax server uses the rule with the highest weight to send the fax. It generally selects the least cost routing for your fax.
WebFaxIt is a service offered by SoftTek (Tel 714 888 1881) You access their website, enter your PIN and you can get low-cost faxing right on your browser. You can also take registration on your own website, let registrants complete a form, route this through WebFaxIt and it will fax the information to your fax machine so that you have a hard copy of the registration form.
FaxFree Portal 500 by Tac Systems (Tel 205 721 1976) is a hardware add-on for regular fax machines. This allows regular fax machines to send free faxes as emails. This is still in beta testing as of press time.
Coming soon: Web VideoPhone by Samsung (Tel 888 987 4357). This can be operated by anybody. One does not have to know anything about computers. All international calls using the internet on this phone is free . You don't have to boot up your computer (your computer is your phone) or call your service provider for your email. The accompanying WebVideoPhone software is always ready for email, web surfing, and audio/video communications through the internet. This is in beta testing and is expected to ship by the end of the year.