For those of us who have gotten used to the speed and ease of e-mail, using a fax machine can seem at times an unbearable hassle. Create document. Print document. Look up phone number. Walk to fax machine. Feed paper into fax machine, dial number. Listen to chirpy tones. Wait for fax to send. Wait for confirmation to print.
The situation often isn’t much better on the receiving end. Make sure fax machine is on, phone line is free, paper and toner are topped off. Make sure present when fax comes in. If not present, ask around to see who might have accidentally picked the fax up…
Surely, one is justified in thinking, there must be a better way. Turns out, actually, that there is: faxing has now gone online. In the process, it’s become a lot more like e-mail and a lot less like fax, although Web-based fax services do, of course, send to and receive from traditional fax machines. But doesn’t that cost a lot? Actually, no. Compared with the price of maintaining and using a traditional fax machine, online fax is very affordable and likely will even save you money. It definitely will save you time.
Take the RingCentral (News - Alert) Fax, for example. If you sign up for a year of service, the most expensive plan from RingCentral is $49.99 per month, which gives you 2,500 ‘free’ pages (that comes out to 1.9 cents per page; it’s 3.9 cents per page thereafter). You also get free fax software for sending and receiving faxes right on your computer, and free transfer of an existing 800 number. (You can also set up a new 800 for a one-time fee of $15, and get a vanity number for one-time $30 fee.)
For a small business, 2,500 pages of faxing for $49.99 seems like a pretty good deal. The question probably remains in your mind, though: how does online fax work? Yours truly recently had a chance to give RingCentral Fax a whirl, and here’s what I found.
First off, setting up and signing into the account was a breeze, using intuitive Web-based controls (at least, intuitive for someone who is accustomed to Microsoft (News - Alert) Window-style graphical user interfaces). Local tech support was called in for a bit after the Call Controller software was installed (to troubleshoot a connection problem due to security settings), but aside from that the PC-based aspect of setup was also easy.
Next, on to sending and receiving faxes. RingCentral Fax provides a number of different computer-based ways to send faxes. You can log into your account using a Web browser, and send a fax as an attachment. You can pull up the Call Controller (local application) menu and send a fax using those controls. Or, you can use the ‘fax’ menu bar button in a Microsoft Office application (Word, Outlook, Excel) to send an active document as a fax.
I chose to thoroughly test out the first option—send document as attachment using Web-based controls—because it seemed most synonymous with the e-mail experience. Because this was my first time sending a fax with the service, the process took about ten minutes, though once everything is set up sending should be a five-minutes-or-less proposition.
It’s probably a good idea to spend a few minutes, as I did, exploring the RingCentral Fax Web-based account controls to see just how many options there are, and how easy it is to use them. A few examples: the service lets you login using SSL (or regular), store incoming faxes in PDF or TIFF format, and create a blacklist of blocked numbers from which you won’t receive faxes. You’re also given a selection of 13 different cover page styles (or, optionally, no cover page), with previews for each.
The Web-based sending transaction is a lot like e-mail in that you can set up an address book of contacts, filling in detailed information for each, and then select one or more contacts as recipient of a fax. Or, you can fill out a simplified form (name, fax number) and send even if the recipient isn’t in your address book. (Incidentally, you can also import contacts saved to a comma-delimited or .csv file; check help files for your e-mail client, Outlook or otherwise, for how to export to this format.)
I chose to create a contact record for the recipient of my fax, and then select that person using the “Contacts” link on the FaxOut form. Then I filled out the rest of the form with options for attachment (in this case, a Word document) cover page (or not), resolution (high or low) and either “Send now” or “Schedule.” (Yes, you can schedule a fax to go out at a particular time.)
It took about five minutes for the fax to send, be received on the other end, and for confirmation to come back. Confirmation is automatic, so there’s no standing around waiting for a page to print. Just click “Send Fax” and you’re done.
The recipient of my fax reported that the experience was slightly different than usual on his end: he didn’t hear any chirpy tones coming through his fax machine, although the document itself printed without any problem.
RingCentral Fax lets you know that a fax was sent (and that a faxes have come in) three ways: an e-mail notification sent to the address associated with your account, an alert in the Call Controller menu, and as an Inbox message when you sign into account via a Web browser. In other words, you don’t have to wonder if a fax sent or if you have new faxes—the system is set up to let you know.
Overall, this being my first experience with online fax, I was duly impressed. Setting up and using the service was easy. It provided me, someone used to sending and receiving electronic documents using e-mail, a familiar interface for interacting with an older technology that’s still used by many businesses. It’s true that, once in a while, I might have need to fax an old-fashioned paper document (probably a form) that wasn’t created on the computer. In such cases, I could just scan the document, save it as a PDF, and send using RingCentral Fax.
My conclusion? RingCentral Fax gives you more fax bang for your buck. The service brings faxing into the 21st century with features that marry old and new technologies to offer more options than either might on its own. Try it for yourself by signing up for a free trial at http://www.ringcentral.com/fax.
Mae Kowalke previously wrote for Cleveland Magazine in Ohio and The Burlington Free Press in Vermont. To see more of her articles, please visit Mae Kowalke’s columnist page. Also check out her Wireless Mobility blog.