Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Faxing solutions

HI All

Been long since I have posted here. Good to see folks still active.
Looking for solution on Faxing. I have been struggling to find some internet fax solution so that I can move my last standing machine that runs fax server with modem gets virtualized.

Right now I use Snappy Fax server on a dedicated machine with clients running on all physician and staff machines. The fax server has a modem with a phone line. All incoming and out going faxes go through that. I hate this as this is so dependent on fax server and modem.

I have looked all of them efax, sfax, SRfax Faxage etc, but all have some sort of a limit. I was surprised to see that we almost do 300+ pages a day. trying to use updox or things like that gets way too pricey.

anyone knows anything with some decent pricing ? on volume faxing ..

I wish this faxing stuff goes way.

If we could send CCD across other interfaces, we wouldn't need to fax.

Nephron!! First post since 4/28/2015! Good to see you.

Srini,

I didn't follow your post completely, but I will try. Faxing will never go away. Hell, you can't even get Internet faxing from a fax machine to catch on, because even though I can send Internet, it has to go to Internet fax. I don't mean the Internet companies, but Internet directly to and from fax machines.

I get the sense that you don't want to do this, but the best solution is a fax server. Using a decent computer or better an actual server. But, you can't use a 33.6 $35.00 modem. You have to use a fax board such as a Brooktrout or a Mainpine. A modem is for AOL on a personal machine 20 years ago. Or any very small business. They are not designed to handle 300 pages a day. Fax boards are expensive, but they last forever, and the one I use, Mainpine, has lifetime support. Call them, and they remote in and fix something. I have had it over eight years, and I needed support once when I set it up.

The Mainpine can do most anything. Obviously, it receives in PDF. You can get one port or two port or 60 port (if you were someone like Google). One port is fine. I have two port, so I have one port for out only, and the other port is for in/out. We also have a high end Xerox machine which faxes out on a different line.

You use Windows Fax and Scan, which unlike many things Windows, is rock solid. So you can fax from the desktop and is full featured.

The other option is if you have a high-end MFP, even Muratec, you can add a fax server to it (somewhere around $200.00 -- again commercial type). They have their own GUI.

We have NEVER had a problem with the Mainpine. Never. It's just too good of a board. And, although it is dependent on the server, if the server is down for a while, if you have the second line, you can switch the MFP over to the other line and send and receive faxes temporarily.

The other nice thing about Mainpine is it is Sandeep approved.

Thanks Bert. It has been quite a while I have posted. Life is busy and previously it used to be only my wife's practice so used to pay lots of attention, but now she is in a group. I still take care of the group, but most of machines are VM's and have replications.

I have a mainpipe modem on a server with snappy fax and works well. Yes it is single line, and failover is MF printer with fax. I agree Mainpipe is solid and works so well.

But since everything is so much cloud I wanted to go that direction, but looks like not much out there. Good for confirmation.

I need to upgrade the AC from something 8.4 to whatever it is 9.? . When I started AC in 2009 or so , in 1 year it was 1GB db, now we are almost up to 4Gb and almost 28 GB in imported folder.

Bert's right. No one is really beating Mainpine when it comes to analog fax modems. They are pricey though. If you're running Windows server AD, it's great. No extra cost per user/computer like SnappyFax. Send and receive faxes from every machine on the network. Faxes come in as PDF's to a folder. Doesn't get much easier. Phone lines seem bulletproof compared to Internet reliability, but more and more people are making the switch.

SnappyFax is good if you're running P2P. I'll use Multi-Tech's SuperG3 USB modem with SnappyFax. I don't like that they started charging yearly. I'll do what I can to avoid it though. Has a clunky interface imo.

From what I've seen it's hard to find an "unlimited" fax service. To give you unlimited faxing, most companies will want you to subscribe to their VoIP service as well. If you're planning on cutting the cord, I would look for a phone provider. I've had good luck with Vonage business. Resellers can get you much better pricing like $25/user/phone with faxing included. They also give you free phones.

One thing to look out for if you go the VoIP route and don't have dedicated runs for VoIP is to make sure you get VoIP phones that are gigabit. Another thing is if you have an alarm system to make sure you get a GSM communicator or an IP communicator before you make the switch.

With most providers, faxes come to an online portal or via email where you have to download and copy them to the appropriate location. I haven't seen any with a dedicated application that just downloads them to a folder like the Mainpine.

Great post!

Two things, although one may be wrong based on the type of VoIP being mentioned. But, with regular VoIP phones, they require power. It is much better if you have PoE on your switch. Doesn't cost that more, and you don't have to purchase a power supply and run cables to your computer and back. And, PoE switches aren't that much more. Finally, if you UPS to the switch, you don't lose your phone service if you power goes out. However, you probably won't get that much time. Again, this is true of my setup, not sure with Vonage phones, etc.

The other thing is I used to have a Brooktrout. Cost the same as Mainpine. I would say it is of equal quality although the support isn't a good. The thing I will never understand, and the reason I had to swallow the entire cost was because it didn't save to PDF. That's just plain stupid. Only tiff files.

TIFF TO PDF CONVERSION

I have used omniformat with pdf 995 Omniformat
It converts all my TIFFs to pdf automatically
Watches folder a (where my faxes come into the server (using fax server from windows 2008r2)
Dumps pdf in another folder (I called it faxes pdf)
THis folder uploads to updox

And with the system Sunil describes, none of those incoming faxes count toward your limit on Updox, so they are totally free.

That sounds pretty cool Sunil.

Thanks Bert/Sandeep/Sunil looks like there is no easy solution to get rid of modems and phone lines. I signed up for SRfax trial for the 2500 pages, and we used it up in flat 6 days or so. Like the solution they have(you can download the faxes in pdf format to folder on one file server) , but at this rate I would need 10000 pages.

anyone attempted or figured out using a modem with VM in host mode ? I would love to run snappyfax in a VM and access the modem. All my stuff runs on VM's and I replicated them.

James can weigh in on the M$ world, using KVM, you can do port pass-through to connect physical interfaces to a given VM.

My voip service includes fax - it emails files. One can use Mail Attachment Downloader to automatically scan an email inbox and download the fax (emailed as pdf) to a folder which Updox watches.

Fax, unfortunately, is one of those things that will keep a lot of companies from going completely cloud. And, as Bert said, fax just isn't going anywhere. Even to this day, GFI's (www.gfi.com) sales of their Faxmaker software is solid. As is their sales of their MailEssentials antispam for Exchange as there are still plenty of on-prem Exchange servers that just aren't going anywhere.

That being said, for rock solid performance, Bert and Sandeep are correct about Mainpine. I would also throw in GFI Faxmaker with a BrookTrout board. I've have clients that have Brooktrout cards that are now 10 years old and they still chug along. You can dump faxes into either a folder, an email box on your Exchange Server, or a public folder on your Exchange server.

Sending faxes is as simple as installing the client and printing to it via Word or whatever (the client sets itself up as a Windows printer). The client will prompt you for a phone number. Or, if you have an Exchange server, you can send an email to xxxxxxxxxx@faxmaker.com where the x is the number you are sending to and faxmaker will take it from there.

Communication is a must for any organization and has to be reliable. Fax, I'm must mirror again, is here to stay as one of those forms of communication.

You can use a Windows 10 Pro machine joined to your domain as a fax server for GFI and the Brooktrout card.

For fax boards, check out e-bay. Those Brooktrout and Mainpine boards are pricey but you can find some good deals on used stuff.

JamesNT

I could probably find you one for nothing, if I could find my old Brooktrout. Only used it like a week before changing to Mainpine.

Thanks Bert. I have a win 2008 servers running SnappyFax with Mainpipe. I might have to add one more line to avoid the fax jam.

Let me have Sandeep weigh in to see how the fax software would work.

Most faxing software supports multiple modems so you should be fine. Windows Fax and SnappyFax allow you to designate a line for receiving and a line for sending. If you wanted rollover, single number rolls over to the next line, you would need some type of phone system.