Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID
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Move to a Virtual Inbound and Outbound fax service. Much cheaper than real fax and much more flexible
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@eleceng said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
Move to a Virtual Inbound and Outbound fax service. Much cheaper than real fax and much more flexible
I have been looking at that for years, and it's Never been true.
We accept more than 700 faxes a month - this normally amounts to something like $600+/m for most services I've looked at.
it's significantly cheaper to have a local fax machine, local provided dial tone (from Cox is $35/m) saving to a network share.
Now days we have a SIP trunk delivering to a FreePBX server which emails to our O365 account where a power automate script grabs the file and saves it to Sharepoint for anyone to access.
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@dashrender said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
We accept more than 700 faxes a month - this normally amounts to something like $600+/m for most services I've looked at.
Skyetel is $.03/m for faxing on their Skyefax service. $600/m would be 20,000 minutes of faxing. That would require a physical fax machine / phone line to be in continuous use for something like 13 hours per day, 7 days a week without dropping. At 700 faxes, that would be 29 minutes average per fax to make it cost that much.
While theoretically possible, it's only theoretically possible to cost that much. In the real world a fax is much closer to two minutes. And if you were getting those numbers of a single Cox line, the line wouldn't be able to support it at that volume even if you were running 24x7 to coordinate it and Cox would absolutely cut you off as their "unlimited" definitely doesn't mean "unlimited" to that degree.
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@scottalanmiller said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
Skyetel is $.03/m for faxing
For SkyeFax
Normal faxing to the PBX is based on your inbound per minute cost. Of which, the Skyetel retail rate is $0.01/minute for inbound.
Relationship pricing is lower.
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@jaredbusch said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
For SkyeFax
yeah, i listed that.
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@scottalanmiller said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
@dashrender said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
We accept more than 700 faxes a month - this normally amounts to something like $600+/m for most services I've looked at.
Skyetel is $.03/m for faxing on their Skyefax service. $600/m would be 20,000 minutes of faxing. That would require a physical fax machine / phone line to be in continuous use for something like 13 hours per day, 7 days a week without dropping. At 700 faxes, that would be 29 minutes average per fax to make it cost that much.
While theoretically possible, it's only theoretically possible to cost that much. In the real world a fax is much closer to two minutes. And if you were getting those numbers of a single Cox line, the line wouldn't be able to support it at that volume even if you were running 24x7 to coordinate it and Cox would absolutely cut you off as their "unlimited" definitely doesn't mean "unlimited" to that degree.
That cost I gave you was for specifically listed HIPAA compliant fax solutions. Something that Skyetel told me was not their goal. I'm also not sure if Skyefax delivers to email or just to an onsite fax machine for you - I'm pretty sure they send you a box to connect to your fax machine. blah blah blah..
The Skyefax solution is a potentially more reliable end to end fax setup, one that wouldn't work with my FreePBX setup (well, not without reintroducing what caused much of the problems in the first first place - my local last mile).
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@dashrender said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
That cost I gave you was for specifically listed HIPAA compliant fax solutions.
All fax is allowed by HIPAA, no fax meets any minimal level of compliance without a waiver.
What you are wanting is someone to assume responsibility for the faxing, which is completely different than compliance.
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@dashrender said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
one that wouldn't work with my FreePBX setup
Why do you want the fax to work only with FreePBX rather than being a separate thing? Not saying that that is bad, but since FreePBX doesn't support faxing over web for reliability and security, why stick to it as the fax part of your solution?
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@dashrender said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
Something that Skyetel told me was not their goal.
Because it's not a thing.
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@scottalanmiller said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
@dashrender said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
one that wouldn't work with my FreePBX setup
Why do you want the fax to work only with FreePBX rather than being a separate thing? Not saying that that is bad, but since FreePBX doesn't support faxing over web for reliability and security, why stick to it as the fax part of your solution?
Well - if Skyefax can save directly to OneDrive for Business, I suppose that could work - which means if Skyefax sends to email it could be made to work...
But - as JB pointed out, it's 3 times the price I pay now for the solution I have in place that already works well.
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@dashrender said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
But - as JB pointed out, it's 3 times the price I pay now for the solution I have in place that already works well.
Is it? Where did he point that out?
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@dashrender said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
which means if Skyefax sends to email it could be made to work...
You can do THAT with the old solutions, too.
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@jaredbusch said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
@scottalanmiller said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
Skyetel is $.03/m for faxing
For SkyeFax
Normal faxing to the PBX is based on your inbound per minute cost. Of which, the Skyetel retail rate is $0.01/minute for inbound.
Relationship pricing is lower.
Right here.
Skyefax = $0.03/min
Skyetel normal inbound = $0.01/min -
@scottalanmiller said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
@dashrender said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
which means if Skyefax sends to email it could be made to work...
You can do THAT with the old solutions, too.
yes of course, no one ever said it couldn't. The whole OD4B is pretty new for my solutions.
Previously - we terminated faxes on local fax machine and saved the files to an internal self controlled SMB share. No paper was involved until and unless a person wanted a hard copy.
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@dashrender said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
But - as JB pointed out, it's 3 times the price I pay now for the solution I have in place that already works well.
Oh, I thought you were using Cox lines now, not VoIP.
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@scottalanmiller said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
@dashrender said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
But - as JB pointed out, it's 3 times the price I pay now for the solution I have in place that already works well.
Oh, I thought you were using Cox lines now, not VoIP.
Like you - I talk from many angles since I support a day job and do consulting.
From my day job - we mostly have our faxes delivered directly to our EMR vendor and they handle much of the processing - those they can't, they dump into a bucket inside the EMR for us to handle.
We also have a few remaining fax lines from Cox, mostly for outbound, that I am trying to get rid of.As for my consulting clients - some use a third party directly into the LOB software, some use use faxes into FreePBX -> O365 email box -> Power Automate -> Sharepoint location.
I'm sure I don't always spell it out which I'm talking about when I'm writing something.
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@dashrender said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
some use use faxes into FreePBX -> O365 email box -> Power Automate -> Sharepoint location.
Ah, I see. Yes, that makes it cheaper. We've found that that requires so much support and has reliability problems that's less expensive to have customers on SkyeFax so that it is direct to email and rock solid and essentially zero effort (and no worries about automation steps.)
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@dashrender said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
@scottalanmiller said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
@dashrender said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
But - as JB pointed out, it's 3 times the price I pay now for the solution I have in place that already works well.
Oh, I thought you were using Cox lines now, not VoIP.
Like you - I talk from many angles since I support a day job and do consulting.
From my day job - we mostly have our faxes delivered directly to our EMR vendor and they handle much of the processing - those they can't, they dump into a bucket inside the EMR for us to handle.
We also have a few remaining fax lines from Cox, mostly for outbound, that I am trying to get rid of.As for my consulting clients - some use a third party directly into the LOB software, some use use faxes into FreePBX -> O365 email box -> Power Automate -> Sharepoint location.
I'm sure I don't always spell it out which I'm talking about when I'm writing something.
We've tried to setup the same type of workflow before with Power Automate, but Power Automate never seems to work like the documentation says it should. Even Microsoft support couldn't get it working.
The Microsoft support wasn't a surprise to me, but my boss acted like he'd never heard of Microsoft support failing before.
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@travisdh1 said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
@dashrender said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
@scottalanmiller said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
@dashrender said in Will faxes ever die - cheapest way to forward a DID:
But - as JB pointed out, it's 3 times the price I pay now for the solution I have in place that already works well.
Oh, I thought you were using Cox lines now, not VoIP.
Like you - I talk from many angles since I support a day job and do consulting.
From my day job - we mostly have our faxes delivered directly to our EMR vendor and they handle much of the processing - those they can't, they dump into a bucket inside the EMR for us to handle.
We also have a few remaining fax lines from Cox, mostly for outbound, that I am trying to get rid of.As for my consulting clients - some use a third party directly into the LOB software, some use use faxes into FreePBX -> O365 email box -> Power Automate -> Sharepoint location.
I'm sure I don't always spell it out which I'm talking about when I'm writing something.
We've tried to setup the same type of workflow before with Power Automate, but Power Automate never seems to work like the documentation says it should. Even Microsoft support couldn't get it working.
The Microsoft support wasn't a surprise to me, but my boss acted like he'd never heard of Microsoft support failing before.
Interesting - I had no issues with it, though what i wanted is/was pretty simple and straight forward.
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@dashrender I can't seem to find a way to do this without using an account, either one of my users or creating a "service" account.
