Fax: Sangoma FAXstation
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@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@fateknollogee said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@fateknollogee said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@fateknollogee said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
Bottom line, people want to keep & use their "old school" fax machines, be able to walk up to the damn machine & just send a fax.
How it gets there....as long as it gets there...faxing has never been fast!No one wants to pay the $40+/mo for a POTS line.
I sure in the hell do, when I look at a faxing solution like this that costs me $700+ a month compared to a single or even two lines at $40/m.
Granted, my costs really are more than just $40/line, it's the faxing equipment (but I already have that) and it's a server to store the faxes on. But I can buy that for the savings I have in a single month of paying for a service.
How did you come up with $700/mo.?
That price is from a few different vendors I approached years ago when I was looking into fax replacement solutions.
I receive roughly 700 pages per day, and we send around 100. At that volume, I was quoted $700/month.
This service is $24.95 for 3000 pages (+ $190 if you want the gateway)
Well you'll need the gateway if you want to send faxes from a traditional fax machine (making Scott's argument that this is simply a SMTP to Fax gateway solution more likely).
Which you can do for free or really cheaply.
I'm not sure how you do this free? You need a SIP to PSTN gateway, are there free options out there?
Not free on their own. But free for incoming minutes on your existing service, yes. I certainly have customers for whom "unlimited" incoming fax would be free.
who does that? free incoming?
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I'm not saying that it is a good solution for you, but worth looking into. Someone like voip.ms has a $4.95/mo single DID, dual concurrent, unlimited incoming line option, that should handle 3,000 pages a month without much problem. Same two lines that you have now. Would be cheap to test and see if it worked for you.
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@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@fateknollogee said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@fateknollogee said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@fateknollogee said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
Bottom line, people want to keep & use their "old school" fax machines, be able to walk up to the damn machine & just send a fax.
How it gets there....as long as it gets there...faxing has never been fast!No one wants to pay the $40+/mo for a POTS line.
I sure in the hell do, when I look at a faxing solution like this that costs me $700+ a month compared to a single or even two lines at $40/m.
Granted, my costs really are more than just $40/line, it's the faxing equipment (but I already have that) and it's a server to store the faxes on. But I can buy that for the savings I have in a single month of paying for a service.
How did you come up with $700/mo.?
That price is from a few different vendors I approached years ago when I was looking into fax replacement solutions.
I receive roughly 700 pages per day, and we send around 100. At that volume, I was quoted $700/month.
This service is $24.95 for 3000 pages (+ $190 if you want the gateway)
Well you'll need the gateway if you want to send faxes from a traditional fax machine (making Scott's argument that this is simply a SMTP to Fax gateway solution more likely).
Which you can do for free or really cheaply.
I'm not sure how you do this free? You need a SIP to PSTN gateway, are there free options out there?
Not free on their own. But free for incoming minutes on your existing service, yes. I certainly have customers for whom "unlimited" incoming fax would be free.
who does that? free incoming?
voip.ms, we have it with VoicePulse, it's a common feature. Not universal by any stretch, but a regular feature you often get.
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@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@fateknollogee said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@fateknollogee said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
Bottom line, people want to keep & use their "old school" fax machines, be able to walk up to the damn machine & just send a fax.
How it gets there....as long as it gets there...faxing has never been fast!No one wants to pay the $40+/mo for a POTS line.
I sure in the hell do, when I look at a faxing solution like this that costs me $700+ a month compared to a single or even two lines at $40/m.
Granted, my costs really are more than just $40/line, it's the faxing equipment (but I already have that) and it's a server to store the faxes on. But I can buy that for the savings I have in a single month of paying for a service.
How did you come up with $700/mo.?
That price is from a few different vendors I approached years ago when I was looking into fax replacement solutions.
I receive roughly 700 pages per day, and we send around 100. At that volume, I was quoted $700/month.
Have you tried FoIP to see if it is reliable for you? That would be free on many plans.
I'm not sure how this would be free? I'd need a analog to SIP convertor (granted one time fee) that would talk to a T.38 provider.
If you need that to manage old fax machines, yes. But that's cheap and a one time fee.
But you can also move to non-fax equipment and scan directly to FoIP instead of going with actual paper. So, in theory, you could eliminate the cost of paper, ink, storage, and the risk of all of that.
Our out going faxes are typically signed contracts and things like it. Those providing the contracts don't have a digital option for signing, so we are stuck printing them out, signing and faxing back.. so yeah.. kinda stuck there. Of course we could scan them, and fax via an email service, then you need an email gateway that talks SIP to send the outbound faxes - I've never looked into that.
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Also quoted on their page: "Whether you’re in medical, real estate, legal, offshore communications or any other industry that depends on reliable fax services and wish to enjoy the benefits of VoIP..."
The benefits of VoIP? But no VoIP is used here, either. What does VoIP have to do with this service? They really just throw out buzz words hoping that people don't question it.
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@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@fateknollogee said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@fateknollogee said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@fateknollogee said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
Bottom line, people want to keep & use their "old school" fax machines, be able to walk up to the damn machine & just send a fax.
How it gets there....as long as it gets there...faxing has never been fast!No one wants to pay the $40+/mo for a POTS line.
I sure in the hell do, when I look at a faxing solution like this that costs me $700+ a month compared to a single or even two lines at $40/m.
Granted, my costs really are more than just $40/line, it's the faxing equipment (but I already have that) and it's a server to store the faxes on. But I can buy that for the savings I have in a single month of paying for a service.
How did you come up with $700/mo.?
That price is from a few different vendors I approached years ago when I was looking into fax replacement solutions.
I receive roughly 700 pages per day, and we send around 100. At that volume, I was quoted $700/month.
This service is $24.95 for 3000 pages (+ $190 if you want the gateway)
Well you'll need the gateway if you want to send faxes from a traditional fax machine (making Scott's argument that this is simply a SMTP to Fax gateway solution more likely).
3000 pages, eh, well that covers me for 4 days, what about the other 18 working days a month? Assuming it was a standard curve for more pages, then my costs would be $132/month.
As I mentioned, I have 2 lines, at $35 a month, so I'm paying $70 a month... sure that server I mentioned earlier takes a few more months to pay off.. but I'm still way ahead by the end of the first year.3K is their maximum service listed on their site.
Right, there was when I was looking a J shaped curve when you got over 2-3000 pages a month. The prices just spiraled out of control. Thus making maintaining my one POTS lines and storage server (could be cheap NAS) versus using a provider.
What are you storing on the NAS?
The incoming faxes. We don't want them to go to email, we want then centrally available. Sure they could go to a shared mailbox or a shared folders in Exchange, but that would mean downloading them from email to the local machine before uploading them to our EHR ( yep.. all kinds of crazy here).
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@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
Our out going faxes are typically signed contracts and things like it. Those providing the contracts don't have a digital option for signing, so we are stuck printing them out, signing and faxing back.. so yeah.. kinda stuck there. Of course we could scan them, and fax via an email service, then you need an email gateway that talks SIP to send the outbound faxes - I've never looked into that.
Well there is always an option to digitally sign. Anything that can be send via fax can, by definition, be digitally signed. You can't have one without guaranteeing the other. Simplest solution there might be an iPad or similar to do the signing. That might make it not cheap, but it doesn't force you into paper at any point.
Right, email to FoIP gateway is an option.
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@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@fateknollogee said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@fateknollogee said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@fateknollogee said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
Bottom line, people want to keep & use their "old school" fax machines, be able to walk up to the damn machine & just send a fax.
How it gets there....as long as it gets there...faxing has never been fast!No one wants to pay the $40+/mo for a POTS line.
I sure in the hell do, when I look at a faxing solution like this that costs me $700+ a month compared to a single or even two lines at $40/m.
Granted, my costs really are more than just $40/line, it's the faxing equipment (but I already have that) and it's a server to store the faxes on. But I can buy that for the savings I have in a single month of paying for a service.
How did you come up with $700/mo.?
That price is from a few different vendors I approached years ago when I was looking into fax replacement solutions.
I receive roughly 700 pages per day, and we send around 100. At that volume, I was quoted $700/month.
This service is $24.95 for 3000 pages (+ $190 if you want the gateway)
Well you'll need the gateway if you want to send faxes from a traditional fax machine (making Scott's argument that this is simply a SMTP to Fax gateway solution more likely).
3000 pages, eh, well that covers me for 4 days, what about the other 18 working days a month? Assuming it was a standard curve for more pages, then my costs would be $132/month.
As I mentioned, I have 2 lines, at $35 a month, so I'm paying $70 a month... sure that server I mentioned earlier takes a few more months to pay off.. but I'm still way ahead by the end of the first year.3K is their maximum service listed on their site.
Right, there was when I was looking a J shaped curve when you got over 2-3000 pages a month. The prices just spiraled out of control. Thus making maintaining my one POTS lines and storage server (could be cheap NAS) versus using a provider.
What are you storing on the NAS?
The incoming faxes. We don't want them to go to email, we want then centrally available. Sure they could go to a shared mailbox or a shared folders in Exchange, but that would mean downloading them from email to the local machine before uploading them to our EHR ( yep.. all kinds of crazy here).
That makes the whole setup even easier.
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@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
Sure they could go to a shared mailbox or a shared folders in Exchange, but that would mean downloading them from email to the local machine before uploading them to our EHR ( yep.. all kinds of crazy here).
Or to a Dropbox or NextCloud style account, too.
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@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
I'm not saying that it is a good solution for you, but worth looking into. Someone like voip.ms has a $4.95/mo single DID, dual concurrent, unlimited incoming line option, that should handle 3,000 pages a month without much problem. Same two lines that you have now. Would be cheap to test and see if it worked for you.
I need 16K pages a month.. not 3K.
I'll have to look into it with VOIP.ms... though, the last time I looked, the flat fee lines were only for consumer, not business customers.
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@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
I'm not saying that it is a good solution for you, but worth looking into. Someone like voip.ms has a $4.95/mo single DID, dual concurrent, unlimited incoming line option, that should handle 3,000 pages a month without much problem. Same two lines that you have now. Would be cheap to test and see if it worked for you.
I need 16K pages a month.. not 3K.
I'll have to look into it with VOIP.ms... though, the last time I looked, the flat fee lines were only for consumer, not business customers.
voip.ms doesn't offer consumer or business plans. Just unlimited and per minute plans.
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@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
Also quoted on their page: "Whether you’re in medical, real estate, legal, offshore communications or any other industry that depends on reliable fax services and wish to enjoy the benefits of VoIP..."
The benefits of VoIP? But no VoIP is used here, either. What does VoIP have to do with this service? They really just throw out buzz words hoping that people don't question it.
Exactly- though, they do mention the possibility that your final mile could go over ISDN PRI or SIP
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@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
Also quoted on their page: "Whether you’re in medical, real estate, legal, offshore communications or any other industry that depends on reliable fax services and wish to enjoy the benefits of VoIP..."
The benefits of VoIP? But no VoIP is used here, either. What does VoIP have to do with this service? They really just throw out buzz words hoping that people don't question it.
Exactly- though, they do mention the possibility that your final mile could go over ISDN PRI or SIP
That's on the OTHER side, AFTER they've sent the fax on the PSTN. They are basically using the "other recipient might use FoIP" as their way to make that sound reasonable. That's after the service is over and isn't a legitimate part of the diagram. That's not their service.
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@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
Also quoted on their page: "Whether you’re in medical, real estate, legal, offshore communications or any other industry that depends on reliable fax services and wish to enjoy the benefits of VoIP..."
The benefits of VoIP? But no VoIP is used here, either. What does VoIP have to do with this service? They really just throw out buzz words hoping that people don't question it.
Exactly- though, they do mention the possibility that your final mile could go over ISDN PRI or SIP
YOUR final mile has to be neither PRI nor SIP. If the final mile is PRI, it's legacy fax, not FoIP or IP at all. If it goes over SIP, it can't store and forward like they claim.
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@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
Our out going faxes are typically signed contracts and things like it. Those providing the contracts don't have a digital option for signing, so we are stuck printing them out, signing and faxing back.. so yeah.. kinda stuck there. Of course we could scan them, and fax via an email service, then you need an email gateway that talks SIP to send the outbound faxes - I've never looked into that.
Well there is always an option to digitally sign. Anything that can be send via fax can, by definition, be digitally signed. You can't have one without guaranteeing the other. Simplest solution there might be an iPad or similar to do the signing. That might make it not cheap, but it doesn't force you into paper at any point.
Right, email to FoIP gateway is an option.
Of course, I could capture a signature, and just paste that on a digital copy.. then fax it back, all remaining digital on my side. Management has balked at how many extra steps that is compared to just print, sign, and fax back.
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@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
I'm not saying that it is a good solution for you, but worth looking into. Someone like voip.ms has a $4.95/mo single DID, dual concurrent, unlimited incoming line option, that should handle 3,000 pages a month without much problem. Same two lines that you have now. Would be cheap to test and see if it worked for you.
I need 16K pages a month.. not 3K.
I'll have to look into it with VOIP.ms... though, the last time I looked, the flat fee lines were only for consumer, not business customers.
voip.ms doesn't offer consumer or business plans. Just unlimited and per minute plans.
voip.ms also offers incoming fax handling so that it never has to hit FoIP too...
No more using traditional fax machines. Receive faxes in PDF format on any of your DIDs or have them forwarded to your preferred email address. Files supported: PDF, TXT, JPG, GIF, PNG and TIF.
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@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
Our out going faxes are typically signed contracts and things like it. Those providing the contracts don't have a digital option for signing, so we are stuck printing them out, signing and faxing back.. so yeah.. kinda stuck there. Of course we could scan them, and fax via an email service, then you need an email gateway that talks SIP to send the outbound faxes - I've never looked into that.
Well there is always an option to digitally sign. Anything that can be send via fax can, by definition, be digitally signed. You can't have one without guaranteeing the other. Simplest solution there might be an iPad or similar to do the signing. That might make it not cheap, but it doesn't force you into paper at any point.
Right, email to FoIP gateway is an option.
Of course, I could capture a signature, and just paste that on a digital copy.. then fax it back, all remaining digital on my side. Management has balked at how many extra steps that is compared to just print, sign, and fax back.
They've balked that it is.... the same or fewer?
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@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
I'm not saying that it is a good solution for you, but worth looking into. Someone like voip.ms has a $4.95/mo single DID, dual concurrent, unlimited incoming line option, that should handle 3,000 pages a month without much problem. Same two lines that you have now. Would be cheap to test and see if it worked for you.
I need 16K pages a month.. not 3K.
I'll have to look into it with VOIP.ms... though, the last time I looked, the flat fee lines were only for consumer, not business customers.
voip.ms doesn't offer consumer or business plans. Just unlimited and per minute plans.
https://i.imgur.com/srtEDki.png
OK I said consumer instead of residential. I'm guessing that the expectation is that you will have a fairly low usage. My use of 600+ mins a day would likely make me an outlier in the residential sector - though certainly not unheard of.
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@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
Also quoted on their page: "Whether you’re in medical, real estate, legal, offshore communications or any other industry that depends on reliable fax services and wish to enjoy the benefits of VoIP..."
The benefits of VoIP? But no VoIP is used here, either. What does VoIP have to do with this service? They really just throw out buzz words hoping that people don't question it.
Exactly- though, they do mention the possibility that your final mile could go over ISDN PRI or SIP
That's on the OTHER side, AFTER they've sent the fax on the PSTN. They are basically using the "other recipient might use FoIP" as their way to make that sound reasonable. That's after the service is over and isn't a legitimate part of the diagram. That's not their service.
really? You don't think they could mean that they themselves could be using SIP or ISDN PRI? I think you're giving them to much credit.
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@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@dashrender said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
@scottalanmiller said in Fax: Sangoma FAXstation:
I'm not saying that it is a good solution for you, but worth looking into. Someone like voip.ms has a $4.95/mo single DID, dual concurrent, unlimited incoming line option, that should handle 3,000 pages a month without much problem. Same two lines that you have now. Would be cheap to test and see if it worked for you.
I need 16K pages a month.. not 3K.
I'll have to look into it with VOIP.ms... though, the last time I looked, the flat fee lines were only for consumer, not business customers.
voip.ms doesn't offer consumer or business plans. Just unlimited and per minute plans.
https://i.imgur.com/srtEDki.png
OK I said consumer instead of residential. I'm guessing that the expectation is that you will have a fairly low usage. My use of 600+ mins a day would likely make me an outlier in the residential sector - though certainly not unheard of.
What page is that on?
