
FaxFresh: Easy Online Fax - daniel_levine
https://www.faxfresh.com/
======
there
$5 per fax is pretty expensive, and you can't receive faxes through it.

i used to use my all-in-one to fax things over the phone line that i had to
get just for my dsl connection. since switching to cable, i use
<http://faxage.com/> which gave me a local phone number in my area code and
works over e-mail. my monthly bill from them is about $3.75.

any faxes sent to my number get emailed to me, and to fax out, i just email
(the number)@faxage.com with an attached pdf and get an email back when the
fax has gone through.

i have yet to receive any spam faxes through it and have never had any
complaints about quality or problems converting pdfs.

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mkull
At $5 per fax I believe they have priced themselves out.

Not sure what this service buys me, typically the only time i have to send a
fax is because I am sending a form that requires a signature and the company
prefers to receive a fax. So regardless I have to either scan the document
then upload it for faxfresh to send or I can just simply scan+fax in one step.
Is this supposed to be for people that do not have a fax machine (or a printer
that can print+fax)?

~~~
vegashacker
Yeah, this is for people without a fax machine--which is pretty much everyone
I know. I have to fax so rarely that those subscription accounts don't make
sense. I end up walking down to Kinkos, which charges something like a couple
bucks a page. So this pricing seems just about right to me.

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Lewisham
I used PamFax [1] yesterday. 12 cents per page, hooks into your existing
accounts (I used Google Accounts, but there was Facebook, Skype). No
subscription.

Far, far, far better proposition, and likely just as quick as it uses accounts
for authentication that you already have. And for 15 pages, it'll cost you
$1.80.

[1] <http://www.pamfax.biz/>

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gnosis
Also see:

<http://www.freepopfax.com/>

<http://greenfax.com/sendonlyplan.php>

<http://www.hellofax.com/>

<http://www.onesuite.com/>

<http://www.popfax.com/>

~~~
rgrove
I used Greenfax until I actually saw the faxes that were coming out the other
end. They were unreadable garbage. I switched to <http://faxzero.com/> and
have been very happy with the quality of their faxes.

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melvinram
A bit pricey at $5/fax. I won't be using it.

~~~
daniel_levine
how much is your time worth?

~~~
coderdude
Most people won't valuate their time at $600/hr. (Assuming it takes you 30
seconds to manually send a fax.)

~~~
stevelosh
Grab coat, get in car, drive to UPS store: 5 minutes. Wait in line: 0-10
minutes. Talk to cashier, send fax: 3 minutes. Pay: 1 minute. Get in car,
drive home, remove coat: 5 minutes.

Total: 14-24 minutes.

My time is worth more than an average of ~$17/hour.

~~~
coderdude
Since you took the time to figure that out, I'll contribute. I just called a
FedEx Kinkos (in Riverside, CA, USA) and they said it's $1.40 for the first
page and $0.99 for each additional page, and that's to the same area code.

~~~
swirlee
For some more perspective: InterFax's smallest--and highest cost-per-page
package--is $0.11/page. So to send 15 pages through InterFax will cost a
developer at most $1.65: <http://www.interfax.net/en/prices>

I worked on a project very similar to this (and of course the others linked in
this thread) for awhile (because I had a need for just such a service), so: 1)
Kudos to you, the developer for actually shipping, which I did not do, and 2)
I agree with others that you're pricing himself out of the market.

Personally I think that $0.99-1.99 is the sweet spot, and you should tweak
your cost and page counts to match that. I've never had to fax more than ten
pages, so if I went to this site with my 3-6 pages I'd scoff--"Five bucks for
three pages? Pffff." But that's me--maybe lots of people need to send 10-15
pages. You'd want to do some market research to figure what are the most
common page counts.

Off the top of my head, though, I'd charge $0.99 for the first five pages.
Disregarding marginal costs, that's 50% profit per transaction (assuming you
eat the cost of a cover sheet)--at least! 125% profit for three-page faxes.
After that you can tack on your $0.25/page and it's all gravy.

And, of course, this would be an easy thing to A/B test.

 _Edit:_ By the way, if you were willing to buy $500 in InterFax credits up-
front (instead of $10 for their smallest package) you could do 10 pages/$0.99
with at least 33% profit. If you went down for the $2k package you're up to
48% profit.

With 15 pages for $5 you're looking at a minimum 184% profit. So I can
understand the draw--but I don't think the average customer will.

 _Edit 2:_ Changed numbers to factor in cover sheets, which you'll likely want
to eat the cost of.

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lpolovets
I don't have a fax machine and think this would be very useful. However, what
about the privacy/security issues? On the rare occasions that I need to fax
something, that "something" is usually a credit card authorization, driver's
license scan, etc. I don't feel comfortable PDFing and emailing such things
"into the cloud". Not sure if I'm an outlier.

~~~
camiller
+1, my typical use scenario is faxing medical receipts to the admin of the
flexible spending plan. HIPPA violation if the fax were to get leaked, even
accidentally.

~~~
racecar789
My employer switched health insurance providers three different times over the
past three years and NONE of them had the ability to accept pdf's (fax or mail
was the only way to submit flex plan expenses).

Like the other posts have mentioned, $.99 for five pages is reasonable (I
would use it at that price).

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SwellJoe
I've been using MaxEmail.com for my faxing for nearly a decade. $24.00/year,
plus .10 per page sent (I think I'm still paying the old rate of $14.95/year,
which makes it an obvious no-brainer, and I'll never cancel the account as
long as I'm still needing faxes occasionally and they let me keep that old
rate). Free incoming faxes up to 100/month.

I send and receive very few faxes, but I need to be able to do both
occasionally, for contracts with old people, in particular, so faxfresh is
simply not a realistic option for me, despite the fact that it's probably not
much difference in price for the amount of faxes I send.

While I think there are often fortunes to be made in dying industries
(capitalizing on the failures of old providers in that space to modernize) I
don't think fax is an area with a lot of arbitrage opportunities that haven't
already been tapped. And, it's _really_ a dying tech at this point. I'd be
surprised if this proves particularly profitable.

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pasbesoin
I only need to fax infrequently, and I have a landline here. So, I plug the
Windows (XP) machine into the line and "print to fax" (after a one time minute
or two to set up this feature that's built in to the OS/platform).

It receives, too.

I suppose there's probably other software including for other platforms, but
I've never bothered to look into it.

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guiseppecalzone
This is interesting. I'm also working on a faxing app. It's
<http://hellofax.com>. What software are you using to send your faxes?
Asterisk? Or are you plugged into an API?

Ping me if you'd like to chat.

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byoung2
$5 to send a fax seems pretty steep. I would think that after people have gone
to the trouble of creating a PDF (by either scanning or converting), they
would just email it to the recipient.

~~~
daniel_levine
somethings require faxing or mailing. A lot of government docs and things like
that

5$ is expensive but if it saves you the 20mins required to set up an account
and then cancel the subscription for other services it's totally worth it

it's worth noting that I am not the creator btw. I just hate existing faxing
options

~~~
byoung2
_somethings require faxing or mailing. A lot of government docs and things
like that_

Good point...faxed or mailed documents are accepted as official notification,
whereas email is not. But for something that important, I'd be hesitant to
trust someone's MVP. For $5, it would be cheaper to send it Priority Mail.

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steve918
What's a fax? Is it kind of like a pdf?

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kitcar
FYI - VBuzzer.com lets you send faxes to free within North America (via their
IM software app) - I've been using that for years with great success. You
don't even have to have a credit card.

It's Windows Only though :( If gives you a Fax as a virtual print driver,
pretty straight forward.

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joshbaptiste
This is exactly what happened I clicked this link.

1) clicked link from my RSS reader. 2) Ah great looking page, very simple to
the point. 3) Wth.. $5 per page?? 4) closed the chrome tab, to comment on HN
and seen that everyone else raised the same point.

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pclark
Cheap. Clean. Simple. Awesome.

Only way it could be improved is to add olark to it :)

~~~
daniel_levine
good call on olark

~~~
bcx
<http://www.olark.com> (for the link) -- appreciate the support :-)

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tzm
I have been using Faxaway.com for years, which bills on a per minute basis,
not a per page. I believe the rate is $0.11 / minute in the US and $1 per
month service fee.

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byoung2
Offer HN: send me $5 and email me a PDF up to 15pgs and I will personally fax
it for you!

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pbreit
$5 per fax is _not_ cheap. The defenders here are using fairly tortured logic.

