Replacing eFax with MaxEmail

At 6:35 AM -0700 4/5/05, Caleb Clauset wrote:
>but my favorite is Preview.app (free) which handles TIFF-F beautifully.

I agree with this assessment of Preview.app.

As for fax service providers, I've been using "Faxaway.com"
(http://www.faxaway.com) with no complaints ever since Efax
introduced their new program with advertisements and fees and
rudeness toward Mac users. That was a couple of years ago. Inbound
faxes through Faxaway are totally free and you pay for outbound
faxing a-la-carte. Can't get much better than that.

Anyway, MaxEmail has a set of features that is comparable or even
identical to Faxaway. For those who already have a fax number, it's
too bad the numbers are not transportable from one service provider
to another!

Regards,

Hudson Barton

PS. I was author of a TidBits article on this subject years ago.... #484

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05428>>

--- begin forwarded text

From: "Trisha Miller"
To: acetidbits.com
Subject: Another internet Fax Service for your consideration
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 10:25:20 -0700

Hi Adam

Like you I became frustrated with eFax years ago, and while I looked
seriously at (and tested for a couple of months) MaxEmail, I finally
chose Innoport (http://www.innoport.com) for my solution, and I have
been very, very happy with them. In fact I recommend them all the
time, and have several accounts myself with them (for several
businesses I own as well as personal).

Just like MaxEmail they offer a choice of toll-free or local area code
(in almost all area codes), a choice of file formats (pdf, tiff, etc),
multiple notification options and attach (or not) to email, multiple
email address destinations, logs & reports, easy outbound faxing by
uploading a file on your computer, and many more features for only $4
to $6 per month (depending on the level of service you sign up for - a
toll-free number is a little more).

If you are happy with MaxEmail then I wouldn't suggest that you switch,
but some of your readers might like to know about Innoport as well - it
may be a better fit for some.

Love the newsletter - your contributions are always helpful and well
written!

Best regards,
Trisha Miller

--- end forwarded text

For those who are sending faxes that start out life on the Mac...
almost everything we send out is paper already, so we've never been
able to use pagesender and PDFpen in this way.

cheers... -Adam


--- begin forwarded text

From: Greg Scown <gregsmileonmymac.com>
Subject: MaxEmail & pagesender
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 12:06:12 -0700

Hey Adam,

Saw your article on MaxEmail in the most recent TidBITS. I see that
they also offer sending support in the MaxEmail Lite plan. I thought
you might like to know that pagesender can serve as a front-end to
sending faxes via MaxEmail. In other words, you can use the same
convenient pagesender interface right from the Print dialog: pagesender
will image anything you can print in TIFF-Fax format, create a new
E-mail, address it properly, enclose your fax, and send via your E-mail
client. (Imaging the fax locally means that pagesender can fax two-byte
characters and esoteric fonts which don't seem to work so well with
E-mail to fax services.) Combine pagesender with PDFpen, and you can
take a received PDF, add notes, images, even your signature, and turn
around faxes without ever printing on your end.

Thought you might like to know.

Best regards,

==> Greg

--- end forwarded text

--- begin forwarded text

From: "Sebastian A. Rueckert, MD"
Subject: Replacing eFax with MaxEmail
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 11:04:51 -0700

Quote:
> After looking around for another free fax
> reception account, I decided that there either was no such beast
> anymore, or that if one did exist, it would be too onerous to use
> due to intrusive advertising or other restrictions.

Answer:
   <http://www.K7.net>

Receive unlimited faxes and voicemails that are forwarded to your
email. Free. No message size restrictions. Only advertising is on
their web page, none gets into your email inbox.

I've been using it for over a year now without any problems.

--
Sebastian A. Rueckert, MD
Permanent contact link: <http://public.xdi.org/=rueckert>

--- end forwarded text

I too recently got around to changing fax service. It wasn't a matter of
eFax cancelling me -- they were happy to keep on taking my money, I'd been
dying to cancel them for ages, but the last time I'd looked seriously, I
hadn't found a good alternative.

This time I got some help from http://www.faxbeep.com/internet-fax-service/.

The MaxEmail $15/year service that Adam settled on would probably have done
fine for me and probably at the lowest cost. But I would have had to deal
with a varying monthly bill, because MaxEmail only includes a couple of
pages per month of sending, and I do send faxes. I run into a variety of
situations where email doesn't work. Most doctors do not yet accept email
-- that's changing, but it will be a slow process, and will be even longer
for older doctors. I had to fax something to an insurance company just
yesterday, and it's happened before. Any legal papers -- a loan application
a few weeks ago. For writing to federal legislators, fax is probably the
most effective mechanism now -- it's generally accepted that they pay a lot
less attention to email, and since the anthrax scare, snail mail is so
delayed as to be almost useless. Still, age and health make doctors the
most important for me. As an IT (formerly DP ;-) professional, business
faxes are almost unheard of, but personal life differs.

And MaxEmail's web site was relatively complex. By contrast, MyFax is
simple. US$10/month gets an 866 area code number (so senders don't pay and
don't realize it's not a local number), and includes 100 pages sent and 200
received. Receipt is by PDF or TIFF, and my experience, like Adam's, is
that PDF works great. I was impressed that when I asked a question by email
before signing up, I got an answer within minutes, and it was a very
intelligent answer. (The company is located in Ottawa.) MyFax by default
sends in fine mode, whereas MaxEmail defaults to standard and you have to
request fine mode. I find MyFax's position on this to be more reasonable,
as standard mode in a fax is so bad as to be useless.

All the services have, at best, quirky interfaces for setting up a fax to
send, and neither MaxEmail nor MyFax is any exception. The quirky borders
on the bizarre at times. They are both very good at sending attachments
(unless you need to send several, as MaxEmail limits you to three at a
time). I end up converting my MS Word documents to PDF to send, as my
letterhead uses an obscure font (Empire Builder, from
http://www.railfonts.com -- plug. ;-) -- hmm, I should make a fax version
with a bitmap letterhead, then I could just send the Word document. But I
digress: controlling the sent fax involves a mess of controls in varying
locations and formats, and this is true of all the fax services I've looked at.

But at least there are now alternatives to the execrable eFax. The clearest
lesson from the Faxbeep web site is that hatred for eFax is nearly
universal. About the best thing people say about eFax is that it sometimes
works, as long as you don't need to call support.

Edward

--- begin forwarded text

From: Jefferis Peterson
Subject: eFax misfortunes
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 05:39:54 -0700

I had the unfortunate idea of putting my eFax fax number on my business
cards, since I was using the free version for a couple of years. Other than
dealing with and reporting the regular SPAM faxes, it was worth the hassle,
but one month I had a 10 page fax sent to me which put me over the limit for
that month with the spam faxes. So my free account was ended unless I paid
for the full version. I protested and showed them how many spams I had
reported over the past year [which they could conceivably make $2k per
pop!]. Nope, no mercy. My free account would expire.

The problem? eFax charges you so much per page! And the vast majority of
faxes I received were spams, which they neither stopped or investigated, as
far as I could tell. I started to wonder if they were allowing spammers from
known fax domains to continue simply so they could charge customers on the
per page plan. Why would I want to pay for an account where I have to pay
for spam????

Needless to say, I now have business cards with a fax number that no longer
works [for me at least].

Jeff
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jefferis Peterson, Pres.
Web Design and Marketing
http://www.PetersonSales.com

--- end forwarded text

--On April 6, 2005 9:42:18 AM -0700 Edward Reid <edwardpaleo.org> wrote:

> The MaxEmail $15/year service that Adam settled on would probably have
> done fine for me and probably at the lowest cost. But I would have had to
> deal with a varying monthly bill, because MaxEmail only includes a couple
> of pages per month of sending, and I do send faxes.

Is this limit listed somewhere? I signed up with MaxEmail specifically
because I need to send faxes. I almost never need to receive. Their plan
comparison page shows a limit of 3 pages for the 30-day free trial, but no
limit for any of the paid plans.

<http://www.maxemail.com/fax/services_features.html>

A couple of points about maxemail that Adam missed:

There is a $10 sign-up fee. So the first year's payment is $24.95.
Maxemail will send the password you pick back to you in an un-encrypted
e-mail. Don't pick a password you want the world to know. Change your
password online after it gets mailed to you.

It appears that sending a fax from the web site will use SSL to upload your
file (i haven't gone through the whole process of sending a fax yet, so I
can't be sure on this). Using e-mail sends your fax un-encrypted across
the internet first. Faxes aren't secure to begin with but a little extra
protection doesn't hurt.

My sending needs are few so I would've been content to use my mini's
built-in modem and Mac OS X's fax ability, but I no longer have a phone
line. DSL only for me. The interesting bit is that with Skype-in I have
phone numbers in Kansas and New York City (Skype doesn't offer a number in
my area code, so I picked one across the state line that is considered a
local number.) Now with maxemail I have a fax number in Chicago. My IP
address traces back to Chicago too. A virtual existence indeed.

Kevin

At 03:15 PM 04/08/2005 -0500, Kevin van Haaren wrote:
>>MaxEmail only includes a couple
>>of pages per month of sending, and I do send faxes.
>
>Is this limit listed somewhere? I signed up with MaxEmail specifically
>because I need to send faxes. I almost never need to receive. Their plan
>comparison page shows a limit of 3 pages for the 30-day free trial, but no
>limit for any of the paid plans.

I was wrong; the plan prices include no sending, except that the trial
includes three. All other plans are a flat 5 cents per 30 seconds, which in
practical terms means 10 to 15 cents/page. See

http://www.maxemail.com/fax/pricing.html

The green check by "Send Faxes" on the plan comparison page just means that
you can send faxes, not that they are included in the base price.

Ten cents a page is still a good price for small volume. I just like my
monthly bills to be the same each month. Lazy you know.

Edward

Art Works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

Re: Replacing eFax with MaxEmail

I, too, subscribed to eFax, but prematurely. I misread the system requirements and was unable to receive or interpret the faxes. I did confirm that my assigned fax number acted like a fax number when I tested sending to it. Quite a while later, perhaps after upgrading my OS, I was able to receive the eFaxes, including my test message. Much to my chagrin, there were numerous spam faxes waiting for me. Spam faxes, not eFax fee faxes or eFax option notices. My conclusion was that eFax was selling my eFax fax number as a way of getting income from my "free" subscription. I immediately deleted every eFax or efax file on my computer. From TidBITS Talk, I see that there is the added income generated from the fax page count.

From my prospective, the sad thing is that Micronix, maker of the Vomax, is no longer in business. I purchased the Vomax 2000 V.32bis - 14.4 for Mac on 7/18/94 for $340; a slower speed model was available many months earlier. The Vomax is a voice answering machine, data modem, and fax modem, which discriminates between voice calls and incoming faxes. It is a stand alone device with 1 MB memory, upgradable to 8 MB. Voice messages and faxes share the same memory. It can fax anything which can be printed, and outgoing faxes can be scheduled. Incoming faxes in memory can be redirected remotely. Sending faxes does not include gray scale or color options. Incoming fax files can be converted to TIFF files for OCR. Nearly all my faxes are generated on my computer and sent in standard mode to produce a clear sharp fax when received. Only rarely do I send in fine mode. I have several versions of my scanned signature to use when needed, and even pasting into received faxes is easy. One phone line for voice and faxes, shared with DSL, is hard to beat. Unfortunately my unit has developed a hardware defect which precludes downloading the received faxes into my computer and I do not know how to get it repaired.

Richard

the sad thing is that Micronix, maker of the Vomax, is no longer in business. The Vomax is a voice answering machine, data modem, and fax modem, which discriminates between voice calls and incoming faxes.

Phlink ($149) looks like a good replacement for Vomax. It says it works with Pagesender and OS X's built-in fax capabilities. I don't use it, but it has lots of cool features...

http://www.ovolab.com/phlink/features/
http://www.smileonmymac.com/pagesender/index.html?ovolab

-Dave

I get most of my faxes from someone in England. Is there a way I can set up one of these accounts so that it uses a local, UK telephone number, thereby saving the sender long distance charges?

FWIW, I've been using JFax for several years; getting by with their
free service for quite a while, but now using their $15 monthly
service, with great success. To send an outgoing fax you can either
"print" directly to their servers or use their free sender application.
Incoming faxes arrive in a TIFF variety and are displayed inline in
Mail or by Preview.

As an added bonus, your Jfax number also receives incoming voice calls.
Messages left are send to you via email as an audio file.

<http://www.j2.com/>

   --Gordon

Found the article on faxing interesting, though I've personally tried to eliminate such things from my life these days.

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08057>

I wanted however to question one bit of advice you posted in relation to the Mac OS X built-in fax capabilities. You said: "Receiving faxes requires that your Mac be turned on and awake"

I didn't think that was necessary - at least in the past when I used to do faxing from my PowerBook it wasn't.

As far as I can see it should still be possible (in Mac OS X 10.3.8) to have your Mac in sleep, but wake up on a ring. This can be set in the Energy Saver System Preferences under the Options tab. Then set the "Receive Faxes on this Computer" to On in the Printing/Faxing System Preferences.

[You very well may be right - I've never used this option and totally blanked on its existence.]

The only problem you may have with this is if your faxes and telephone calls use the same line, when manual intervention is required (to determine if it is a fax call). But then this would apply whether the computer was asleep or not. One way around this I guess would be to use Ovolab's Phlink which combined with pagesender would give you a truly neat phone/voicemail/fax server and more just on the one line (I note that Tidbit's own Matt has also written the user manual for this application!)

It seems that another good use for a home-based Mac mini for road warriors would be to provide this fax receiving service. Especially as the Mac OS X faxing features seem to permit received faxes to be emailed to a particular address (and again, with Phlink, you could do even more clever things).

Regards Ian

Be careful with MaxEmail. They have billed me $10 each time my account balance fell below a certain amount. As far as I know, they did not allow for automatic refill against a credit card or bank account. I do not think they cater to small users.



[That's very much not my experience with them - what did their customer support people say when you asked about why this was (which I assume you did)? -Adam]