A fax server is a bodily or digital server that’s used to handle the sending, receiving, and storage of faxes over a digital or analog community. Fax servers had been as soon as thought of normal tools in most enterprise places of work, however they’re all however out of date lately.
As an alternative, there are actually many higher options available on the market, so there’s no must cope with fax servers and the complications they bring about within the first place.
4 causes to not use a fax server
1. Fax infrastructure is painful to scale
One of many hardest issues about making modifications to your workplace communications setup is doing so at scale. This could be a actual nuisance with fax servers, because it takes cautious planning so that you just don’t find yourself with some significantly snarled communications.
Moreover, scaling a fax server usually requires a hefty funding in new expertise, together with extra fax boards, modems, and servers to cope with the elevated fax quantity transferring by way of your workplace.
On-line fax companies allow you to keep away from this difficulty totally, providing far smoother scalability with out the necessity for added {hardware} investments. This makes cloud-based companies much more geared up to accommodate a enterprise’s rising communication wants.
2. Restricted flexibility
Merely put, fax servers are solely nice at sending and receiving faxes. Which means they’re not very helpful in fashionable workplace communications the place individuals must ship and obtain messages throughout a wide range of platforms and units.
Since fax servers aren’t designed to work together with the varied kinds of units we use right this moment, they will run into important hurdles in terms of workplace communications.
Attempting to shoehorn a fax server into your enterprise operations can throw off your workflows or require you to provide you with workarounds to accommodate the antiquated expertise. On the similar time, it additionally requires you to run the danger of dropping monitor of any doc that isn’t a part of your in any other case cloud-based system.
Lengthy story brief, sustaining compatibility with evolving expertise requirements and protocols could be a problem for tax servers that’s simply not value taking up.
In distinction, many on-line options include a far larger deal of flexibility, permitting customers to ship and obtain faxes through e-mail, on-line platforms, and even apps. Staff can ship a fax from an iPhone, for instance, irrespective of the place they’re.
On-line faxes are additionally saved centrally and could be accessed by your workforce. This makes it a lot simpler to prepare and entry information. Distant employees can retrieve no matter they want with out having to come back into the workplace.
3. Fax server upkeep prices
Since fax servers are hardware-dependent, they require ongoing upkeep, which might eat up funds. And, as a result of this tools is getting older out of relevance, it’s not all the time attainable for any previous technician to service it — so that you most likely must discover a specialist.
It could be tempting to skirt this explicit draw back by merely not sustaining your fax servers as a lot, however this could be a expensive mistake. Downtime and system failures can simply disrupt enterprise operations and incur extra prices for troubleshooting and repairs.
In spite of everything, fax doesn’t require a ton of bandwidth, however the connection must be steady. Slight delays or issues end in faxes not being despatched or acquired.
On-line fax options sidestep this totally, as they don’t require any devoted {hardware}, and so they supply predictable subscription-based pricing fashions with minimal upfront funding.
4. Safety dangers
The older a expertise is, the extra probably it’s been damaged into or hacked alongside the way in which — and if not, it could nonetheless embody vulnerabilities that make it extra more likely to be compromised within the first place. Fax servers are not any exception to this rule, and folks have had a very long time to determine the best way to hack them and exploit their vulnerabilities.
The unlucky reality is that transmitting delicate info over conventional cellphone traces and unsecured networks will increase the danger of your knowledge being intercepted and utilized by hackers and scammers — and there’s not an entire lot you are able to do to mitigate that threat with conventional fax servers.
After all, cloud-based and on-line fax options have their safety vulnerabilities too, however additionally they have superior safety protocols and use fashionable encryption strategies to safeguard info.
Moreover, relying on the service, many on-line fax options adjust to {industry} safety laws, and these options are additionally up to date repeatedly in response to rising threats.
Three higher options than an in-house fax server
1. On-line fax options
On-line fax options are the present gold normal alternative for fax servers. They permit companies to do all the identical issues they might do with a conventional fax setup, solely with a lot larger levels of safety and comfort.
Typically known as web faxing or digital faxing, on-line faxing works very similar to sending an e-mail. You merely open up the software program or platform, choose the doc you wish to ship, after which click on a button to ship it to a different particular person’s fax machine or on-line fax service.
The principle advantages of on-line fax options embody:
- Price-effectiveness: On-line fax companies normally supply subscription or pay-as-you-go pricing, and it’s less expensive than having to purchase, preserve, and replace all that {hardware} and software program.
- Scalability: If you want to add one other line to your on-line fax service, all it’s a must to do is let your supplier know. There’s no want to put in extra {hardware} or purchase new software program.
- Flexibility: The key phrase in on-line fax companies is “on-line.” Since every little thing occurs over a community, you and your workforce can entry faxes wherever you may have an web connection.
- Safety: On-line fax companies are usually very safe, with encryption protocols and knowledge privateness measures. Relying on which service you go together with, you possibly can even discover choices that adjust to industry-specific safety laws, like HIPAA.
2. VoIP companies
Voice over Web Protocol (VoIP) companies allow you to make and obtain calls over the web as an alternative of over conventional cellphone traces, and so they may also be used to ship faxes. The best way it really works is by sending digital knowledge to a different particular person’s fax machine the place it could be transformed or translated again into analog alerts through their VoIP service or an analog phone adapter (ATA) that helps a fax machine learn it.
Not like a conventional fax machine, a VoIP fax service gained’t mechanically print out no matter it receives, however it’ll maintain it as a file in a cloud-based system, which implies you possibly can entry it wherever after which print it everytime you need.
The principle advantages of VoIP cellphone companies embody:
- Price-effectiveness: Very like on-line fax companies, VoIP cellphone companies usually run low cost, and most work on a subscription mannequin you could simply improve or lower as wanted.
- Seamless integration: Since VoIP cellphone companies achieve this many different issues than faxing, they make an awesome possibility for companies that wish to maintain their operations as built-in as attainable. With VoIP cellphone companies, your workforce can entry their cellphone service, faxes, doc administration, and extra multi functional place.
- Superior options: VoIP cellphone companies include a variety of superior options that make faxing more practical, with fax-to-email conversion being one of the crucial helpful. This makes it so your faxes are despatched to your e-mail, the place you possibly can even reply to them. Many VoIP cellphone companies additionally supply on-line doc signing, which could be very handy if you happen to’re faxing issues like contracts.
It’s essential to notice that many VoIP cellphone companies additionally present fax companies — however not all of them do. Do your analysis to ensure no matter service you take into account has all of the performance you want.
3. Doc administration methods
Doc administration methods (DMS) aren’t particularly designed for faxing, however they will usually be used for it anyway, making them a superb various to a fax server.
They work very equally to on-line fax companies in you could add a doc to the DMS after which ship it out as a digital fax. Faxes you obtain may also be despatched immediately into your DMS the place it may be categorized together with the remainder of your information.
The principle advantages of DMS embody:
- Comfort: If you happen to’re already utilizing a DMS to handle your paperwork and you want to ship faxes, it simply is smart to make use of the identical platform to do each features.
- Constructed-in integration: Faxes are despatched and acquired immediately from the DMS, which implies that you don’t have to fret about copying information over from a fax service or pulling information out of your DMS to ship through your fax service.
- Simple group: If you happen to’ve already acquired a superb hierarchy in your DMS, faxes will match proper in, without having to create one other course of.
I’ve nothing towards fax servers personally, I simply don’t suppose it’s one of the best ways for many places of work to deal with fax. There are too many higher choices on the market.