Why Isn’t There a Pay-As-You-Go Internet Fax Service?
Business, Customer Service, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Software, Technology March 14th, 2007
The title pretty much says it all, and frankly, how is this possible in 2007 is beyond me.
I’ve had a trusted old eFax service for perhaps a decade, never gave it a lot of thought. However, now that Fred Wilson is asking for advice, I thought I’d do a quick research. Voila! Here’s a comparison matrix of 10 Internet fax services by Top Ten Reviews:
What’s wrong here? There’s not a single offer tailored for individual users. I’m sure a busy VC like Fred has enough fax traffic to justify the $10 or so that most of these services charge: there are term sheets, legal documents..etc. (Although I certainly hope EchoSign would obliterate the fax machine soon.)
As a consumer, the grand total of faxes I receive in a year is perhaps 1-2, and I don’t send more than 5 per year. $10 is not a huge amount, but why would I pay a monthly subscription optimized for 1-200 pages monthly traffic?
The free version of eFax (btw, how could the granddaddy of Internet fax services escape the comparison?) allows free inbound services, but no sending at all. I don’t expect free sending, but why can’t I pay per use, only for the pages I send? Sure, I would not bring a huge business volume, but there are tens of millions just like me: occasional users, sending a few faxes a year. Charge me triple price, but don’t force me into a subscription deal! Then I could kiss goodbye to the modem and phone cable.
Update (313): There is an interesting comment-exchange re. the economnics below. And some good news: EchoSign will soon have doc-to-fax functionality. Of course what I meant above by EchoSign obliterating fax machines was wider acceptance of electronically signed documents and eliminating the need for faxed copies at all.
Zoli Erdos
I suspect the reason none of them offer a “single use” model is that it’s too uneconomical to reach these users. eFax’s ARPU is about $16/mo, and if they keep their average customer for say 12 mos., that’s about $200 in revenue. It’s too hard to chase a customer with $1-$2 in fax revenue I think … they don’t even seem to emphasize eFax Free that much anymore, and that’s just an upsell customer acquisition vehicle anyway. Plus billing would kill you - credit card fees, etc. — even iTunes doesn’t bill you until you hit $10 … but I think the real issue is how do you cost effectively reach people only willing to spend $1-$2 … i think it’s close to impossible unless it’s truly viral.
But, the good news — we’ll actually have this functionality in EchoSign in our next release (mid-April), though almost “accidentially” as part of automating generaly “send-to-a-fax-#” worfklow. In our next release, just put a fax # in the “To” line at EchoSign, and you can fax a document in to EchoSign and have it delivered to another fax #. You can already do fax-to-email for free on EchoSign btw.
I thought about the economics - but with eFax I already have a phone number, so whatever fixed cost there is, they are already incurring it. Now, if I was able to send my 2-3 faxes through them, that would be incremental revenue.. little, I know, but million times a little goes a long way.
But I certainly agree with you, I would not chase such customers - would simply list the option on the website and let them come tom me.
Great news about Echosign - as usual
There is one: http://faxzero.com/
Yey, also http://www.fax1.com
Yes, also http://www.fax1.com
I use maxemail.com, it’s only $24/year for service
http://www.greenfax.com/serviceplans.php
GreenFax has a send only service for 6 cents per minute, billed in 6 second increments with a one minute minimum. Credits are bought in $25 increments, but never expire.
I think there is a limit to the total size and total number of attachments, but they are pretty reasonable (10 MB size).
Thank you for the wonderful article. I have thought the same thing for awhile. I had MyFax, and I loved their services, but the most faxes that I ever sent was 24 in a two month period, and I only received two. I didn’t need to pay $10 for these, either.
Thank you for other readers for posting to the pay-as-you-go faxing services. I can now use these to fax.
Yea, thank you so much for the Free Fax info. This is exactly what me and my friend needed since the only time I send fax is when I need job (which I don’t need right now). Send2Fax used to be good with their prepaid plan, however they changed it without my knowing and started charging me $6.95/mo.
I looked at everyone else’s recommendations and I am sticking with faxaway.com.
http://www.fax1.com is not pay-as-you-go like they say they are… they charge you a service fee of $9.00 per month to receive fax!
http://www.fax1.com/receiving_faxes.html
I think the montly payments is just so you can hold on to a fax number. But I think it should only be as little as a domain name. Anywho, faxing is a dead technology. Why do we still use it? We have email… Why not just make an email machine that you can feed paper into it if you really need to do it that way. Or maybe just add an option to a fax machine so that you can type in an email address into it. At least the trees would be happier… lol… People receiving the fax would then select what is good and what is junk before printing it out. I think we are creatures of habbit. And unfortunately the FAX machine came first before email did.
wow! http://faxaway.com if they do what they say they do.. then they are the best!
checking out http://www.faxaway.com they look as close to a pay-as-you-go service as I was able to find. $1 per month maintenance fee and 11 cents per minute usage fee. I’d like to hear from anyone who has used it about the quality of their fax service. For a $1 a month it’s worth taking a chance on I figure. Thanks.