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Fax servers had been as soon as thought-about customary gear in most enterprise workplaces, however they’re all however out of date today.
As an alternative, there at the moment are many higher options in the marketplace, so there’s no have to take care of fax servers and the complications they convey 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 generally is a actual nuisance with fax servers, because it takes cautious planning so that you simply don’t find yourself with some critically snarled communications.
Moreover, scaling a fax server usually requires a hefty funding in new know-how, together with extra fax boards, modems, and servers to take care of the elevated fax quantity shifting by way of your workplace.
On-line fax companies allow you to keep away from this concern fully, providing far smoother scalability with out the necessity for extra {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 that they’re not very helpful in trendy workplace communications the place individuals have to ship and obtain messages throughout quite a lot of platforms and units.
Since fax servers aren’t designed to work together with the assorted forms of units we use in the present day, they’ll run into important hurdles in relation to workplace communications.
Attempting to shoehorn a fax server into your small business operations can throw off your workflows or require you to give you workarounds to accommodate the antiquated know-how. On the identical time, it additionally requires you to run the danger of dropping observe of any doc that isn’t a part of your in any other case cloud-based system.
Lengthy story quick, sustaining compatibility with evolving know-how requirements and protocols generally is a problem for tax servers that’s simply not value taking over.
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, regardless of the place they’re.
On-line faxes are additionally saved centrally and might be accessed by your staff. This makes it a lot simpler to arrange and entry information. Distant staff can retrieve no matter they want with out having to return into the workplace.
3. Fax server upkeep prices
Since fax servers are hardware-dependent, they require ongoing upkeep, which may eat up finances. And, as a result of this gear is getting old out of relevance, it’s not all the time attainable for any previous technician to service it — so that you in all probability have to discover a specialist.
It may be tempting to skirt this specific draw back by merely not sustaining your fax servers as a lot, however this generally is a pricey mistake. Downtime and system failures can simply disrupt enterprise operations and incur extra prices for troubleshooting and repairs.
In any case, fax doesn’t require a ton of bandwidth, however the connection needs to be secure. Slight delays or issues end in faxes not being despatched or acquired.
On-line fax options sidestep this fully, as they don’t require any devoted {hardware}, they usually provide predictable subscription-based pricing fashions with minimal upfront funding.
4. Safety dangers
The older a know-how is, the extra possible it’s been damaged into or hacked alongside the way in which — and if not, it might nonetheless embrace vulnerabilities that make it extra prone 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 find out how to hack them and exploit their vulnerabilities.
The unlucky fact is that transmitting delicate info over conventional telephone strains and unsecured networks will increase the danger of your information being intercepted and utilized by hackers and scammers — and there’s not an entire lot you are able to do to mitigate that danger with conventional fax servers.
In fact, cloud-based and on-line fax options have their safety vulnerabilities too, however in addition they have superior safety protocols and use trendy 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 often 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 customary substitute 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.
Generally 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 embrace:
- Price-effectiveness: On-line fax companies normally provide 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’ll want to add one other line to your on-line fax service, all you need 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 all the pieces occurs over a community, you and your staff can entry faxes wherever you could have an web connection.
- Safety: On-line fax companies are usually very safe, with encryption protocols and information 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 a substitute of over conventional telephone strains, they usually can be used to ship faxes. The best way it really works is by sending digital information to a different particular person’s fax machine the place it might 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.
In contrast to a conventional fax machine, a VoIP fax service gained’t routinely print out no matter it receives, however it is going to 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 telephone companies embrace:
- Price-effectiveness: Very similar to on-line fax companies, VoIP telephone companies usually run low cost, and most work on a subscription mannequin that you may simply enhance or lower as wanted.
- Seamless integration: Since VoIP telephone companies accomplish that many different issues than faxing, they make an ideal choice for companies that wish to preserve their operations as built-in as attainable. With VoIP telephone companies, your staff can entry their telephone service, faxes, doc administration, and extra multi function place.
- Superior options: VoIP telephone companies include a variety of superior options that make faxing simpler, with fax-to-email conversion being some of the helpful. This makes it so your faxes are despatched to your e-mail, the place you possibly can even reply to them. Many VoIP telephone companies additionally provide on-line doc signing, which might be very handy for those who’re faxing issues like contracts.
It’s necessary to notice that many VoIP telephone companies additionally present fax companies — however not all of them do. Do your analysis to ensure no matter service you think about has all of the performance you want.
3. Doc administration programs
Doc administration programs (DMS) aren’t particularly designed for faxing, however they’ll usually be used for it anyway, making them different to a fax server.
They work very equally to on-line fax companies in that you may add a doc to the DMS after which ship it out as a digital fax. Faxes you obtain can be despatched instantly into your DMS the place it may be categorized together with the remainder of your information.
The principle advantages of DMS embrace:
- Comfort: For those who’re already utilizing a DMS to handle your paperwork and you’ll want to ship faxes, it simply is sensible to make use of the identical platform to do each capabilities.
- Constructed-in integration: Faxes are despatched and acquired instantly 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.
- Straightforward group: For those who’ve already obtained hierarchy in your DMS, faxes will match proper in, without having to create one other course of.
I’ve nothing in opposition to fax servers personally, I simply don’t suppose it’s the easiest way for many workplaces to deal with fax. There are too many higher choices on the market.