Faxing in 2025? | TheaterFire

For businesses in healthcare and/or atleast government, yes faxing ability is absolutely required. It's sometimes the only way to communicate per HIPAA with insurance companies and other entities on different EMR systems as faxing is built in and is sometimes the only hipaa complaint way to communicate documents.

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dcgrey@reddit

Yep exactly. A lot of people don't get how much more cumbersome it would be to have compliant document transfer for, say, 30 documents a day if they were using digital signatures and secure portals instead of using a perfectly fine fax machine.

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Alert-Mud-8650@reddit

This past week I was just helping a Doctor's office their printer/copy/fax machine was having issues and we replaced it and after I hooked up the replacement a 135page fax started coming in from a hospital it was a patients hospital record they had requested. I did help them set up end to end encrypted email but get the hospital to use that would be impossible

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archiekane@reddit

It really isn't. Fax is an insecure and totally dead technology.

It isn't required. Old fuckers just won't learn alternatives.

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dogcmp6@reddit

I feel like you just wanted to lob an insult at Americans.

Fax may be totally insecure, and dead technology, but in the US is still required by law in many organizations, or a choice by the business that we support. For most of us, we have no choice but to provide a solution so that the org has a Fax solution in place.

Many orgs have shifted away from physical fax machines, and now use Efax tools like Right Fax...But this is not just an American solution, Rightfax and Efax tools are used by many orgs that still require fax internationally. . .And many countries outside of the US still require businesses in specific sectors to maintain fax line.

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archiekane@reddit

It wasn't wanting to lob an insult towards the US. I used to work British Corp F500 that was bought by a US company, and it sent us back with red tape and antiquated ideology about a decade. It was nuts.

The US just cannot seem to let go of Fax. We do a lot of legal work, we refuse Fax for encrypted email and do not have any issues. I said it's a dead tech, as in antiquated and not required to exist when so many other technologies have replaced it.

I never mean to directly insult anyone, I am insulting the technology and the fact that older people seem to still think it should be relevant. I've entered my third decade in this gig, fax tech should be where NT3.51 and Netware are.

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Alert-Mud-8650@reddit

I've heard Japan still using a lot of fax machines to so it is not just us in the USA.

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b3542@reddit

So... You just forego business with other entities which are required to use fax?

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FearlessFerret7611@reddit

You have no clue what you're talking about.

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UpbeatAssumption5817@reddit

I work for state government.

By law I am required to be able to receive faxes.

So yes it is required. It's probably some ADA or accessibility shit. I don't know.

All I know is it's required

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SpecialistLayer@reddit

Um, try being in healthcare and/or government. It's absolutely required.

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sryan2k1@reddit

When it's in government legislation yeah, it's required. There are some things you have no control over.

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thelemon8er-2@reddit

If you deal with doctors and lawyers who use faxes… then yes it’s not up to you and is then “required”.

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2cats2hats@reddit

Depending where you are, this attitude would end up bad for you. Customers don't write the laws. The pen is still mightier than the sword, even in the world of FAX.

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Kukri187@reddit

gif

“Let it die”

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Brilliant-Advisor958@reddit

I ported all our numbers to a fax service and they get emailed to the local branch.

After about a year , they asked to stop getting the emails since it was all spam. We still keep the faxes in an o365 mailbox just in case, but no one misses faxes .

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dartdoug@reddit

We work with government so I kept our fax machine for too long. The telco line started to glitch and the telco claimed 4 times that they had sent someone that fixed it. We never saw a truck roll. They were lying. We switched to an eFax type service for almost 10 years. Then I realized that for an entire year the only faxes we received were a) roof repair scams -always came in on rainy days- b) parking lot paving scams and c) We'll buy your used car/ house sight unseen at the best price.

At that point I killed the eFax.

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BeyondRAM@reddit

This

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Tufek1310@reddit

Yes and the scale is shocking. The global fax services market was worth $40 billion in 2023. Hospitals can't quit because of HIPAA compliance, law firms won't because of liability, and Japan literally tried to ban it in 2021 and failed.

I made a full breakdown of the economics: [ https://youtu.be/r9c4ojfmynU?si=K9EP3debJFInyaQF ]

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AvesRay@reddit

I work in Telecom at a well known hospital and we use Opentext RightFax.

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tequilero@reddit

www.faxwaves.com to fax through the faxwaves! Fax it forward!

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Tech-Sales-Lurking@reddit

Medsender.

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Ok-Penalty-2058@reddit

faxaroo.com/us doesn't require an account. Send a few pages per year and no inbound junk

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WestFax_Official@reddit

If you only fax occasionally, don’t sink more money into a fax board or a phone line. In 2025 that’s the most expensive and least reliable option.

Your two practical paths:

Use a cloud fax connector on the Canon (no fax card, no PSTN line).
Go fully online and fax by email or web.

Services like WestFax handle both workflows, including walk-up faxing from Canon MFPs and simple email-to-fax for low-volume users. SMTP2GO won’t fax for you - you still need an actual fax transport.

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StyleSignificant1203@reddit

If faxing is light and only used by a few people, I’d skip adding a fax card and phone line altogether. That keeps you tied to hardware, maintenance, and a workflow that only works at the copier.

A cloud option like Documo is much simpler. Users can send and receive faxes from email or a web portal, so there’s no new hardware and no analog line to manage. It works well alongside scan-to-email, keeps costs predictable, and is easier to support long-term.

For occasional faxing, going fully online is usually the cleanest and lowest-overhead path.

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Icy-Agent6600@reddit

SR Fax

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Own-Eggplant-3435@reddit

SR Fax here too. 4 Canon iR 527 and 3 lexmark using this service since about a year. Was on another provider before for 3 years. Moved due to the cost. It's cheaper but with better support.

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SpecialistLayer@reddit

I would second this, have used it at a few places and has compliancy as well.

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idspispopd888@reddit

On the rare occasion I need one (usually to send crap to the Feds, who are stuck in the 1980s) I use voip.ms. Receives and sends, either by email or other. Easy. Cheap.

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Background-Slip8205@reddit

That's not something most businesses can do. It's fine for you, but not okay for them to send potentially sensitive data to a 3rd party they don't have a contract with. There's tons of laws against this, especially HIPAA if medical information is involved.

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idspispopd888@reddit

Thank goodness I’m in Canada. Don’t need to deal with that!

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Background-Slip8205@reddit

Thank goodness you don't have laws protecting companies from sharing your private medical information with anyone they want?

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CarnivalCassidy@reddit

We have plenty of data protection laws in Canada. None of them force anyone to send documents via fax machine.

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Intelligent_Fun3207@reddit

At no point did anyone say anything about being forced to send documents via fax.

All the guy said was that you should check with compliance first before going through a 3rd party as there may be company policies, or laws that need to be taken into consideration when handling potentially sensitive data.

2 idiots in 1 thread, do they not teach you how to read in Canada?

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CarnivalCassidy@reddit

Where's your proof that voip.ms doesn't comply with Canadian privacy laws?

Go troll somewhere else.

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Background-Slip8205@reddit

What are you even on about? No one said it doesn't, just to check with your compliance officer to make sure it does.

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Intelligent_Fun3207@reddit

Jesus fuck, are you illiterate? No one said voip.ms does or doesn't comply with Canadian privacy laws, all that was said, is that you need to verify it is before making a decision.

If anyone here is trolling, it's you.

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idspispopd888@reddit

LOL. Sure.

I don’t need to deal with those.

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Background-Slip8205@reddit

Is this r/ShittySysadmin? Canada still has laws to protect people's personal information, and your company has rules to protect their information as well.

That's okay though, you do you.

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idspispopd888@reddit

Thank you for that typically antagonistic Murrican comment, that shows you have not a clue in a closet about us, our requirements or our technologies.

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Background-Slip8205@reddit

Looking at your previous posts, you don't have a clue how to do IT. You have over 3 years experience and still asking helpdesk 101 questions.

Maybe you should put some effort into learning how to do your job, other than just constantly asking reddit.

Try getting a proper education or studying for some certs. Otherwise you're going to be doing this entry level shit your whole life. But yeah, I'm the typical stupid Murrican, what do I know, other than basically everything compared to you.

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idspispopd888@reddit

Once more. Thanks for the supercilious antagonism. Bye!

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Background-Slip8205@reddit

I was friendly and tried to give you very important advice, and instantly you're the one being antagonistic. This is why you'll always be a failure at your job.

I hope in 10 years when you're still making shit pay that you remember this moment.

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AntonOlsen@reddit

I had a discussion with a school administrator once. They wouldn't accept a PDF by email because it wasn't an "original" signature, but somehow a fax was.

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SevaraB@reddit

Cue printing to PDF, then e-faxing the PDF. Make sure to include a cover sheet explaining the stupidity!

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Ashamed-Ad4508@reddit

I thought the process by now would have been Print To Fax.. skipping the pdf... 🤔

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Alert-Mud-8650@reddit

Yeah just use the printer called fax on your windows computer just need an old dialup modem and an anolog equivalent phone line.

Or some efax services have print driver for faxing options. But most are email to fax.

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SevaraB@reddit

The point is to make their brains explode that they’re getting a fax of a PDF.

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Clear_Olive_5846@reddit

Plenty of good online fax service. If just outbound fax and small use, just use 1fax.com to send them without sign up. I hate these subscription service.

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Juan_in_a_meeeelion@reddit

Tell them that faxes were invented nearly 200 years ago, and they’re older than the telephone, and ask them to explain in very small words why an email won’t suffice.

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Dolapevich@reddit

You can setup a fax server with hylafax and a modem.

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jengibrelindoja@reddit

We are using FAXSIPIT and it has been good so far in the 1.5-2 years we’ve had it. People still send a fax to our number and it gets converted to a PDF then emailed to me. To send a fax, there are a couple options. The first is using their online portal to upload a document and send. The second is an application installed on a PC that acts as a printer so you send a print job to it. The third way is to send an email with attachment which is how we are doing it from the copiers. If the email account on the copiers matches the FaxSIPit account then it sends no problem. If the account is different then the subject line just needs the FaxsipIt username and password listed, it strips it off before setting the fax subject line. I think they have a way to do secure faxing as well but we just pay for basic service.

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sryan2k1@reddit

We use ConcordFax and are happy with them.

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Ok_Negotiation3024@reddit

We have been using Concord for years and the only issue we run into is during tax season the IRS’s end will get busy. Other than that we zero issues.

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ItsMeMulbear@reddit

Second this. Faxing something is as easy as sending a PDF attachment via email.

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Boilergal2000@reddit

We use Ring Central just for fax.

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Top-Shoulder6081@reddit

Windows fax. Just drop a fax modem in a pc or server. works great

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Individual_Clue_6209@reddit

You could have them print the document, scan it, then email it?

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The_NorthernLight@reddit

Faxage.com

$7/month and you get all your faxes via email.

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JMeucci@reddit

I work for a financial services company. The IRS requires faxing. We use Faxcore for our electronic faxing and several of our larger offices have a manual fax machine onsite for backup.

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BeyondRAM@reddit

That's crazy, that old US bureaucracy will never change lmao "world's leading power"

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SuperScott500@reddit

Funny how physical documents are the least secure medium, yet all of our most important items are still on paper (SS card, real estate {personal & commercial}, court, etc.).

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IntelligentCandy8716@reddit

Yes, but I am very happy that I don't need to worry about file corruption in regards to my birth and marriage certificates along with select other archived physical documents. And those old Polaroids my parents took of our family aren't nearly as pixelated as the one I took with my old digital camera and copied from device to countless device over the last few decades.

I agree with the them of this thread, though. Faxing in the digital age is not as secure as it once was and should probably be reconsidered as a preferred method of secure document transfer.

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zeroibis@reddit

Meanwhile other advanced powers like Japan have moved off the floppy last year.

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StyxCoverBnd@reddit

Yep, they are now using zip drives!

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Eggshensdojo@reddit

Are you using a voip system? Most of them have a faxing feature built in.

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HDClown@reddit

A fax board for your copier will likely run anywhere from $400-800 for the part, plus potential service visit fee for install. Depending on how many pages of faxing per month you do, that will be a 1-3 year payoff compared to online services. Add in the monthly cost of a phone line unless you already have one available.

Last hosted service I was used eGoldFax and it started at $30/mo for 250 pages with unlimited users and 1 local number. Additional local numbers were $0.50/month. Every other service charged per user and was $5-10/mo per additional number. Users can share a single number (send inbound fax to an email group) but at $0.50/mo/user I gave individual numbers. The unlimited user model also meant every user could send faxes for the same cost, and sending was much more common to be randomly needed vs. receiving. It's possible this pricing has changed as it's been a few years.

As you indicated you are only a few people who need to fax, SRfax and WestFax have lower cost starting options.

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AxeellYoung@reddit

I have nothing to add except that im shocked Government and Schools still use Fax in 2025. Is this a US thing? In the UK haven’t heard of Fax since 2014

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Kraligor@reddit

How's your PBX set up? If you're on VoIP, most providers should have a soft fax option. If you're not on VoIP.. just get a fax machine and assign a number.

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djaybe@reddit

E-fax.

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bizyguy76@reddit

We use a biscom fax server and got a sip trunk from fax.com. faxes send and receive via email and could be programmed to print. Runs on a VM.

The biggest change is that the user has to scan it to email first. I got complaints at first but not any more.

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Icy_Conference9095@reddit

Talk to your fax line provider. I ended up just using our ISPs online fax system that allowed a few lines to be used, and allowed domain level email-to-fax. You basically just email "personsnumber@emaildomain.net" and it faces to that number.

Ended up actually being cheaper for three digital fax numbers for receiving, and domain email to fax, then the 13 fax lines we had been paying for.

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bit_byte-@reddit

If you're forced to fax for some reason, be it HIPAA or otherwise, use a digital fax service. We use Documo.

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wrt-wtf-@reddit

You can scan to email on some systems.

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mobileaccountuser@reddit

e fax service

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ProgressBartender@reddit

Are they still using faxes for regulatory reasons? Or security reasons? Some of those still require transmission over voip (21st century landlines) and don’t accept fax as a service because those may transmit to a service in a foreign country.

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kangy3@reddit

Pretty much any cloud phone service has this functionality right?

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CPAtech@reddit

eFax

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Microflunkie@reddit

This is the right answer OP. The eFax service is a modest cost and simply works. Once the users know how to use it you are not going to have to think about it again for a long time.

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links_revenge@reddit

eFax here as well. Seems to work well, just have to change your password every 90 days or something.

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__printf@reddit

I have given up fighting some customers who are so set on physical fax machines and just get an ATA for them (medical, usually).

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Evening_Link4360@reddit

WestFax is cheap, simple, has SSO, and is HIPAA compliant.

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dcgkwm@reddit

rent a business-class MFP, those should have FAX funtion by use extend FAX controlcard. Inadditionally, you can combo into system like papercut.

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laughsbrightly@reddit

Spend the $50 a year on a MagicJack and plug it in to your multifunction copier. Solved.

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Background-Slip8205@reddit

I absolutely would not use a 3rd party service without getting compliance and HR involved. If the information being faxed contains PII (Personally Identifiable Information) or company IP (Intellectual Property), using a 3rd party without a specific NDA or confidentiality agreement.

You could be at very least, breaking company policy and get fired, at worst, breaking an actually law like HIPAA resulting in large fines and even jail time.

There's a reason people still use faxes, it's far more secure than email and often contains sensitive information.

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F7xWr@reddit

But the fax signal itself has no encryption. What you mean?

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F7xWr@reddit

docmo

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speel@reddit

Do you have Zoom phone? It has faxing capabilities.

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TKInstinct@reddit

My HP home printer has this too.

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Kirk1233@reddit

Second tbis, works great, and included if you have zoom phone, just need to turn the feature on.

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kidyus@reddit

Thirding this, was so happy they added this feature.

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TheBlackAlpaca@reddit

Updox is decent, idk if it integrates with MFPs.

Started seeing some clients use or want to use efax corporate and they claim to work on MFPs. However from what I've seen its basically scan to email and the email you would send to is country code+phone+@efaxsend.com. I already know they will not want to use it because of that and they dont always have common recipient's to do this in address books.

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Lonecoon@reddit

Check your phone service. Most have a fax adapter for physical machines, a fax to email, and email to fax capabilities. I use Net2Phone and all three methods just work.

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BeyondRAM@reddit

Why would anyone still use fax machines in 2025? I really don't understand

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Djblinx89@reddit

Courts in the US still use faxing, more than you think.

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SpecialistLayer@reddit

We haven't used fax machines in years but efax is still heavily used across some of my entities (healthcare)

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rynoxmj@reddit

Doctors and Lawyers in my experience. Our only two remaining fax lines (eFax) are HR and Legal for these reasons.

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archiekane@reddit

It's dying out in both, thankfully.

With POTS support withdrawn in the UK, I told people we couldn't use fax with VoIP systems. People were vocal and I set up eFax. It was used once in the year I had it configured, then I cancelled it.

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Sweet-Sale-7303@reddit

I work IT at a library. The amount of the public that comes in to use our fax machine is insane.

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Djblinx89@reddit

Check out RightFax. They offer traditional phone line faxing and efaxing solutions. Our company still uses faxing on the regular. There's a desktop app you can use and they have integration with smart copiers. We have the app loaded on our Xerox altalink's and primelinks.

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silverlexg@reddit

Guys what’s the best way to setup dialup?

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LastTechStanding@reddit

Haha can’t wait for fax to die… email is faster and cheaper…

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SurprisedMushroom@reddit

fax by email is a good solution.

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TaliesinWI@reddit

What phone system are you using? The cloud ones like RingCentral have e-fax built in. You fax to the direct dial and that user gets it as an email attachment, or they print to the app and it automatically faxes.

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kg7qin@reddit

If you are running a PBX, it might support native faxing ans sending that as an attachment to email.

You can try faxcore. It works well.

If you have a company that you lease your copiers from then check to see if they offer anything.

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quagalcheck@reddit

Zoom Phone

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Metmendoza@reddit

We use rightfax with about 60 brook trout lines connected to a Cisco sip. Gotta love healthcare.......

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SlightAnnoyance@reddit

My org has to maintain faxes for courts, government agencies, and healthcare that all use it as preferred for secure communication. A few years ago when we changed phone systems and eliminated analog options I switched us to Convord fax. We do a fair amount of outbound faxing which is done as a print to fax option. I have some dedicated numbers for faxing to each office and a handful of heavy fax users have dedicated fax inbound.

Inbound is delivered to email as a pdf so the collective office number is monitored by either mail room or reception staff and forwarded as needed.

eFax may be a bit prettier and easier to use, but Concord isn't hard and since the bulk of the org doesn't need user accounts to send out, its dirt cheap.

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yeahimsober@reddit

We use RightFax by OpenText and love it. The vendor that supports it is Paperless Productivity, formerly Advantage Technologies. I have nothing but good things to say about their customer service/support. https://paperlessproductivity.com

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BadSausageFactory@reddit

we got rid of the machine-based faxing about 4 years ago and have an easyfax account which has been used precisely twice

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SpecialistLayer@reddit

I would look at efax solutions. Your options entirely depend on what compliances you have to maintain and monthly volume usage.. If you have none, go you! I've only dealt with hipaa compliant ones which adds a few 0's to the monthly bill.

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Jezbod@reddit

I work for local govt in the UK, even we got rid of our last faxes more than 5 years ago.

UK National Health Service is another story. They were supposed to get rid of faxes by April 2022, but 1 in six NHS Trusts were still using them.

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Enough_Brilliant9598@reddit

I ended up purchasing a coffee machine that can do fax and taking a phone number to it.

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atomic_jarhead@reddit

Our phone system doubles everyone phone numbers as their fax number. Only people that use it at work are HR and Credit. Outside of that, everyone else “fax” by scanning and emailing. There was a little push back at first but it’s the norm for them now and has been accepted just fine.

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stkyrice@reddit

Nobody is really providing a solution. You can go with services like t38fax.com or efax.com. I'm sure there are others. Most of these services would allow you to email your fax to them and they would convert to fax and send it for you. They also have web Portals to log into and attach PDFs and fax out.

For the copier you can just set them to relay to smtp2go and the. Users would enter in the fax number as an email address on the scan to email.

You can port your fax numbers to their service and get incoming taxes as emails.

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Ol_JanxSpirit@reddit

We use https://www.ingeniumsw.com/ for faxing via email. Works pretty well.