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Show HN: Send a fax to 50 countries, no signup, account or subscription required

faxrocket.com

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Re: Show HN: Send a fax to 50 countries, no signup, account or subscription required

#21

Post by dsr_ »

schnevets wrote: post #9

This looks absolutely fantastic! Does anyone else feel like Show HNs with straightforward, by-the-order pricing is always based on declining technology (Fax; SMS; Printing in the case of Bingo Card Creator)? I guess it has to do with the customer base?

It's the predictable margin between cost to provide service and the value of convenience to the customers.

The marginal cost of sending a fax is, arguably, about one cent. (1.8c/min VOIP cost, 30 seconds to send, some electricity). Most faxes will be one page anyway, so the profit margin is a nice 10000%.

Finding a working fax machine if you don't have one sitting around all set up is a hassle on the order of 10 minutes to an hour, and likely to end up with a visit to a UPS/FedEx/Staples or the equivalent thereof, where they will charge you $1.50-$2 for the first page anyway.

Find a cheap old technology that people want to use infrequently and are therefore willing to pay a relatively large markup for convenience. Let's see... appointmentreminder already does voice calls for reminders, but how about automated, customized calls? Get a good speech synthesis app and let people send and schedule calls that read out whatever they want to type. That's probably worth a buck to people who only want to do it once, and then you can offer a subscription rate for frequent flyers.

Re: Show HN: Send a fax to 50 countries, no signup, account or subscription required

#22

Post by kunle »

brut wrote: post #5

I was asked to look for an online fax solution. A provider I contacted never called me back. Do you offer subscriptions even if they are not needed? I know next to nothing about faxing - how is the transmitted data secured? Is it?

We currently don’t offer subscriptions, as were just starting out.

Out of curiosity what’s your use case? There are lots of subscription fax services out there (efax and hellofax are 2 popular ones)

Re: Show HN: Send a fax to 50 countries, no signup, account or subscription required

#23

Post by fomojola »

dvt wrote: post #11

This is awesome! Just out of curiosity, who (or what) do you use on the back-end? Is there like a Twilio for faxes?

Hey, thanks. Twilio actually does do faxes, but this was built prior to Twilio dipping their toes into the fax waters. We use Phaxio (https://www.phaxio.com/): the API is nice and clean and we've had an entirely happy time working with it.

Re: Show HN: Send a fax to 50 countries, no signup, account or subscription required

#24

Post by rabidonrails »

dvt wrote: post #11

This is awesome! Just out of curiosity, who (or what) do you use on the back-end? Is there like a Twilio for faxes?

Phaxio! I'm a founder :)

Our goal is to provide devs that have mission-critical applications with the most reliable and redundant faxing capabilities. (If you've dealt with faxing, you know it's annoyingly finicky.)

Re: We're fans of Twilio, but our approach to solving this problem is significantly different.

(I'm answering the second question above, not necessarily the first)

edit: I guess I was answering both :)

Re: Show HN: Send a fax to 50 countries, no signup, account or subscription required

#25

Post by rabidonrails »

fomojola wrote: post #23
dvt wrote: post #11

This is awesome! Just out of curiosity, who (or what) do you use on the back-end? Is there like a Twilio for faxes?

Hey, thanks. Twilio actually does do faxes, but this was built prior to Twilio dipping their toes into the fax waters. We use Phaxio ( https://www.phaxio.com/ ): the API is nice and clean and we've had an entirely happy time working with it.

w00t!

Re: Show HN: Send a fax to 50 countries, no signup, account or subscription required

#26

Post by Gaelan »

rabidonrails wrote: post #24
dvt wrote: post #11

This is awesome! Just out of curiosity, who (or what) do you use on the back-end? Is there like a Twilio for faxes?

Phaxio! I'm a founder :) Our goal is to provide devs that have mission-critical applications with the most reliable and redundant faxing capabilities. (If you've dealt with faxing, you know it's annoyingly finicky.) Re: We're fans of Twilio, but our approach to solving this problem is significantly different. (I'm answering the second question above, not necessarily the first) edit: I guess I was answering both :)

Huh. Looking at phaxio's prices, faxrocket is charging a huge premium. For a techie, is there a reason to use faxrocket vs curling to phaxio?

Edit: I guess the phone number makes faxrocket a better deal for low usage, but phaxio becomes much cheaper quickly.

Re: Show HN: Send a fax to 50 countries, no signup, account or subscription required

#27

Post by tyingq »

kunle wrote: post #22
brut wrote: post #5

I was asked to look for an online fax solution. A provider I contacted never called me back. Do you offer subscriptions even if they are not needed? I know next to nothing about faxing - how is the transmitted data secured? Is it?

We currently don’t offer subscriptions, as were just starting out. Out of curiosity what’s your use case? There are lots of subscription fax services out there (efax and hellofax are 2 popular ones)

The UI is terrible, but the functionality is good on Anveo. I'd recommend it if you want something subscription based, and aren't concerned with rough looking UI. https://www.anveo.com/business/features.asp?code=faxinout
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