Great post.

This subject is such a Hot Topic with me – I too have tried a number of services on the market(Since discarding a traditional phone line), including RingCentral (Phone Only), eFax/eVoice (Phone and Fax), Rapid Fax, FreeFax, Vonage, and even my local cable company (Time Warner).

I have a complete dissertation on the perils of each and have since resorted back to my standard All-In-One Printer/Fax/Scanner on cable phone service. For my interest, the Phone, Cable, Internet combo package on flat monthly-rate provided by my cable company, has proven to be convenient and a cost effective solution for my home office.

However, I was only moderately pleased with RingCentral in the past. The issue with RingCentral is that the service bills on a per minute basis – just like the traditional phone company (Not like Vonage or cable flat rate). The per minute billing was a major concern and I ultimately discontinued use of the phone service. Having said, if cable service were not available, I would consider the offer if I only required Fax services (Which incidentally the RingCentral offer now appears to have been restructured to appear more competitive with the eFax Free 30-Day Trial business model). We will be waiting to hear how it all worked out for you!

I pay $30/month just to lease the land line and receive calls. I have ADSL so I need a land line, and my ISP doesn’t offer naked DSL, so I have to pay Telstra (government-owned telco) and that really gripes me. No, I can’t get cable, and wireless is ridiculously expensive.

Fortunately for me I hit upon the fax solution by accident. I have a Canon MP980 which is brilliant, and does everything EXCEPT fax. For that I use my ISP’s fax-to-email gateway.

Send an email to @fax.isp.com.au with a password in the subject line and your fax in the body. If you have a PDF or Word document attached, it takes THAT as the fax instead. They give me a no-charge VoIP number for receiving faxes.

Faxes sent to a normal fax number they provide appear as an email attachment in my inbox.

Cost is 10C/10 pages, and 20C/page from 11 onwards, and no change for receiving.

They also give me a free VoIP number for my local and international calls – local at 10C anywhere untimed within Australia, and USA for something like 0.002/minute. Yes, point 2 of a cent per minute !!!

I can even ring 1-800 numbers FREE as they have a US PSTN connection – or I use Skype.

If I could get rid of the need to pay Telstra for anything I’d chop down the land line tomorrow.

Cheers!

Nick
@nburmandesign