Robert Ambrogi Blog
You may ask yourself, “Is faxing still a thing?” While the fax may seem like a vestige of a bygone technology era, the actuality for many lawyers is that the ability to send and receive faxes remains a necessity.
For many of us, the once ubiquitous fax machine has been replaced by internet faxing services. Today, there was a shake-up in that world, as what is arguably the leading service, eFax, owned by j2 Global Inc., announced that it had acquired another leading service, MaxEmail.
I am a MaxEmail subscriber and this morning received an email informing me of the acquisition. It began:
We’re excited to announce that MaxEmail has joined forces with eFax, the world leader in Internet Faxing! The fax number(s) on your account will remain the same and will soon be transitioned to eFax in late September. This means you will gain access to many new features from the world leader in digital faxing, including electronic signature, large file sharing, unlimited online storage, and our free apps for Android and iOS.
I was not thrilled by this news, for reasons that I explained in a 2014 post and, much earlier, in this 2003 post. I had a sour experience with eFax that led me to switch to MaxEmail and I never looked back.
MaxEmail users will see increases in their subscription rates in conjunction with the change. In my case, I was paying $17.85 a quarter for the MaxEmail service. According to the email I received, I will now pay $27 per quarter — or about $36 more a year.
I cannot find any subscription plan on the eFax website comparable to the rate I’ve been quoted, so this may be an accommodation to MaxEmail subscribers. The eFax site lists two rates: $16.95 a month for the eFax Plus service and $19.95 a month for the eFax Pro service.
As I noted in my prior post, eFax also offers a free service, but makes that fact hard to find on its website. The free service is not practical for a lawyer, as it cannot be used to send faxes and limits incoming pages to 10 per month.