MetroFax

Save Trees with MetroFax!

September 1, 2010 News for Metrofax

MetroFax has changed so many things I’m just going to list them out here and give you extened coverage later. Of these the most notable are the Expanded Network which directly positively impacts preformance, the elimination of signup fees and the abiltiy to change the header.

• The setup fee has been eliminated
• Porting fee for moving a current fax number is now only $24.95
• MetroFax Dashboard has been redesigned

• Text message (SMS) notifications to mobile phones make sure MetroFax users are never “out of the office” and miss an important fax.
• Email notifications can be sent in either HTML or plain text delivery formats.
• Fax send retry attempts and time interval between attempts can be customized.
• Additional fax transmission details can be included in notifications.
• Fax headers can be customized with custom text and numbers. Now company names and phone numbers can appear at the top of each sent fax.
• Save faxes sent or received for up to 90 days (faxes can always be saved to the user’s computer for longer-term archival).
• MetroFax now offers numbers in the top 100 cities coast-to-coast in 48 states and Puerto Rico as well as many other cities.
• Enhanced and expanded network optimization for substantially improved transmission times.

Once you sign up for MetroFax you’ll recieve a Welcome Message.

This email will tell you how to Activate your account. Click on this link first. It takes you to a screen to change your password. This tnen takes you to a LOGIN screen where it asks for your ID and Password. One problem is they don’t tell you what your login ID is. I guessed it was the email id I signed up with and was correct. Not a big deal but something they should add to their welcome letter.

Once logged in you come to the Metrofax dashboard. The dashboard is VERY clean and easy to read. Easily one of the top interfaces I’ve seen to date.

Sending a Fax Online with MetroFax
Sending a fax is easy for up to a maximum of 50 recipients. Y ou enter the fax number the name and company name and you have the option of adding the recipient to your address book. You can also choose a fax number from your contact list. More on the contact list later.

You can add an attachment easily by browsing and easily pick from one of 5 styles of cover pages. Attachments are limited to 10MB and there are no custom cover pages, but do you really need that? If you do there are other services that offer custom fax cover pages .

Further down you can add more information for the cover page including a message. This message can be the entire fax if you are not faxing a document. If you don’t attach a file you MUST put a message on the cover page or it will not deliver the fax. But then, why would you want it too?

Important Update! (2/09) MetroFax now lets you send faxes direclty from Office 2007. This is a nice feature to have if you send lots of documents created in Office 2007

After that you can SEND NOW. It says Delivery options but it only offers send now.

See screen shots at the end of the article

MetroFax website

Fax Retention
Faxes are kept online for only 30 days so this is not a good service for those looking for an archive solution.
On the left column you can Clearly see how many pages you have left of your 1,000 included pages. Very nice!

User Preferences
Under  User Preferences you can set up default Name and cover page details as well as change your time zone and password.
You can choose to receive faxes in either PDF or TIFF formats as well as how you want to receive your faxes; in emial or notifications only.

Account Administration
This section of the site is fairly straight forward. You can only have ONE email id associated with MetroFax and you cannot have multiple numbers  or accounts associated with a billing account. Other services do offer multi user fax accounts .

Junk Faxes and Fax Spam
Like many Internet fax services today you can identify junk faxes and block faxes from those numbers. There is no perfect solution but being able to block numbers is better than nothing.

Email Faxing
Like all email fax services MetroFax allows you to send and receive faxes through your email.

MetroFax also offers a Outlook plugin that will add a button to your Outlook toolbar labeled FAX.

Support
Clicking on support brings you to a Support Request page with an email form. There is also an email id and three phone numbers to call, toll free, and two other non toll-free numbers. I did this review on a Saturday afternoon and got a message stating their offices are closed and to send an email to support. In fairness most problems with fax happen during the first 3-4 days of using the service and are usually due to folks doing a few little things wrong. There is a basic online support section but as mentioned, support is usually only necessary if something goes wrong with MetroFaxes back end which should be almost never.

Basic infor on MetroFax
Price Plan                                        $12.95
Activation Fee                                 $  9.95
Fax pages included IN & Out             1,000
Toll Free                                          $2 extra per line per month
Additional page price                        3 cents per page after 1.000

MetroFax.
Compare the Bottom Line. $12.95/mo includes 1000 pages/mo. $0.03 per page thereafter.

Who is this service for?
Small businesses that send and receive around 1,000 faxes each month. Not for businesses that need multiple accounts under one master account. The web site mentions corporate plans but I did not contact them on this. Check back soon for more info on corporate faxing from MetroFax.

Conclusion
If you use 750 or more in or outbound faxes a month MetroFax is a tremendous deal. The super clean online interface is a joy to use and easy to understand. I would give this 3.5 out of 5 stars. Once they add the ability to translate Office 2007 documents I’ll give them 4 stars.

As they are fond of saying you should compare the bottom line. If you fax more than 800 pages a month then MetroFax is a great deal. Click here to visit the MetroFax Site. MetroFax. – $12.95/mo includes 1000 pages/mo. $0.03 per page thereafter.