Clickfax (formerly Clickfax Pro)

Available area codes are at http://www.datafabrication.com/main_content.asp?pageid=182

I am the VP of marketing and business relationships for Data Fabrication. I'd like to post an overview of our ClickFax Pro product. Of course, I can answer any questions anyone has as well.

Like many services, ClickFax Pro allows you to send and receive faxes over the Internet. We have pricing plans as low as $3.50/month, and our pricing is flexible and configurable according to how many faxes you send and/or receive.

In terms of receiving, we have 90+ local area codes, as well as toll-free (see the link above).

In terms of sending, we offer all of our customers our ClickFax Pro Control Panel software, to make faxing anywhere from a few to thousands of faxes very quick and easy.

Our software links live (i.e. no messy importing) to nearly every address book around: Outlook, Exchange, Access, Excel, Goldmine, QuickBooks, etc. It also comes with its own Word mail-merge feature.

Like other providers, we do have an email-to-fax option as well. You can send an email to [FAXNUMBER]@cfpfax.com if you don't want to use the Control Panel software.

We have plans that work for individuals, small businesses, fax blasters as well as corporate accounts.

Our customer login section allows you to view your complete fax history, view PDF versions of the faxes you received, and many other options.

ClickFax Pro has no contracts, you can cancel at any time, and we have a money-back guarantee.

You can visit our site for more information, or to contact our team with additional questions:

ClickFax Pro internet fax service

Here is an overview of our costs. We allow all of our customers to "build their own plan", which you can do from this page:

Click here for internet fax costs

We also have another product that is not listed in this directory. If you want to fax or email, in batch, from your accounting system, our PDFBlaster product is perfect for you:

Click here to visit PDFBlaster

The faxing does go over the Internet, and it does a lot more than that.

If, for instance, you have 100 invoices to send to 100 recipients... it takes them all with one click, figures out which need to go out as fax, email or both, figures out the correct recipient information, and sends it! No muss, no fuss.

So far, I like ClickFax Pro because you can send a fax from ANY Windows application as easily as you print a document. If you prefer to send a fax through the email (with or without attachments), it is also an easy step. ClickFax is a versatile faxing option that I believe has an edge over others because the quality is exceptional, as they promised.

The cost is the only thing that is concerning me at this point. I signed up for a base plan that was to include 50 free pages a month. Most faxes are supposed to take 1-2 minutes but mine are taking more than twice that amount of time. It seems I have used my allotment of pre-paid time and pages and it hasn't been a month yet. They suggest I convert to a yearly plan to save money but I have an email sent to clarify the amount of time that buys and does it get billed once or monthly. I am awaiting a reply.

I also encountered that my 4 page files are too large to send in one fax. It is inconvenient to break they down and send 1 page per fax but that has worked. I am investigating not sending from the console and perhaps making lower res PDF files and sending from email as an alternative to make smaller files that take less time.

Overall, I would rate ClickFax the best I tried out of 3 that I tried. Myfax and Maxemail were the other two I tried.

Newbie :unsure:

I have an update to ClickFax Pro to report. It has a 1 MB size limit.

I could open a very large file (90 MB) and send all 16 pages from WinFax Pro. I was unable to do that from ClickFax Pro. I was able to send 1-2 pages and sometimes not even 1 page. I had to export the page to a very low res PDF file and send it that way.

I am not that impressed anymore.

Newbie :-(

Quick note from the guys at ClickFax. We've changed the name of the product from "ClickFax Pro" to simply "ClickFax". The program, pricing and all of its functionality will remain the same, of course!

Our new URL is:

http://www.clickfax.com

ClickFax has just released an upgrade (just in time, too!) so that file size limit went from 1B to 5MB. I was frustrated and about to look around for one that didn't have a size limit. I would still like to see ClickFax drop the whole size limit. Their product is great all except this one pesky feature.

Newbie

OK so we have a 5MB limit now. I swear I could go out to lunch in the amount of time it takes to send a fax. Faxing is my least favorite things to do these days. I just paid for a new month so I have 30 days to figure out if I will go back to the tried-and-true WinFax Pro and enable its virtual faxing features.

Newbie

[Edited for grammar - it's its, not it's]

Just uppered to 5MB from 1MB? Unless it was buried deep in their website I didn't read about this restriction. I didn't realize it was that slow either. I am glad I didn't waste my time even trying their service. So much for a small business solution. What a joke....

This board is so stupid. All it is a marketing tool for the listed Fax over IP services. My comment was never posted. I am assuming it was "moderated" for content by "Joe Simon" (generic name).

Original Comment:

[Steve, as you can see - this post lives on. No posts are ever deleted unless they smell of being a self-serving so-called "testimonial" by a provider about themselves. -- Joe Simon]

They have no cusomer service phone # Ishould have checked before i signed up, I needed the next morning, since they billed me twice for one service

Oh My God! they do have a # it carries a fifty dollar non refundable fee, just so i can tell them they billed me twice. I sent them email (the only free way to get them) and will see how soon they get back to me.

"ClickFax Live Tech Support Request"

"If you wish to speak to a live technical support representative via a telephone call-back, there is a non-refundable per-incident charge of $50.

Note: If you wish to use our free email support system, please click here.

I agree to allow Data Fabrication to charge my credit card a non-refundable per-incident charge of $50.

Live technical support calls are typically returned within 30 minutes between the hours of 9 AM and 6 PM CST."

This is a quote from there site but you can only get to it if you login. I hope this deters everyone from using this service, I was billed twice and I cant send any faxs, all made worse because i cant talk to anyone. I have sent 6 Emails in 48hrs and have got one short responce that was no help, Clickfax........ YOURE FIRED!!

newbie and Jay:

We're actively working to find a good way to handle the file size restriction.

For starters, we accept almost every file type. So if you do have a 5MB+ file, I'd recommend you try to decrease the size of the file, or use another file type (PDF, JPG, etc.) You can usually make a 20 or 30 page PDF about 2 MB.

The problem is that very large files are often unreliable in terms of sending to our servers, and then faxing out.

I think you'll find that even if other services or software don't have a restriction, you'll still have trouble with files that large.

Steve:

Our comparison page is supposed to be a quick overview of our features. We find that sites like faxbeep.com are better for an all-inclusive, feature-by-feature comparion-- there's really no way we can find the time to do that massive amount of research.

I do think you'll find that- especially with our flexible plans, and ability to build your own plan- that you can generally create a much more affordable plan than other offerings.

John:

Please understand that our goal is to keep prices down as much as possible.

Because the sheer majority of issues people bring have can be solved easily, we try to move them through email support. The fee for live support is meant for larger corporate accounts who need custom support.

Our other option would be to charge *everyone* more to handle the phone support for a few customers.

We rarely take longer than a few hours to answer any email.

Yea its like the saying goes, you get what you pay for. I got one fax and could not send anything even though I had the account to do it. I paid 20.90 and had to cancel my acct. So I paid 20.90 for nothing. Is that cheaper?

Thanks to all users who took the time to post and warn potential customers. I take the time to write this to ensure ClickFax understands-- unhappy customers kill business. I'm off to check out competitors.

$50 fee for customer service?

Sounds like someone needs to thin the herd!

Like I said, this is a dying business. in 10 years, all fax machines will be in the Smithsonian. Even for "legal" applications, the fax is dying out (many courts and government agencies are moving to on-line submissions). So who needs it or wants it?

From what I am reading here, there are too many players in the market. Quite a few are too small to survive.

One or two are using huge marketing campaigns and "negative option" pricing to stay in business, with associated higher prices to cover such costs (they have to constantly get new customers as they continually P.O. the old ones).

A couple are actually just offering a decent service at a decent price. They will stay in business as well - and longer.

While the AOLs of the world will always survive (there are, after all, an unlimited number of people who will respond to marketing over reason), the survivers amongst the rest of the bunch have to offer something decent at a reasonable price.

$50 for customer service? To the folks at clickfax, I'd start polishing that resume....and turn out the lights when you leave. Thanks.

Geez, I hate "dot com" people. Always with one hand in your wallet.

RobertPlattBell,

I am sorry you feel that way in general, but please do understand the specifics of our support system:

1. Personal email support is completely free, of course. As well, we have an online support/help/FAQ system. The sheer majority of issues with our software (and I imagine most other Internet Fax providers) can be handled through email.

2. We never charge for any sort of billing issues, even if its phone based.

3. To keep costs down, we try to handle support through email. Otherwise, we'd naturally have to somehow charge a little more to *everyone* to cover the support costs of a *few* people.

4. Our $50 support is intended for large accounts that are installing on 25, 50, 100 computers and require that level of complex support. We don't expect the bulk of our customers to ever need to use this.

5. We don't look to make money on support at all. We merely want to cover costs and not have to pass costs of large customers onto you!

Thank you for your comments.

I have been using ClickFax with great results. They DO answer emails and my faxes send efficiently. I am able to send from wherever I have access to a computer which is a nice feature. I also have the ability to tailor my plan according to my actual usage, if I so choose. I have a toll-free number and it is perfect for my needs. Thank you, ClickFax. Great product.