From email to FAX Machine

[morditech.com]

Does anyone have a suggestion for a service or system that will forward an email to a FAX machine? I would like to send orders that go to a particular email address to a FAX so the orders can be filled as soon as the order comes in of having the orders sit in the email until someone checks them.
Thanks Eric M.

[dotCOM_host]

Most of the services that work with faxes over internet work the other way around - faxes are delivered to you via email (in PDF or TIFF format) or allow you to manually "print" to a virtual fax printer which then sends the fax out as if it was from a standalone fax machine, but... there are some options available for what you need. Haven't tried them personally so I don't have specific recommendation, but if you search for "email to fax" on Google (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=email+to+fax) or Yahoo (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=email+to+fax&fr=FP-tab-web-t400&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8) there are several options available. Check out a few for the features you may need and try them out. At most you have 1 month's worth of service to lose (a few $, nothing major), or if they have free trial, even better.

[morditech.com]

Thanks for the quick response and the insight but I had already tried searches like the one you suggested and the descriptions of the products to say ?email to fax? but they all seem to be misrepresenting themselves because when you click on the features of the products they only do FAX to email.
Can you believe people and companies out there would do that? <--- sarcastic

[dotCOM_host]

Hmmm... perhaps it's not as bad as you think. I have used eFax (http://www.efax.com) in the past, and I just had another look at it and sure enough, it still supports sending faxes via email. You simply send them to 123456789@efaxsend.com (where 123456789 is the actual fax number) and once your email reaches eFax servers, they do the actual faxing on your behalf. Don't go crazy testing this now - you need an eFax account first, as the "from" address must be registered in their system to be allowed to send faxes through their gateway servers. There's a plethora of supported file formats you can 'fax', including plain old text, which is what your emails would be.

Simply set up a rule in your Outlook to forward a copy of each order confirmation email as it arrives to the fax number you want, and you're done. Or, you can add that fax number (typed as an eFax email address) right in the CC line in your store settings under Merchant Order Notification. Either way, I think it's very doable and other than a small monthly fee and per-page faxing fee, there's really minimal time involved in setting this up...

For more details on eFax check out these links:
http://www.efax.com/en/efax/twa/page/howItWorks
http://www.efax.com/en/efax/twa/productOverview

You'll see that sending faxes via email is definitely supported, and with a large number of file formats you can use without converting them to some proprietary fax format first.

[Pete McNamara]

I have used the j2.com service for 6 years at least:

"Compose and send faxes to one or to many numbers using email, a Web browser interface, or j2 Messenger."

It also gives you a voicemail service.

[Greg Newell]

Hi, it doesn't look like any of this really solves your problem. I was looking for the same type of thing. The sender should not be required to have an efax or any other type of electronic fax service. Ultimately all you want to do is forward all email going to a specific email address to a fax machine. This would allow you to get ecommerce orders via fax as an example (works great for sending dinner reservations to a restaurant who never looks at email). There is a service that does this: www.faxmachinesonline.com (http://www.faxmachinesonline.com)

I've used this for clients who are stuck in the old world and they love this but there is a per charge for each of the incoming...so it's not something you want to be spammed on. I really like it for restaurants because the email address is tied to a reservations form and the client never knows the email (so it is never published). Anyway, if I'm not mistaken, this is most likely the solution you need.

[Southlander]

You could also run a server for this. Relayfax (relayfax.com) is great.

Basically the fax server checks a POP email account. It parses any digits it finds (you can set the minimum) in the subject header and treats it as a fax number. So in Merchant you could set this in the merchant email. Relayfax would pick up the orders from the POP account and fax them. It also allows for routing rules for inbound and outbound faxes.

Obviously there is some downside to having to run your server. The upside is you control it, and it does not unexpectedly change on you due to a corp. buyout.. etc.