RingCentral Fax Review: Lacks a Focus on Faxing
Our Verdict
RingCentral Fax offers powerful features, simply the service lacks fax management.
For
- Scheduled faxing
- Web-storage support
- Vanity numbers
- Text message alerts
Confronting
- Apps and Spider web interface lack design specific to fax-only service
- No management of inbound and outbound faxes.
Tom's Guide Verdict
RingCentral Fax offers powerful features, simply the service lacks fax management.
Pros
- +
Scheduled faxing
- +
Web-storage support
- +
Vanity numbers
- +
Text message alerts
Cons
- -
Apps and Web interface lack pattern specific to fax-only service
- -
No direction of inbound and outbound faxes.
RingCentral Fax offers some of the about compelling and powerful faxing features we've seen from an online fax service. It likewise offers some of the all-time online support guidance, likewise.
Simply RingCentral's fax-merely component is role of the company's bigger phonation services juggernaut, and its apps and Spider web-based interface on mobile, Spider web and desktop reflect this in a style that's distracting to fax-merely usage. For that reason, we rate other offerings ahead of it in our all-time online fax services rankings, though some people might discover its fax component compelling.
- All-time all-in-one printers
- MetroFax review: Why this is the best online fax service
RingCentral Fax review: Pricing
RingCentral changed its pricing and plan sizes since nosotros first reviewed the service. Your starting bundle now gives you 750 pages for $15 when billed monthly. (Signing up for an annual plan lets you relieve on your monthly costs: the 750-page tier drops to $thirteen per month for almanac subscribers.)
RingCentral says its best value tier offers 1,500 pages for $23 a month (which drops to $eighteen for almanac subscriptions). There'due south also a 2,500-page tier ($60 a month) and a $50 unlimited plan that too includes access to 2 shared fax numbers.
If you need additional numbers, information technology'southward $4.99 a calendar month per user. Contrast that with Biscom 123, which includes v numbers in its $fourteen.99 Pocket-size Groups offering, though Biscom has less generous page limits than RingCentral.
Free Trial: RingCentral offers a seven-day free trial for its faxing service, a shorter test flow than was previously available.
RingCentral Fax review: Setup
You tin choose a price-free number, vanity number, or local phone number. RingCentral is the only service I tried that supports a cost-free number or a "vanity" toll-free number made up of letters, numbers or symbols (at a i-time $30 setup fee). RingCentral was as well the merely service I tested that walks you through the transfer of an existing fax number to the service online; other services require yous to contact the company to initiate a transfer.
When choosing a local number, you tin can drill down to specific towns and cities within an area code, with greater particular than nosotros've typically seen. Subsequently y'all choose your telephone number, you'll enter your contact information, followed by payment and billing info, and which payment programme you choose (monthly or annual). The service now verifies you are who you say you are with a dissever authentication via your mobile telephone. Just and so will you get to the last step in setting up the seven-twenty-four hour period costless trial — activating the account via an emailed link.
When y'all follow the link, you'll create a password, a PIN, and a security question. The PIN'due south purpose is unclear for the fax service user; the interface says information technology'south for accessing your voicemails, but...this is a fax service only, not RingCentral'due south full unified messaging product.
For your account, you'll always log in using your fax number. During initial account creation, RingCentral prompts you lot to fix up a countersign and PIN, and the visitor has stronger requirements for these than other services I tried, for example requiring both a capitalized letter and a number.
When you get-go log in, you'll walk through an express setup for your account, calculation some company data every bit well as your information for the account, including how your proper name, email and time zone should announced. The service now has a smooth walkthrough that explains how to send and receive faxes. It also prompts yous to download mobile apps for iOS and Android, and apps for Mac and PC.
While the mobile apps are for receiving faxes, the desktop apps let you both send and receive faxes, too equally add a custom cover page or schedule a fax delivery.
This is the first identify I started to meet the annoying elements of RingCentral'due south cross-use interface. For example, for our fax-but business relationship, the account info tab prompts you to confirm your extension info, a question that only makes sense if you lot're a unified communications subscriber, not a fax-only subscriber — meaning you utilise the vocalism service, besides. The service's interface via the Web, and via its mobile and desktop apps, are littered with references like that to the vocalisation service; ditto for the ample help files.
Interface
I plant RingCentral's frequent voice and unified communications references distracting, and the lack of clearly fax service-specific elements annoying.
The Web interface is designed to be universal, covering faxing besides equally the voice and unified communications components of RingCentral'south services. I institute the frequent voice and unified communications references distracting, and the lack of clearly fax service-specific elements abrasive. The sole fax-specific chemical element sits in the far right side of the brandish, a subtle icon that'south meant to indicate a page beingness sent via fax.
This becomes peculiarly clear with the multipurpose mobile app, which exists for the unified communications side of RingCentral, not the Fax service. For example, when I logged into the mobile app, the first thing I saw was a welcome screen telling me that RingCentral lets yous put your business telephone number on display for calls, texts and faxes fifty-fifty when you're not at your desk; and 5 of the 6 initial welcome screens take goose egg to do with the fax service. For some users, the shameless self-promotion could cause moments of suspension and defoliation before realizing that these other services are merely not relevant to them.
When I logged into the mobile app, the get-go matter I saw was a welcome screen telling me that RingCentral lets you lot put your business organisation phone number on brandish for calls, texts and faxes even when you're non at your desk.
On the plus side, the settings section includes some features not establish elsewhere. RingCentral is the only service of those I tested that can notify you lot of inbound and outbound faxes by both electronic mail and SMS. Y'all can likewise set your encompass folio information and opt to block numbers.
Once you lot log in to the Web interface, y'all're faced with a pattern with a height navigation bar, for accessing your account overview of recent messages and recent calls, messages (which includes folders for inbox, outbox, sent box, and deleted items), phone call log, contacts, settings, billing and tools (which leads to app downloads). As noted earlier, the selection for sending an outbound fax is obscured with a meaningless icon, to the far correct of this top nav bar. Blink, and y'all might miss the reference, particularly frustrating given that we were subscribed to the fax-only service.
RingCentral Fax review: File format and deject support
RingCentral supports more than xl file formats, double what we saw the last time nosotros reviewed the service. There was no back up for OpenDocument files. The service is one of two I tested that tin handily admission files from Spider web storage: Dropbox, Box or Google Drive. In fact, RingCentral is at present integrated with Google for Work. HelloFax has broader support, though: Information technology supports grabbing files from those services, besides as Evernote and OneDrive, and it lets you store inbound faxes in the cloud, too. Because of this, I preferred how HelloFax'southward cloud storage integration worked.
RingCentral Fax review: Apps
To consummate the initial walk-through, the service next prompts you to download the appropriate gratuitous app(due south) for iOS and Android for mobile, and Mac and Windows for desktop. I tried the Android app and the Windows app; both have a consistent interface and approach that more favors the components of the voice service than the fax-only service.
The Android app offers proficient functionality, and makes it like shooting fish in a barrel to download an incoming fax from the cloud, view information technology and and then cull to email it or forward it every bit a fax. But at that place's no tagging or management of inbound faxes, and the app is designed to encompass all RingCentral communications, including voice, which means there are a lot of irrelevant carte du jour options if y'all're a RingCentral Fax subscriber.
The Windows app has similar issues. It is meaty, requiring simply a narrow band of screen real estate, similar a typical chat messaging app would. The app shows incoming faxes, and will pop up an on-screen notification that a new fax has been received. However, I noticed a delay between the notification and when the fax was received in the RingCentral Web inbox and in my email. Tap on a fax to view it in your chosen desktop PDF reader.
RingCentral Fax review: Sending and receiving faxes
The get-go-fourth dimension setup of RingCentral does a great job of introducing users to how to send or receive a fax. As with other services, you tin send a fax via electronic mail using the fax number (no "one") @rcfax.com, or you can send via the Spider web, mobile or desktop apps.
Inbound faxes arrive every bit an email PDF (you lot tin can choose not to take the PDF included), and testify up in the Web and mobile interfaces in your Messages tab. That aforementioned Messages tab would exist how yous'd access voicemails if y'all were a unified communications RingCentral Office subscriber. Information technology's besides where RingCentral delivers vox messages related to your account, such as if yous've changed a countersign or performed other such account activity.
The actual template for sending a fax is, at least, a friendly and useful presentation. RingCentral starts past prompting you for the recipient's fax number, which you tin can add manually or past selecting from contacts stored in RingCentral (you can import contacts from a CSV file). Click the checkbox beneath to include a cover page, from your choice of xiii templates, just not ane of your ain design. Next, you lot select the file(southward) to attach and fax. Yous can choose a file from your figurer, or hook into Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive cloud storage to remember the file(s) you demand to fax.
The next step in sending is to schedule your fax for sending now, or sending at a scheduled time. Hit schedule, and your fax enters the outbound queue for processing and sending. This is the only service we tested that lets you lot schedule a fax. This is a powerful characteristic, especially for businesses.
For as much as I liked the easy scheduling characteristic, and the Spider web-storage support, I also institute RingCentral missing fax-specific functionality. Specifically, it lacks inbound and outbound fax management, then you can tag and search faxes, or at the least sort by inbound and outbound faxes. While the scheduling makes information technology easy to do high-volume faxes, the lack of fax management makes the service less conducive for a highly active fax line.
RingCentral says it uses SSL security. However, the service is not HIPPA-compliant, so if that's of import to you consider a service like Sfax. You can send international faxes, but yous must first buy credits to do so.
RingCentral Fax review: Verdict
There is a lot to like about RingCentral Fax's offerings for faxing, with a flexible set of features and strong mobile and cloud back up. The service makes it particularly simple to transport scheduled faxes, and it is the only service we tested that allows for scheduled faxes.
However, MetroFax and Nextiva vFax both cost less. And RingCentral'south heavily combined voice and fax interface and the lack of fax-tracking management limits the service'south appeal. Nosotros prefer MetroFax for its piece of cake fax searching and tagging, and its clean, fax-centric interface.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/ringcentral-fax,review-5083.html
Posted by: mercersheill.blogspot.com
0 Response to "RingCentral Fax Review: Lacks a Focus on Faxing"
Post a Comment