eFax Review

eFax announced significant enhancements to its online fax service that are dedicated to increase functionality for eFax users, such as digitized signatures, enhanced security, increased storage capacity, and an improved user interface.

New enhancements include:

• Digitized signatures: Signing a document or fax online is convenient and efficient. Drag, drop, and fax or email your signed document.
• Document encryption: eFax 'Enhanced Secure' options further bolster security via secure online network and file encryption.
• Lifetime storage: Always have access to important materials during the term of a subscription.
• Intuitive Online experience: Fax preview helps locate and discern important faxes and an updated address book and streamlined interface enhance usability.

"Fax remains an essential tool for doing business, both locally and globally," said Mike Pugh, Vice President of Marketing for j2 Global Communications, Inc., the parent company of eFax. "And the cloud is increasingly the place companies look to realize cost savings and workflow efficiencies. eFax brings them together, taking fax to the next level with must-have features like security, archiving, mobility and signatures."

Last month, eFax®, the online fax provider owned by j2 Communications, announced that, since March 2010, the service has expanded its global fax network by 13 percent.  This growth reflects a 13% increase domestically to 2,700 cities in which local fax numbers are available and a 14% increase internationally to 1,458 cities.

The international fax service growth is attributed to the recent expansion of eFax® to Europe and Japan, where the online fax service launched a new website and placed a dedicated sales team. In Europe, the online fax provider expanded its German presence with the addition of a number of new cities, including Nuremberg, Heidelberg, and Hamburg.

"The expansion of our eFax® global network demonstrates the continued worldwide acceptance of Internet fax as a reliable communications medium, both for businesses and individuals," j2 Global Communications, Inc. CEO Hemi Zucker says.  "This growth continues to position us well to support the demands of those in need of a reliable Internet fax service."

The eFax® branded service has been operational since 1988. Offering a 30-day free trial and unlimited online fax storage, eFax® serves more than 11 million customers every day.

Last week, eFax, the industry’s largest email fax service provider with 11 million worldwide customers, announced the increase of its online document storage from two years to lifetime for paid accounts. For all eFax paid customers, this means they can easily access their secure, stored copies of faxed documents anytime, anywhere, for the lifetime of their account.

"For both individuals and organizations, offsite document storage is critical to reducing business risk and maximizing business uptime," says Mike Pugh, vice president, marketing for j2 Global Communications, the owner of eFax.  "Lost notebooks, crashed hard drives, and deleted files hit you when you least expect—and can least afford—them.  Since faxes are among a business' most important documents, offering lifetime storage is one way we can maximize the value of our service to customers by providing them with an easy way to preserve and access these critical documents."

The upgrade from two years to lifetime storage is a big perk for customers of eFax’s Internet fax service. Our experiences with eFax were fairly positive, as they offer 24/7 customer support and wide-ranging international service in almost 50 countries.

Last week j2 Global Communications announced that its email fax provider, eFax, will expand its global network from 46 to 48 countries worldwide by adding local fax numbers in both Brazil and Peru.

This growth further expands on the company’s 72% increase in geographic coverage reported in the previous three years.

"The growth in our worldwide network to include local fax numbers in Brazil and Peru demonstrates the increasing importance of fax as a stable, reliable tool for transacting business intra-nationally, as well as internationally," said j2 Global's CEO Hemi Zucker.  "As we work toward adding cities in those countries where we already have a presence, such as Australia, Egypt, Hong Kong, Japan, the U.S. and Britain to name a few, we are excited to be increasing our global footprint to 48 countries with the addition of Peru and Brazil."

While eFax is one of the higher priced plans reviewed by FaxCompare, eFax does offer its customers a 30 day free trial and online fax storage for up to 2 years. The expansion of local numbers to now 48 countries makes eFax one of the most international internet fax providers on the market.

With email marketing services like MailChimp and tax software products, such as TurboTax, turning to social networking sites to market their businesses, it’s no surprise that popular business tools are utilizing every online venue they can to branch out to current and potential customers. eFax has announced the publication of a series of podcasts featuring interviews with business professionals who rely on their Internet fax services.

While it’s not unusual for brands and services to create podcasts as part of their marketing strategies, eFax is spotlighting an interesting array of business professionals in these interviews, including graphic designers and authors, social media communications agency owners and even magicians. Yes, magicians. At first we wondered, “what do magicians need to email fax? Orders for white rabbits?” But, magicians are just like every business owner who needs to send and receive completed forms, applications, contracts and any other hard copy documents with hand written notations or signatures quickly and easily. The thought of ordering top hats or bunnies through Internet fax is still pretty funny, though.

"[eFax] is real magic," says magician Rob Lake in the podcast.  Lake is apparently the youngest magician to win the coveted Merlin Award.  "We travel all the time and it's wonderful because my home office can contact me directly via fax and we can do contracts, signatures, forms.  It's especially useful when we're overseas.  It's really like our whole office is able to travel with us, just due to eFax."

The eFax Solutions podcasts are online at www.efax.com/podcasts. iTunes users can also subscribe to the eFax Solutions channel by going to the iTunes Store and typing "eFax" in the "Search Store" box.  

The fact that eFax is utilizing podcasts as another part of its marketing strategy is fairly interesting, and we wonder how many potential customers are actually taking the time to listen to these testimonials. Podcasts seem less ubiquitous than Twitter or Facebook, and we don’t typically check out advertorial podcast ourselves.