PamFax Evolves: Building a World Class Service Offering

PamFax adds a Japanese partner, lowers rates to 13 destination countries and enhances its infrastructure

Back in April Scendix launched PamFax 2.0 with many new features outlined in a post at that time. To address some reader feedback and summarize PamNews announcements, it’s appropriate to do an update summary of PamFax’s evolution.

First, and most important, is that the launch of PamFax 2.0 with its feature set has triggered accelerated user adoption. While not at liberty to reveal numbers, its acceptance says that, if you provide an  easy-to-use service, the customers will come. Adding Mac support and fax-in numbers brought instant credibility as a fully featured fax service.

A more robust, stable service: With user experience PamFax has required some infrastructure improvements. Issues involving the individual fax-in numbers were resolved during the first week of this new service. Fax-in numbers for Mexico have been added; as result fax-in numbers are available in 22 countries. And as their fax volume grows, the PamFax servers have required improvements to increase the stability and reliability of the service. Probably sounds “boring” but servicing PamFax’s “back office” infrastructure is probably more critical to sustainable reliability at this point than any modifications to the user interface.

Adding a Japanese version: But the PamFax team has not stopped with simply technology improvements. Earlier this week they announced a strategic partnership with Fusion Network Services in Japan who are  offering a Japanese version of the service:

We have jointly worked hard to prepare the launch by localizing the entire PamFax system in Japanese. Fusion is also a Skype partner and provide Skype with the local Skype-In numbers in Japan.

Fusion plan several marketing activities over the next months to introduce the PamFax solution to the market.

Reducing costs: While there were significant price reductions with the launch of PamFax 2.0, there were still some challenges out there. Recently I was going to send a four-page fax to Estonia but when I found out there was a $0.89 per page charge via PamFax, I scanned the document to a pdf file and sent it as an email attachment. However, as of this week, Estonia has been moved to the PamFax Zone 1 list of countries served with a base rate of €0,09/$0.12 per page (or €0,06/$0.08 for PamFax Pro subscribers). In total, thirteen fax destination countries were moved to the lowest Zone 1 rates: Singapore, Israel, Aland Islands, Malaysia, Finland, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Hungary, Venezuela, Cyprus, Argentina, Estonia. (As a side benefit it now becomes a reasonable cost to use PamFax to send faxes to Skype’s developer team in Tallinn.)

Bottom line: Launching any service has its hiccups, but the PamFax team is there for the long run. If you encounter difficulties they have a support program where you can seek assistance and/or voice your issues for a response. The PamFax team wants to ensure a sustainable, reliable, seamless service and is listening.

Most amazing has been the response in terms of user adoption; while certainly email and other Internet services provide the means to send/receive documents, there’s still a large market for sending hard copy fax to all those dedicated fax terminals and “All-in-One” printers still sitting in offices worldwide. Offering a secure, low cost, yet easy-to-use, worldwide service was really the key to unlocking this business opportunity.

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