The Best Fax Server?

I have had direct experience with two software packages.  

1)
The first is the obvious one....Microsoft Windows 2003 Server!  2K3 server has basic fax services built right into the O/S for free.  This is the perfect solution for a small office such as a real estate office or doctor's office.  All you need is a basic fax/modem in the server, and you're ready to go.  Server 2k3 can be configured to route faxes to a particular email address, print the faxes to a network printer, or store the faxes in .TIF format on a network share, or any combination of the three.  

The disadvantage of this setup is that it does not distinguish between users or phone numbers.  ALL incoming faxes will be routed to the same email address.  Again, this is why I say it is perfect for a small office.  My smaller customers use this method to simply route all faxes to a receptionist, who in turn reads the fax, figures out who it's for, and then forwards it on to the appropriate recipient.  The fax server does not support multiple trunking phone lines and does not distinguish between recipients or senders, but treats all faxes the same.  SBS 2k3 also supports this feature.  Server 2000 does not support this feature, and no add-ins are available to add it, to my knowledge.

The MS software allows you to send a basic fax if it is properly formatted.  I believe it only accepts .TIF files, but this is easily verifiable on Microsoft's website.  

2)
The big boomer in the faxing industry is called RIGHTFAX.  This is a completely different animal than the basic little faxing package that comes with windows.  Rightfax is quite expensive to set up, deploy, and support from Captaris is also expensive.  However, the software is very powerful.  The main difference is that RIGHTFAX can distinguish between incoming and outgoing faxes, and routes faxes directly to the users.

First, you to set up and reserve from the phone company a range of phone numbers that all "trunk" (or ring) to the same physical location.  For example, I have ONE phone line coming into the building, but I want that ONE line to have 100 different phone numbers.  So Sprint will set me up with all the numbers from 555-5000 to 555-5100 and they all ring to the same line.

Then RIGHTFAX does its magic.  Using a special kind of "super modem" called a Brooktrout board, it can actually receive faxes on all of these lines.  (100 lines is not the limit, I'm just using that as my example, the limit is crazy high, like over a thousand lines)  Then, based on the phone number that was dialed, it can route the call to the appropriate user.  It integrates in with Active Directory AND MS Exchange, so it can email faxes directly to Exchange recipients.  It's truly amazing that it works at all, but it is very consistent.

Outgoing faxes are even more impressive.  RIGHTFAX supports faxing in a variety of formats.  You can feed it an MS Word document, .TIF, .jpg, excel files, Raw text, whatever...and it automatically converts it to fax format before sending it.  The only format that is not supported is .PDF, but it is available as an add-in for an extra cost.

There are multiple ways to send faxes, also.  The best thing about it is that it adds a button into MS Outlook.   When you click it, you create your fax just like you'd create an email, including attachments, and when you click send, it is faxed automatically through the server.  This is especially cool because it reads Exchange data, so you can pick a user off an exchange or outlook contact list, and the fax server will automatically use whatever phone number it finds in the "fax" field.  It even puts the user's custom (virtual) phone number on the outgoing fax for easy replies.  You can also print to a fax machine, or use their little quick fax utility to send one-time faxes.  There are a lot of great options for sending.

The user interface on the server modules is a bit clunky, but you get used to it.  Also, like I said, the software becomes expensive VERY quickly, especially if you figure in all the add-ins you need, plus the trunking lines from the phone company.  It's not for everyone, but it's extremely powerful and versatile if deployed properly.

Their tech support is pretty good, they got me up and running in a week or so, and were extremely knowledgeable about their product.

I'm not sure if there's anything more specific that you wanted to know about the software, I could go on for hours, it's extremely complicated.  But, if you have any more questions about either of those platforms, let me know!

-Paul