A fax sent from the corridor machine costs far more than the phone call: at ten sendings a month, expect about €70 all-in — €7 per fax — once the line, supplies, breakdowns and handling time are counted. An online sending service charges €3.99 incl. VAT at most for a document of two pages or more, and nothing for a single page.
What the machine really costs
The purchase price is only the first line. Amortised over five years, an entry-level laser fax bought for €300–400 works out at €5–7 a month. Around it pile up:
- the dedicated line — €15–25 of monthly rental, whether the machine transmits or sleeps;
- supplies — a few cents a page, but toner, drum and paper get replaced all at once, usually in a hurry;
- maintenance — paper jams, sensors, boards: a repair call bills €50–80, and the device fails at the worst moment;
- the line's own future — copper is being retired everywhere, and keeping a compatible access will cost more and more (what the copper switch-off changes for fax covers this shift).
Altogether: about €30 a month in fixed costs before the first page, amortisation included.
The line item nobody budgets: time
Every sending ties someone up for about ten minutes: getting up, printing, checking the pages, walking to the machine, dialling, waiting for the transmission report, filing that report — and starting over when the number is busy or the line misbehaves. At a loaded hourly cost of €25 — a real salary, holidays and charges included — those ten minutes are worth slightly over €4.
That is the single largest cost item, by far: at 50 sendings a month the machine swallows a full working day; at 200, close to a week. Failures make it worse — a busy number, a partial transmission, paper stuck mid-job: every retry is a full session again.
The model: 10, 50 or 200 sendings a month
With those orders of magnitude — €30 of fixed costs, €4 of time and supplies per sending — the full monthly cost fits on one line:
| Sending volume | Machine, full cost | Per sending | Online service, ceiling |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 a month | ≈ €70 | ≈ €7 | ≤ €39.90 |
| 50 a month | ≈ €230 | ≈ €4.60 | ≤ €199.50 |
| 200 a month | ≈ €830 | ≈ €4.15 | ≤ €798 |
The online ceiling assumes every document runs to two pages or more: the flat rate of €3.99 incl. VAT then covers the whole document, however long it is. Any single-page fax is free, with no quota: at ten monthly sendings where half fit on one page, the bill lands near €20.
At equal volume, the online service
No device, no line to maintain: sending runs from the browser, with no account to open. The PDF delivery receipt comes as an optional extra for €2.99 including VAT — due only once the fax has actually landed — the PDF receipt page details what it holds. To anticipate the bill, the fax price calculator adds up the pages of your document inside the browser and shows the firm price before anything goes out.
The euro comparison is still incomplete: the machine's total already contains €800 of monthly staff time at 200 sendings, while the online sending takes two to three minutes of handling at the desk.
Decision thresholds
- Under 10 sendings a month: the line rental alone costs more than all your online sendings. No investment is justified; even an already-paid machine keeps €30 of dormant costs and €4 per sending.
- 10 to 50: the switch is clear-cut — the flat rate covers a complete sending at €3.99 when the machine exceeds €4.60 all-in.
- 50 to 200: euro parity closes in on long documents; the gap then plays out in freed time and in the line's reliability.
- Beyond 200: the choice depends on your inbound flow, detailed below.
When keeping the machine stays rational
Three cases resist the switch:
- A heavy native inbound flow — laboratories, hospitals, partners transmitting to you all day: the line serves reception first, and its cost is justified by receiving, not sending.
- The original must come out on paper at the machine — a workshop, a loading dock, a service that files the received piece on the spot.
- A daily outbound stream of several hundred pages to a small set of numbers, where a per-page telecom contract stays below the flat rate.
In those cases, check the line itself: moved to voice over IP without care, it carries a fax poorly — fax over IP and the T.38 protocol detail these limits.
Run the numbers with your own figures
The model above folds into one rule: fixed costs against cost per sending. Take your real line rental, your loaded hourly cost and last quarter's volume; the tipping point shows in one line of arithmetic. The Faxeroo sending form takes your PDF with no account: the first page is free, the €3.99 incl. VAT flat rate applies from the second page, and the receipt remains an optional €2.99 including VAT.
Tagsfaxbudgetorganisationdocumentspreuve
