How to send information from a website to a FAX machine.....help..

[magicianstalk]

Hey all,

I have read around on this, and haven't found the answer i am
looking for -- i appreciate your help. A friend of mine just bought a
pizza business, and i have designed a webpage for him. We decided to
implement an online-order placement feature. Now, i know i could have
the form sent to email -- but that would require a constant internet
connection, and a LOUD alert.... I was was wondering if there was
anyway to have the form that is filled out on the webpage be sent to
the business' FAX machine when it's submitted. I would have to have
this work without the customer having to have any special config's on
their system....

In other words, when they place the order, and hit submit -- i want
it to be sent to the fax at the pizza place. What is a good service
for this? Are there free ones? Is it complicated? Can you think of
any alternatives for having orders sent from the net?

We really appreciate your help...

Thanks,


Matt

 

[brucie]

in post: <

when they place the order, and hit submit -- i want it to be sent to
the fax at the pizza place.

http://www.google.com/search?q=php+fax&num=50
http://www.google.com/search?q=email+to+fax&num=50

 

[Augustus]

In other words, when they place the order, and hit submit -- i want
it to be sent to the fax at the pizza place. What is a good service
for this? Are there free ones? Is it complicated? Can you think of
any alternatives for having orders sent from the net?

Hey this is pretty much what I do for a living... faxing lunch/dinner orders
to restaurants from the web.

You can do it yourself (by setting up a fax server, hooking up a phone line
to your web server and then sending information from the website to the fax
server) but it can be alot of trouble and unless you are doing ALOT of
transactions its often not worth the cost.

The best way to do this would probably be to sign up at an email-to-fax
company... When the customer comes to your site and places an order it is
sent (by email or xml) to their servers where it is then rendered into an
image and faxed off (the destination fax number is usually the subject line
or the first line of the email).

Cost is typically dependant upon how many transactions per month you expect
to do (typically 5 to 15 cents per fax or per fax page)

The two companies I use are:
www.dataoncall.com
www.protus.com

Are there free services? Yes. HOWEVER ordering is time sensitive... the
free services offer no guarantee when your fax is sent (could be sent
anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 days)