RingCentral is not a fax company. It is a full business communications platform, covering phone, video, team messaging, and fax as one feature bolted onto a much bigger product. FAX.PLUS by Alohi is the opposite: a tool built entirely around doing one thing well. Deciding between them comes down to a simple question that most ecommerce sellers can answer honestly in a few minutes: do you need a full communications overhaul, or do you genuinely just need a reliable way to send a fax?
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Quick Comparison Table
| Feature | FAX.PLUS by Alohi | RingCentral |
|---|---|---|
| Core purpose | Dedicated online fax tool | Full business phone and communications suite |
| Starting price | Free plan, then $6.99/mo | Priced as part of a broader plan bundle |
| Fax-only value | High, purpose-built | Low unless you need the rest of the suite |
| Phone system included | No | Yes, full VoIP platform |
| Team messaging | No | Yes |
The Fundamental Difference
This comparison is not really about which fax feature is better in isolation. It is about whether fax is the only communications tool you need or one piece of a bigger puzzle. FAX.PLUS exists purely to send and receive faxes as efficiently and affordably as possible. RingCentral exists to replace your entire business phone system, and fax rides along as a secondary feature within that much larger platform.
When RingCentral’s Bundle Makes Sense
If you are already shopping for a VoIP phone system for your ecommerce business, perhaps to handle customer service calls, manage a growing team, or replace a traditional landline, RingCentral’s inclusion of fax capability means you effectively get fax for free on top of a purchase you were making anyway. In this scenario, the math clearly favors RingCentral, since you are not paying anything extra specifically for the fax feature.
When RingCentral Is Expensive Overkill
If fax is genuinely the only communications gap in your operation, and you already have phone, video, and messaging tools you are happy with, paying for RingCentral’s full suite just to unlock fax capability is a poor use of budget. You would be paying for video conferencing, team chat, and a VoIP phone system you do not need, all to get a feature FAX.PLUS provides standalone for a fraction of the cost. See the FAX.PLUS pricing breakdown to compare directly.
Fax-Specific Feature Depth
Because fax is RingCentral’s secondary feature rather than its core product, the fax-specific tools tend to be less refined than what a dedicated provider offers. FAX.PLUS’s interface is built entirely around the fax workflow: sending, receiving, organizing, and tracking documents specifically. RingCentral’s fax feature works, but it is accessed through a broader dashboard designed primarily around phone calls and messaging, which can make fax-specific tasks feel like an afterthought rather than the main event.
Mobile Experience
FAX.PLUS’s mobile app is built specifically for fax, with a streamlined flow for scanning, sending, and tracking documents from a phone. RingCentral’s mobile app covers its entire communications suite, meaning the fax function is one menu item among many rather than the primary focus of the app. If you fax frequently from your phone while sourcing or traveling, a purpose-built app tends to be faster to use for that specific task.
Pricing Structure Comparison
RingCentral’s pricing is built around its full communications suite, with plans typically priced per user per month covering phone, video, messaging, and fax together. This makes a direct price comparison to FAX.PLUS’s fax-only tiers somewhat apples to oranges, since you are comparing a bundled platform price to a single-feature tool. The honest way to compare is to ask what you would pay for a phone system alone versus what you would pay for fax alone, then decide whether bundling them under RingCentral saves money for your specific situation, or whether paying separately for each best-in-class tool works out better.
Team Accounts and Multi-User Access
Both platforms support multiple users, but the structure differs. FAX.PLUS’s Business tier adds up to 5 team members specifically for shared fax access at a fax-focused price point. RingCentral’s team structure is built around its full communications suite, so adding users brings the cost of the entire platform along with it, not just fax access. For a small ecommerce ops team that only needs shared fax visibility, FAX.PLUS’s model is more targeted and generally cheaper for that specific need.
Reliability and Uptime
RingCentral, as a larger and more established communications company, generally has robust infrastructure and strong uptime across its full platform, fax included. FAX.PLUS, as a more focused provider, also delivers strong reliability specifically for fax transmission. Neither should be a concern purely on reliability grounds for standard business fax use.
Customer Support
RingCentral’s support has to cover an enormous surface area, phone systems, video conferencing, messaging, and fax, which can mean fax-specific issues get routed through a broader support queue not specialized in fax troubleshooting. FAX.PLUS’s support is entirely focused on fax, which tends to mean faster, more specialized help when something fax-specific goes wrong.
Independent Review Data
On G2, RingCentral scores well overall as a communications platform, with reviewers praising its breadth of features, though fax specifically is rarely the feature reviewers highlight. Capterra reviewers of FAX.PLUS, by contrast, consistently focus their praise specifically on fax usability and mobile reliability, which reflects the difference between a platform where fax is one feature among many versus a tool where fax is the entire product.
TrustRadius reviewers of RingCentral echo the G2 pattern, praising the platform’s breadth as an all-in-one communications suite while rarely singling out fax as a standout feature, which is consistent with fax playing a supporting role rather than a headline one in RingCentral’s overall value proposition.
Total Cost of Ownership Over a Year
Running the numbers over 12 months clarifies this decision more than a monthly price comparison alone. A FAX.PLUS Premium subscription at $13.99 a month runs under $170 for the year, covering 500 pages monthly with no other bundled features. RingCentral’s entry-level business plans, priced per user per month and including the full phone and messaging suite, typically run several times that amount annually per user, even before accounting for additional lines or advanced features. If fax is genuinely your only need, that gap represents real money that could go toward inventory, marketing, or supplier deposits instead of communications infrastructure you are not using.
The calculation flips entirely if you already need a phone system. In that case, RingCentral’s annual cost is money you would be spending anyway on VoIP, and fax capability effectively arrives at zero marginal cost. This is the single most important factor in choosing between these two: not which is “better” in the abstract, but whether you are already paying for what RingCentral bundles together.
Setup Complexity
Getting started with FAX.PLUS takes minutes: create an account, get a dedicated number, and start sending. Setting up RingCentral properly, especially for a team, involves considerably more configuration, including phone number porting, extension setup, call routing rules, and user provisioning across the full suite. If you need the phone system anyway, this setup investment pays off across all the features you are using. If you only need fax, going through RingCentral’s full setup process just to access one feature is a disproportionate amount of configuration overhead for what you actually need.
Scalability Considerations
As your ecommerce operation grows, both platforms scale, but in different directions. FAX.PLUS scales along the fax-specific dimensions that matter to a growing supplier network: more pages, more team members with fax access, deeper compliance features. RingCentral scales along the dimensions that matter to a growing communications need broadly: more phone lines, more video conferencing capacity, more integrated messaging channels. If your growth is specifically about handling more supplier paperwork, FAX.PLUS’s scaling path is more directly relevant. If your growth involves building out a larger customer-facing team that needs phone and chat infrastructure, RingCentral’s broader scaling makes more sense as an investment.
Switching Costs If You Change Your Mind
If you start with FAX.PLUS and later find you need a full communications suite, adding RingCentral or a similar platform later is straightforward, since FAX.PLUS was never meant to replace a phone system in the first place. If you start with RingCentral purely for its fax feature and later decide the full suite is not worth the cost, unwinding that decision means migrating your entire communications setup, not just your fax number, which is a considerably bigger undertaking. This asymmetry is worth factoring in in favor of starting narrow with a dedicated fax tool and expanding later if genuinely needed, rather than starting broad and potentially needing to downsize.
Who Should Choose RingCentral
Choose RingCentral if you are actively shopping for a full business phone and communications system and want fax bundled in as a bonus, or if you already use RingCentral for other purposes and simply want to activate its existing fax feature rather than adding a separate tool.
Who Should Choose FAX.PLUS
Choose FAX.PLUS if fax is your only real communications gap, you already have phone and messaging tools you are satisfied with, and you want the most affordable, purpose-built option specifically for sending and receiving faxes. For most ecommerce sellers whose fax needs are limited to supplier paperwork, licensing documents, and insurance correspondence, this is the more common and more cost-effective scenario.
Real Scenarios: Which One Actually Fits
Consider a solo ecommerce seller running a single-owner dropshipping store, occasionally faxing supplier agreements and insurance paperwork, with all customer service handled through email and a support helpdesk tool. For this seller, RingCentral’s phone system offers little value they are not already getting elsewhere, making FAX.PLUS the clear, cheaper, more focused choice.
Now consider a growing ecommerce operation with a small customer service team fielding phone calls, using video calls for supplier negotiations, and needing team messaging to coordinate across time zones with overseas manufacturers. This business already needs what RingCentral provides as its core offering, phone, video, and messaging, so adding fax through the same platform avoids paying for a separate specialized tool and keeps everything under one login and one bill.
Most ecommerce sellers fall closer to the first scenario than the second, particularly in the early and growth stages of a high ticket dropshipping business, which is why FAX.PLUS tends to be the more commonly recommended choice unless a broader communications need already exists independently of any fax requirement at all. Take an honest inventory of what your business is actually paying for today before assuming you need a bigger platform than you do.
What Happens If Your Needs Change
Businesses evolve, and the right tool today is not necessarily the right tool in two years. If you start with FAX.PLUS and later build out a customer service team that needs a real phone system, you are not locked in. You can add RingCentral or a similar platform at that point without having wasted money on unused features in the meantime, since FAX.PLUS’s cost was proportional to what you actually used. This flexibility is part of why starting with a focused tool and expanding only when a genuine need arises tends to be the more capital-efficient approach for a growing ecommerce business watching its operating expenses closely.
A Hybrid Approach Worth Considering
Some sellers land on a middle path: use whatever phone and communications tools already fit their business, whether that is a simple VoIP line, a customer service platform, or nothing formal at all, and add FAX.PLUS specifically for fax needs rather than bundling everything under one provider. This “best tool for each job” approach often ends up cheaper and more effective than a single all-in-one platform, particularly for a lean ecommerce operation that does not need enterprise-grade unified communications.
This modular approach also gives you more flexibility to swap out individual pieces as better options come along, rather than being locked into one vendor’s entire ecosystem. If a better customer service phone tool comes along next year, you can switch it without disrupting your fax setup, and vice versa. Bundled platforms like RingCentral make this kind of piecemeal optimization harder, since switching away from any single feature often means reevaluating the entire subscription and whether the remaining bundled features still justify the cost on their own.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is RingCentral’s fax feature good enough to skip a dedicated tool?
If you already need RingCentral’s broader platform, yes, its fax feature is functional and reasonable for typical business needs. If fax is your only need, a dedicated tool like FAX.PLUS is more cost-effective and purpose-built for exactly that job.
Does RingCentral cost more than FAX.PLUS?
For fax alone, yes, since RingCentral’s pricing bundles in a full communications suite rather than offering fax as a standalone low-cost option.
Can I use RingCentral just for fax without the rest of the suite?
Generally no, RingCentral’s plans are structured around its full platform rather than offering fax as an isolated, separately priced feature you can subscribe to on its own.
Which is better for a growing ecommerce team?
It depends on whether that team needs a full phone system or just fax access. FAX.PLUS is more targeted and affordable for fax-only team needs, while RingCentral makes more sense once broader communications infrastructure is genuinely required.
Does FAX.PLUS integrate with phone systems like RingCentral offers?
FAX.PLUS is a standalone fax tool and does not include phone system functionality, so if you need both, you would run them as separate tools rather than one unified platform, which many lean ecommerce operations find works out just fine in practice.
The Bottom Line
This comparison rarely comes down to which fax feature is objectively better. It comes down to what else you need. If you need a full communications overhaul, RingCentral’s bundle makes fax essentially free. If fax is your only real gap, FAX.PLUS is the more focused, more affordable choice. Read the full FAX.PLUS by Alohi review for the complete picture.
Or check the full alternatives roundup to see every other option side by side.
If supplier documentation and vendor paperwork are more than you want to manage yourself while you focus on growing the business, our done for you services can handle the operational side for you from start to finish.
Prefer to learn the systems yourself rather than hand it off entirely? Our one on one coaching covers exactly this kind of operational detail as part of the full dropshipping process from sourcing through fulfillment.
New to the space entirely? Start with our guide to what high ticket dropshipping actually is. Our list of the best high ticket niches can help you choose a direction worth pursuing.
Once you have a niche, our guide to finding the best suppliers covers the relationships that generate this kind of paperwork in the first place. Our business formation guide rounds out the legal side of getting your operation set up correctly.
Grab our free beginner’s guide to high ticket dropshipping. Or visit the Ecommerce Paradise homepage for the full resource library.
Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.
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