For fun I built a T.38 fax-over-IP service on top of Asterisk and a T.38 trunk. Since I'm to the point where everything is built and working, I've sent test fax's, confirmed the output. Auto-refunds for failed faxes (busy line for example) Everything is functioning as it should. So the hard steps begin, marketing. While this started as a project for fun, I decided it would be interesting to see if I could actually sell the service in 2026. So far my only real advantage I'm seeing is that I'm cheaper than faxzero (main competitor) and my services are cheap enough I can keep things running even below my break-even point. The honest numbers: Revenue - Free: $0, up to 3 pages + cover, 2/day, required email confirm (funnel tier) - Paid: $1.99/fax, up to 25 pages, priority queue, refund if delivery fails Costs - SIP trunk: $7/mo, DID: $2/mo local - Usage: $0.025/min (~1 min/page) - VPS: $10/mo - Fixed base ≈ $19/mo, break-even ≈ 15 paid faxes/month - Gross per paid fax: ~$1.61 at 1 page → ~$1.01 at 25 pages (after ~36¢ Stripe) What I've tried / where it stands - Reddit ads: $10 → 9 clicks → 0 sends. - SEO with some guide pages. I built the product before considering the market, that's on me. Though I'd hate to kill something before giving it a fair shot. Any words of wisdom for me?
Back in the mid '90s I'd have been interested, we did a lot of marketing via fax. Sending from my PC but ending up on physical machines. For the last few decades it's only been lawyers and pharmacies that still used them but even pharmacies have switched over now. No idea about lawyers, I avoid them! I guess your next step is to do an old-fashioned business plan, find the "use case" and you'll find your market. Then you just need to work out how to reach them, what keywords they actually use. At least you have the other company to study.
Thanks for the reply, yeah a lot of my ideas / projects tend to be things that would've been better in the 90s. I get lost in time I suppose. I'll see what I can do with what I've got for now and hopefully I can get some traffic moving before I decide to let it go.
Honest take: I wouldn't kill it yet, because your cost floor is the whole story here. Nineteen dollars a month in fixed costs means this doesn't need to be a business — it needs to be a break-even hobby that pays for its own server. Most side projects die because they burn cash while searching for a market; yours can afford to keep searching. sarahk nailed the real task: find the use case, then the market follows. The people still sending faxes in 2026 aren't doing it for fun — they're doing it because some institution demands it. Medical offices, legal filings, government contractors, financial compliance. Coming from a Navy background, I can tell you the military and federal world still runs on fax for certain records, because the compliance trail is understood and trusted. Nobody's going to change a decades-old workflow because a cooler tool exists. That's your market: not people who like fax, but people who are forced to fax and hate owning a fax machine. So I'd stop thinking about "fax users" and start thinking about moments of desperation. The person searching is the one sitting at home at 9pm with a form that says "fax it to this number" and no fax machine. Your SEO should target those moments: "send a fax without a fax machine," "fax from phone," that kind of intent. Your Reddit ads result makes sense now — you advertised a product to an audience browsing for entertainment. A fax tool sells at the moment of need, not in a feed. Two practical notes on your numbers: first, your free tier is the right call — a couple of free faxes a day with email confirmation is basically a demo that qualifies intent. Second, watch the 25-page paid cap: your margin collapses from $1.61 to $1.01 on long faxes. Consider tiering by page count so your longest, most expensive sends are also your most profitable. Last thing: study your competitor like sarahk said, but look at what they don't do. If they're positioned as the established option, you get to be the simple, no-signup, cheap one. Sometimes "the other guys are expensive" is a perfectly good market position when your costs let you survive on scraps. Good luck — there's something charming about a T.38 trunk on Asterisk still earning its keep in 2026.
Nine clicks with no sends is too little to tell whether the offer is failing. Before spending more, I'd ask a few people unfamiliar with the service to try the free send while you watch where they hesitate. Does the email confirmation arrive promptly? Is it clear which file formats work, what happens after upload, and how they know the fax was delivered? For someone uploading a document to an unfamiliar site, trust may matter more than saving a dollar. A plain explanation of file retention and deletion, plus a sample delivery confirmation, would answer two practical questions before they commit. Those details should reflect what the service actually does.