OpenText RightFax is on-premise enterprise fax server software — the long-standing default for hospitals, financial institutions, and government agencies that need high-volume fax with deep ERP and EHR integration. It is capable and it is proven. Its costs are also structural rather than subscription: server licensing plus fax board or SIP channel licensing plus Windows Server plus annual maintenance plus the staff time to run it. Organizations increasingly re-evaluate it at a hardware refresh or when carriers retire the analog and ISDN lines it was built around. Documo is a cloud fax alternative with a BAA on every plan from $25/month that adds document classification and data extraction on top of transmission.
Quick answer: should you keep RightFax or move to cloud fax?
Keep RightFax if you have a working deployment, deep custom integrations you are not prepared to rebuild, a genuine requirement to keep fax traffic entirely inside your own network, and no upcoming hardware or OS refresh.
Move to cloud fax if you are facing any of the standard forcing functions: a server refresh, Windows Server end-of-support, carriers decommissioning the analog or ISDN circuits, a data-center exit, an inability to staff fax-server administration, or a compliance program that wants audit trails without maintaining the infrastructure that produces them.
The decision usually isn’t about fax features. RightFax and mature cloud platforms both send and receive reliably at volume. It’s about who operates the infrastructure and what happens when the person who understood it leaves.
What RightFax actually is
RightFax is fax server software that you install and run. A typical deployment includes the RightFax server on Windows Server, fax boards or SIP channels for telephony, a database, connectors for applications like Epic, Cerner, SAP, or Oracle, and client components for desktop and email integration.
Its strengths are real, and worth stating plainly:
- Very high throughput when properly provisioned, with channel-level control.
- Deep, mature integrations into ERP and EHR systems, some with decades of production history.
- Complete network control — fax traffic need never leave your infrastructure, which satisfies security programs that reject cloud transmission on principle.
- Granular routing and least-cost routing for complex multi-site organizations.
For an organization that has already paid for all of this and has it working, “rip it out” is not automatically the right advice.
Where RightFax is the better choice
Genuinely: air-gapped or network-isolated environments, deployments with heavily customized integrations that would be expensive to rebuild, and organizations whose security posture forbids third-party transmission of the documents in question. Cloud fax cannot serve a requirement that the traffic never leaves the building. If that’s your constraint, RightFax remains the answer.
The cost structure people underestimate
OpenText does not publish RightFax list pricing, so treat any specific figure you find online with suspicion — including ours. What is reliably true is the shape of the cost, which differs from subscription cloud fax in ways that don’t show up in a per-page comparison:
| Cost component | RightFax (on-premise) | Cloud fax |
|---|---|---|
| Software licensing | Per-server and/or per-channel, plus client licensing | Included in subscription |
| Annual maintenance / support | Recurring percentage of licence | Included |
| Telephony | Fax boards or SIP channels, carrier circuits | Included |
| Server hardware | Purchase plus refresh cycle (typically 3–5 years) | None |
| Windows Server + database licensing | Yes | None |
| Virtualisation / hosting | Yes | None |
| Disaster recovery | You design, build and test it | Vendor SLA |
| Administration | Staff time — patching, monitoring, channel capacity, upgrades | Vendor-operated |
| Upgrades | Project work, with testing and downtime | Continuous, transparent |
| Scaling for peak volume | Provision for peak, pay for it year-round | Elastic |
OpenText does not publish RightFax list pricing, so this describes cost structure rather than quoting figures we cannot verify. Contact OpenText for a quote.
The line that most often gets missed is the last-but-one. A RightFax major-version upgrade is a project with a plan, a test cycle, and a maintenance window. Cloud fax upgrades are somebody else’s Tuesday.
The other under-counted line is administration. Fax server expertise is increasingly scarce, and concentrated in one or two people per organization. A refresh cycle that coincides with those people retiring or leaving is what actually triggers most migrations we see.
RightFax vs Documo
| OpenText RightFax | Documo | |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | On-premise (or partner-hosted) | Cloud, multi-tenant |
| Pricing model | Licensing plus maintenance; not publicly listed | Subscription from $25/mo (Solo, annual) |
| Overage | n/a — capacity is provisioned | $0.15/page (Solo) to $0.07/page (Enterprise) |
| Infrastructure you operate | Server, OS, database, telephony, DR | None |
| Upgrades | Planned project with downtime | Vendor-managed, continuous |
| Telephony | Fax boards or SIP channels you procure | Included |
| BAA / HIPAA | Available — you own much of the compliance surface | Included on every plan |
| SOC 2 Type II | Your deployment is yours to certify | Yes — Documo is certified |
| Encryption | Per your configuration | TLS 1.2 in transit, AES-256 at rest |
| Audit trail | Yes, self-maintained | Yes, built in |
| API | Yes | Yes — Business plan and up |
| EHR / ERP integration | Extensive, mature | Yes |
| Network isolation possible | Yes | No — cloud transmission |
| Document classification / extraction | No | Yes |
| Time to deploy | Weeks to months | Days |
| SSO | Per your environment | Yes (Enterprise) |
Documo pricing from documo.com/pricing, verified August 13, 2026. OpenText does not publish RightFax list pricing; contact OpenText for a quote. Deployment characteristics reflect standard on-premise architecture and will vary by installation.
The compliance trade people get backwards
A common assumption is that on-premise is inherently more compliant than cloud. For HIPAA, that’s not how it works.
With RightFax, you own the safeguards: encryption configuration, access controls, audit logging, retention, physical security, patch currency, disaster recovery. Nothing is delegated, which means nothing is outsourced — including the work and the liability for getting it right.
With a cloud provider under a BAA, the provider contractually assumes responsibility for the safeguards on their side, and their certification is independently audited. Documo holds SOC 2 Type II and includes the BAA on every plan.
Neither model is automatically more compliant. On-premise gives you control and the obligation that comes with it; cloud gives you a contractual counterparty and an audited control environment. The right answer depends on whether your organization would rather operate the controls or contract for them — and, realistically, on whether it currently has the staff to operate them well.
What changes beyond transmission
Migrating RightFax to a cloud equivalent gets you out of the infrastructure business. It does not, by itself, change what happens after the fax arrives.
That part is usually the larger cost. In a hospital or clinic, inbound faxes — referrals, prior authorizations, lab results, records requests — land in a queue where staff open each one, identify the document type, find the patient, and key the data into the EHR. RightFax delivers the document faithfully. So does cloud fax. Neither reduces the keying.
Documo’s intelligent document processing layer classifies the inbound document, extracts the fields, and routes structured data to the downstream system. The fax stops being a PDF that generates work and becomes a record that arrives already processed.
If you are already running a migration project, this is the moment to evaluate that, because you are paying the change-management cost once either way. The ROI calculator sizes it against your own volume, and build vs. buy IDP covers the case for not building it in-house.
How do I migrate from RightFax to Documo?
A typical enterprise migration runs in five stages:
- Inventory. Catalogue every fax number, routing rule, integration, and downstream consumer. This is the step that determines the timeline, and the step most often underestimated — RightFax deployments accumulate undocumented routing rules over years.
- Number porting. Port in batches rather than all at once, typically 2–4 weeks per batch depending on the losing carrier.
- Parallel run. Old and new run simultaneously so nothing is lost during cutover, and so you can verify routing against live traffic.
- Integration cutover. Rebuild EHR/ERP connections against the fax API.
- Decommission. Retire servers and circuits — and keep the RightFax archive for your retention period rather than migrating history.
The BAA is executed at signup, not as a later add-on. Contact sales to scope a migration.
What is OpenText RightFax?
RightFax is on-premise enterprise fax server software from OpenText. Organizations install it on their own Windows Server infrastructure with fax boards or SIP channels, and integrate it with systems like Epic, Cerner, SAP, and Oracle for high-volume automated faxing.
How much does RightFax cost?
OpenText does not publish RightFax list pricing. Total cost includes server and channel licensing, annual maintenance, server hardware, Windows Server and database licensing, telephony circuits, disaster recovery, and administrative staff time. Contact OpenText for a quote.
Is RightFax being discontinued?
No. RightFax remains an actively supported OpenText product. Migrations away from it are typically driven by hardware refresh cycles, carrier decommissioning of analog and ISDN lines, or difficulty staffing fax server administration — not by end-of-life.
Is RightFax HIPAA compliant?
RightFax can be deployed in a HIPAA-compliant manner, but compliance depends on your configuration and operations — encryption, access controls, audit logging, retention, and physical security are all yours to implement and maintain. With cloud fax under a BAA, the provider assumes contractual responsibility for their side of those safeguards.
Can I keep my fax numbers if I move off RightFax?
Yes. Numbers port to a cloud provider, typically in 2–4 week batches depending on the losing carrier, with a parallel-run period so nothing is dropped.
What is the best RightFax alternative for healthcare?
A cloud platform with a BAA, EHR integration, and an audit trail. Documo includes the BAA on every plan, holds SOC 2 Type II, and adds document classification and extraction. If your requirement is that fax traffic never leaves your network, no cloud platform qualifies and RightFax remains the right choice.
Is cloud fax reliable enough to replace a fax server?
For the overwhelming majority of deployments, yes — mature cloud fax platforms handle enterprise volume with carrier-grade redundancy that is difficult and expensive to replicate on-premise. The genuine exceptions are network-isolated environments and deployments with custom integrations too costly to rebuild.
How long does a RightFax to cloud migration take?
Weeks to a few months, driven mostly by number porting batches and integration rebuild work rather than by platform setup. The inventory stage is the usual source of schedule surprises.
Bottom line
Keep RightFax if fax traffic cannot leave your network, if you have custom integrations too expensive to rebuild, or if you have a working deployment with no refresh on the horizon.
Move to cloud if you’re facing a hardware refresh, a Windows Server upgrade, carrier decommissioning of analog lines, a data-center exit, or the loss of the one person who understands the fax server.
Choose Documo specifically if you also want the manual work downstream of the fax to go away — because the migration is the cheapest moment to change that, and no fax platform on its own will.
HIPAA-compliant cloud fax · See pricing · Contact sales · Security and compliance · Fax API
Related comparisons
Documo publishes this comparison and sells a competing product. Every competitor claim below links to that vendor’s own page so you can verify it. Verified August 13, 2026.
