Great question, and one we hear often, because both Passport and Fax 2.0 are enterprise faxing solutions from Lane that move your communications off traditional phone lines and hardware. But they’re built for different environments and use cases, and choosing the right one matters.
What Is Passport?
Passport is Lane’s flagship integrated messaging platform, and it has been delivering secure faxing for over four decades. It’s a centralized networking solution that enables organizations to send and receive messages of all types across users, workgroups, and applications. Passport comes in three configurations: Passport Enterprise for large organizations running across multiple servers and corporate networks, Passport Small Business Edition for smaller operations that need a simple and cost-effective setup in 2 or 4 line configurations, and Passport C, which is the fully cloud-hosted version for organizations that want the power of Passport without managing on-premise infrastructure.
Passport is also the platform that powers Lane’s other products, including PassFax and the Passport Fax App for Microsoft Teams, so when you’re using those tools, you’re building on Passport’s foundation.
What Is Fax 2.0?
Fax 2.0 is Lane’s cloud-based faxing solution designed specifically to eliminate PSTN infrastructure entirely. It places all fax and data communications over the internet using Passport’s integrated messaging platform as its backbone, but it’s optimized for organizations that want to replace their existing fax system with a fully hosted, volume-based, internet-only solution.
Fax 2.0 includes multi-level encryption, real-time monitoring, a consolidated audit trail, built-in disaster recovery and scalability, and zero need for on-site software hosting or phone line infrastructure. Fax data only persists for the life of the transmission and is then destroyed, which makes compliance straightforward in regulated environments.
Which One Is Right for You?
The key distinction is this: Passport is a full messaging platform that can be deployed on-premise, in the cloud, or as a hybrid, and it supports a wide range of integrations and configurations. Fax 2.0 is a cloud-first, infrastructure-replacement solution for organizations that specifically want to get off PSTN and simplify their fax environment with a single hosted platform.
Many organizations use both together. Fax 2.0 handles the network and transport layer while Passport provides the user-facing tools, routing, and management capabilities on top of it.
Not sure which fits your situation? Talk to the Lane team and they’ll help you figure out the right configuration for your environment.
