With the digital revolution at its peak, faxing seems a thing of the past.
Although it’s more of a traditional technology, certain businesses still require faxing as the primary mode of document transmission. But the tedious handling of physical hardware and the slow transmission speed mandated its facelift for speedy document transfers over the internet.
The advent of online fax software brought together the best of both worlds – internet and fax – and simplified faxing. With this new technology, you no longer have to operate a fax machine to fax documents physically. Instead, you can use your computer or smartphone to fax – anywhere, anytime.
Online faxing is a new way of sending and receiving faxes online over the internet. Online faxing is a huge improvement over traditional analog fax machines. All you need is a computer or a smartphone connected to the internet to send an online fax.
While regular faxing uses a public telephone network, online faxing uses the worldwide internet protocol (IP) network to send and receive faxes. This makes the entire process effortless and cheap.
You need to register with a reliable online faxing service to fax online. It helps you handle documents digitally by converting emails into faxes and faxes into emails.
When sending a fax, simply attach the digital version of the document to an email and send it to your recipient's fax machine number. The intended machine receives this as a regular fax signal for a printout. If the recipient is also an internet faxing service user, they can get digital fax via a service provider’s portal.
Because it's useful for digitally handling documents, many companies consider online faxing the next big revolution. There are various ways to send faxes online. You can choose one of the following ways depending on your equipment and recipient.
You can easily send online faxes through your email service provider using just your smartphone or computer. Attach the document, enter the fax number, and email it.
Email faxing requires a subscription to a reliable internet faxing service. Once subscribed, your service provider acts as the mediator for online faxing. The provider receives the documents over the internet and simply transmits them to the fax machine.
Most service providers require the fax number and the applicable country and area code in your email’s “To” address.
The email is converted into an online fax on the receiving end. You can easily access the faxed documents in your service provider’s portal. All you need to receive fax via email is an internet-connected device with an online fax service subscription.
Internet faxing is one of the most convenient and fastest methods of document transmission. There are no extra charges other than your usual subscription and internet usage fee.
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is another way to send internet faxes. VoIP is a telephone service that enables you to send or receive calls over an internet connection.
VoIP allows you to send a fax by dialing the recipient’s number and entering the corresponding code before their fax number. This code should be followed by your email address, which delivers all documents sent via VoIP to an inbox.
Fax machines use analog signals to transmit data over phone lines. However, you use a VoIP gateway to convert the analog fax machine signal to internet-friendly data packets with VoIP. These messages are assembled and converted into analog signals that fax machines print out. This method isn’t so successful and can fail as the VoIP network isn’t optimized for fax signaling at the analog level.
Online faxing services can help you send and receive faxes from your computer. Simply install your service provider’s web extension or software interface and use it for internet faxing.
Most internet faxing services have the Google Fax feature. Using this function, you can integrate your online fax into various Google workspace services and send a fax directly from Google Docs or Google Sheets.
For example, if you're a data-oriented business such as real-estate, Google Docs and Google Sheets can offer you ease of use and accessibility. When integrated with these Google services, you can transform your real-estate business using online fax.
Install the add-on specific to your online fax service provider in Google Workspace. This add-on helps you send and receive faxes using Google Docs or Google Sheets from your computer or smartphone.
Depending on your online faxing service provider, you can fax documents with Microsoft 365 applications. Fax MS Word, MS Excel, or MS Powerpoint files using the "email to fax" feature. Additionally, you can download your service provider's add-in for Microsoft applications. This way, you can fax a document, spreadsheet, or presentation directly via the add-in.
If your online faxing service provider has an iOS app, you can send faxes with your iOS device. Web apps on Macbooks and mobile apps such as Keynote, Pages, and Numbers on mobile iOS devices can also be used to send faxes.
Like Apple devices, Android devices can have a fax service provider’s app on the Play Store. You can easily send and receive faxes on these devices with the app. All you have to do is download it, log into your account, and fax it.
Many online faxing service providers offer fast, hassle-free online faxing services for a small fee. These service providers make it easy to send or receive documents around the globe through their user-friendly websites or apps.
The recipient’s fax machine or online faxing portal will receive your fax.
Various services offer professional transmission similar to conventional analog devices. They even overcome many disadvantages of traditional faxing, making online faxing the preferred route for new-age businesses.
Many of these providers have also released extensions for various browsers. This allows users to bypass the complicated steps of using their mailing service provider and their email-to-fax or fax-to-email capabilities to send and receive online faxes.
You can save on equipment and other related costs with online faxing services. It even helps you digitally archive the documents, not possible with offline faxing as it requires a scanner to scan the documents and save them.
Online faxing is beneficial in many ways. Introducing online fax in your business can help you streamline your business. From saving you time to giving you an effortless way of archiving the faxed files, it can be great in a lot more ways.
With online faxing growing in popularity, it's no wonder that people are turning to this method. It gives you several advantages over the old, traditional method. You save on phone bills, enjoy easy storage, save on maintenance costs, stay on budget, and most importantly, are free from physical barriers that limit your access to documents.
A good online faxing service provider ensures that its website connection is extremely secure so that you can securely use its web interface. Additionally, secure cloud storage helps store sensitive documents and data safely.
Need to figure out how to store these documents after you've faxed them over? Check out everything you need to know about document storage.
Olivia Tan is the co-founder of CocoFax, a new-age start-up offering a full range of online fax solutions for smarter business communications. In her free time, Olivia loves sharing helpful insights on marketing.
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