3 Ways to Send Faxes with an Online Fax Service

Did you know that you don’t need a fax machine to fax anymore?  Perhaps you’ve used a thousand times and you’ve grown accustomed to it, but you don’t need to keep using outdated technology. The new way to fax is digital, and has proven to be a faster and more cost-effective alternative to the traditional method.

Online fax services mix the convenience of communicating digitally with the reliability and security of faxing.  One of the biggest perks of using these services is that they provide different ways to send fax and receive incoming fax without having to rely on a fax machine and without incurring in the costs of a dedicated fax line.

Sending a fax doesn’t have to a frustrating experience.  If you are still using your fax machine you’ll notice that these methods are very easy to use and don’t need any type of advanced knowledge from your part.  Let’s take a look at them

1. Using Your Email

This is the most common way to send faxes online.  Once you sign up with an online fax service, they will hook a virtual fax line to your email, so you can send faxes the same way you send an email.

It’s a very easy process, with only minor differences to sending a common email and it works with all kinds of email addresses, including free ones such as Outlook, Yahoo Mail and Gmail. This tutorial has more details on how to send your first fax from email.

Basically, you compose a new email and attach the file you want to fax.  Services work with many file formats, converting them to an analog transmission before sending the fax to the recipient. At the same time they are able to receive incoming fax and forward it to your inbox as a PDF attachment.

2. Using Your Online Fax Service’s Web Tool

Every online fax service has an web tool that you can use to send faxes.  You just need to log into your online fax service account and look for the “Send” section on the main page.  You’ll be taken to a web form.  Enter the details of the recipient, upload the files you want to fax and send your fax.

This method has the advantage that it can provide additional functions, like for example the ability to pull documents straight from your cloud storage accounts (in services like Box, Google Drive or Dropbox), the ability to broadcast a fax to more than 100 contacts at the same time, and an easy way to fax from your Contacts database.

3. Using Your Cell Phone

This third method is the newest one, but has already become very popular.  Faxing from your smartphone lets you practically have a virtual fax machine in your pocket at all times!  Forget about rushing to the nearest office store to send a fax, you can just do it in a few taps.

This is all possible with the aid of mobile fax apps. Now, not all services have these apps, so it’s good to do some research before deciding on a service.  The main advantage of this method is its flexibility.  Although apps lack some of the advanced features of the web account, they offer the advantage of taking a photo of a document to then fax it automatically, already optimized to be readable on any machine.

Image credits: Dave Crosby - https://flic.kr/p/bqNNjw