Online Faxing

The term online faxing, also known as email faxing or Internet faxing, refers to using an online fax service to enable you to send and receive faxes online or as email attachments.

Online faxing is an adaptation that allows interoperability between the old technology of the telephone-line-based standalone fax machine and the transmission and receiving of faxes via the Internet and email.

Faxing Online without a Fax Machine

To send an online fax, you don’t need a fax machine. You can scan documents to turn them into electronic files; then, with the help of an online fax service provider, your documents can be transmitted and received as facsimiles in the form of digital files via email. Or the files can be made accessible for viewing by way of an online interface.

The online faxing service provider will assign you a dedicated fax phone number (international numbers are available), meaning that electronic faxing doesn’t tie up your regular telephone line. Persons sending you faxes will never receive busy signals, either. Through the phone number the online faxing service gives you, incoming faxes are converted to files that you can have sent to your email address.

In addition, most online faxing services enable you to send attachments of various file formats to standard fax machines. The transmission takes place as if you were using a standard fax machine.

The cost of an online faxing service ranges somewhere between about $8 and $17 a month. Similar to choosing a package with a cellular phone company, you can select a package based on the number of faxed pages you will be sending and receiving during a month’s time.

You may also choose a plan that manages your fax and phone needs, with your fax, email, and voicemail accounts centrally located.

VoIP

As online faxing is more widely used, so is VoIP, another communication method made possible by Internet-based technology. Vonage is one company that has successfully offered VoIP telephone service for quite some time, and other VoIP services have emerged as successful.

Ring Central is a service that offers both online faxing and VoIP service. This company offers a package that bundles to two technologies in one plan.

Taking Advantage of VoIP Services

As the use of online faxing gains wider acceptance, the type of technology related to the sending and receiving faxes over the Internet is being further developed and online faxing service providers are beginning to offer online faxing bundled with enterprise-wide Internet-based phone services.

Sending faxes or making a phone call over the Internet requires an entirely different approach from faxing or calling over a conventional telephone network, which sets up a dedicated circuit for the duration of a phone call.

VoIP uses a technology called packet-switched telephony in which voice data goes to its destination by way of innumerable packets across the Internet. Today VoIP systems can offer quality and reliability on a level that rivals land lines and cell phones.

Companies that choose to use online faxing may also consider a VoIP phone system as they streamline their communications. Solutions for both faxing and enterprise-wide, Internet-based phone systems are available through companies such as RingCentral, Nextiva, and 8 x 8, for example.

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