Internet Fax – Do You Really Need It?
Copyright (c) 2008 Titus Hoskins
In business, as in life, habits are very hard to break. Over the years, the reliable old fax machine has become the standard way of sending faxes in most offices and workplaces. Despite a few paper jams or the occasional missed fax because of a busy signal, the old fax machine has worked out quite well.
There's no denying that fact, but is there a more efficient way to fax?
Everything changes, including the way we fax. Now, there is a new method of faxing called Internet Fax or Email Faxing. It simply means you use the web and your email system to send and receive your faxes. You sign up to an online fax service provider which handles all your faxes. There is no need for a second phone line and you can access your faxes anywhere, anytime. And yes, you can still send your faxes via the old fax machine.
Trying a new way of doing things takes some effort on the part of everyone. And like anything new, not everyone or every business has embraced this new technology. Is this a crucial mistake? Do you or your company really need Internet Fax?
The answer to that question probably lies in a topic that's familiar to all businesses: competition. If you're in a competitive business, will you be at the top of your game without Internet Fax? That's probably the real question you have to ask?
Internet Fax gives you the advantage of accessing your faxes 24/7, anywhere you have Internet access so you are not tied down to your office fax machine. This can be a great benefit to those working on the road or in the field such as traveling salespeople, managers, real estate agents, engineers, onsite building contractors... and the list goes on.
Having access to your faxes at all times can make you more competitive in a very competitive world. It will give you that slight edge that can make all the difference in a crucial deal or transaction. It's probably your call or business decision whether or not you go with Internet Fax.
Keep in mind, an Internet Fax service is relatively inexpensive and there is no need for a second phone line. There are many fax providers you can choose from such as MyFax, eFax, RapidFax, TrustFax, and Send2Fax. You should also look at some lesser known fax providers such as Faxage out of Denver and Metrofax out of Seattle; many times choosing a relatively smaller company can give you better individual service in that you or your company don't get lost in the crowd.
In addition, many companies and individuals like to consolidate all their phone/fax services into one provider. RingCentral is a popular choice since it gives you virtual phone and fax services all rolled into one.
Like choosing any business service, it pays to shop around. You must find the service plan that suits your needs and budget. Internet Fax service plans range from the very modest $20 a year to around $10-$15 a month. Each plan will have a different number of faxes that you can send and receive. Rates are usually based on minutes with 5 cents per minute being the average cost. Multiple page faxes and International faxes will usually cost you more.
The question still remains, do you really need Internet Fax?
Since computers and the Internet are the wave of the future can your company or business remain truly competitive without Internet Fax? Again, this is your call or decision you have to make. It would mainly depend on how crucial faxing is to your business? Is faxing a vital element of your company? Does it play a part in generating new business or making sales? If so, then you may need Internet Fax just to stay in the game and remain competitive.
Many companies are switching over to Internet Fax or using it in addition to their current fax system. Considering the relatively inexpensive cost, this gives them the option of having access to their faxes at all times. For them going forward with Internet Fax is a wise business move on their part, one that will keep their company truly competitive in a very competitive world.
Five Solid Reasons To Use An Internet Fax Service
Online or Internet Fax Services are becoming extremely popular with our ever increasingly mobile workplace and workforce. As we become more mobile, we want the ability to receive and send faxes through our email and the Internet. It's as simple as that!
Receive and send your faxes anywhere, anytime.
Plus, you have no more paper jams, no more bulky fax machines, no more busy signals and no more return trips to the office to pick up that important fax at 10 o'clock at night!
If you need more convincing about the advantages of using or switching to an Internet Fax Service, here's a short list of reasons:
Convenience
There's a great deal of convenience to receiving and sending your faxes through your email. You can access it anywhere and anytime; wherever and whenever you access your computer and the Internet.
Your faxes are right at your fingertips - just one click away.
You receive a local or toll-free fax number that you can give out to all your contacts. You can also store all your faxes online or on your computer's hard-drive, so you know exactly where your faxes are. You know exactly where to find that important fax when you need it. No more scrambling through files or garbage bends to find your faxes. No more missed faxes because of busy signals, not to mention the decrease in all that foul language as there are no more paper jams.
Mobility
Perhaps, the most important feature or selling point for using an Internet or email fax service is mobility. Since you receive and send faxes through your email system and the Internet you can access them anywhere, anytime.
This is great for mobile professionals, traveling sales people, real estate agents, onsite builders, etc. Our workplaces and workers are becoming very mobile at a very fast rate - just in the last five or ten years we have seen the explosion in the popularity of cell phones, PDAs, Wi-Fi, Wireless Broadband, and portable laptop computers. All these new technologies have changed how we do business and how we communicate.
Internet or email fax fits perfectly into this mix and gives us the means to take our work on the road.
Easy To Use
Internet fax is as easy as using your email. How hard can that be? Most, if not all email fax providers have a Web Interface (online site) where you can log onto and do all your faxing chores. Send and receive your faxes. Most fax services also allow you to store your faxes online for easy access.
Most Internet fax services will work with Windows Outlook and Windows Office. Some have free desktop applications that you can download and place on your desktop which allows you to send and receive your faxes.
Finally, most services let you send a fax by just sending an email, i.e. (destination number)@yourfaxservice.com - It doesn't get any easier than that.
Inexpensive
Internet fax can be very inexpensive, especially if you only have modest faxing needs. If you send or receive just a few faxes each month you can purchase a very inexpensive monthly or yearly plan from many of the major fax providers. Many of these Internet fax services have various plans and fees; finding one that matches your faxing needs can save you a lot of money in the long run.
Really modest fax users can get an Internet fax service for a few dollars a month. One of the major service providers, eFax will even let you have a Free account where you can receive up to 20 faxes a month for free, but be aware that you will have to upgrade to a paid service to send faxes. Another service, Send2Fax Prepaid charges you $0.15 for every fax and a $20 deposit along with a very low $1.95 monthly fee.
For a person starting a home business or office, using an online fax service will save you the extra cost of purchasing a fax machine and an extra phone line. Actually, online faxing may save your company or organization around 85% on up front costs and 34% on monthly costs of traditional fax servers. This is a great plus.
Most online fax services are business-ready, and are completely flexible and scalable to meet all your company's faxing requirements. Fax broadcasting to a large number of recipients can also be more cost-effective with these online services. There's usually special custom pricing for companies.
Compatibility
Lastly, in a world that's constantly changing, having a faxing system that's compatible to all the latest gadgets and gizmos, is more important than it may seem at first glance. As our communication and business tools keep changing with the introduction of new hardware and services, Internet or email fax will work with all of these new inventions: Laptops, PDAs, Cell Phones, Wi-Fi, VoIP, Wireless Broadband, Satellite Internet, come what may...
Choosing an Internet fax service will meet all your present and future personal and business faxing needs. It is the right choice at the right time. Discover the advantages of an email fax service for yourself. Easy to use, affordable, mobile, accessible and compatible.
Should Your Company Use Internet Fax?
The operation of any company will usually entail many decisions that will determine the success or failure of your business. Choosing how you set up your company's communication system will no doubt be one of those crucial decisions you will have to make.
How your company communicates with its clients, employees, business partners, suppliers, shipping agents... are all vital to the running of an efficient business. Your communication system should be integrated, seamless and available everywhere.
Simply put: you must connect all your operations together into one useful network where none of the patrons listed above should be left out. Everyone should be connected and easily reachable; no matter the time of day or the location.
One obvious component of any company's communication system will be the Office Fax. However, the old traditional fax machine is slowly being replaced by a new kid on the block. For the reasons listed above and below, many companies are choosing to go with Internet Fax as their preferred method of faxing. If you're not familiar with online or email faxing some background information might prove helpful.
Internet Fax is simply using the Internet and your email system to send and receive faxes, anywhere anytime. It is mobile, paperless, efficient and you won't get any busy signals. Plus, there is no need for a second phone line.
Internet Fax is an extremely fast, convenient and simple way to send and receive your faxes. In order to use Internet Fax you have to sign-up to a Fax Service Provider where you get a local or Toll-Free fax number and an online site to send and receive your faxes. Your fax provider acts as a mediator, handling all your faxes whether they are coming from a standard fax machine or from another Internet Fax user. Faxes are sent as email attachments usually in TIFF, PDF or JPEG formats. Most services also let you store your faxes online so they are available wherever you have the Internet and these days that's just about everywhere.
Internet faxes are private and secure with SSL and PGP encryption. Most if not all companies are compliant with such privacy regulations as Gramm-Leach-Bliley & HIPAA in the United States and PIPEDA in Canada. Your faxes sent and received via email can be protected through PGP encryption.
Internet Fax also has some special benefits for companies that work in remote locations or away from the office such as real estate agents, engineers, onsite builders and contractors, traveling sales agents... just to mention a few.
Plus, keep in mind, Internet Fax is completely scalable to meet your company's needs. You can have or expand to different fax numbers for each department or salesperson in your company without the cost of installing all those extra phone lines.
Then there is Fax Broadcasting where you can send the same fax to thousands of agents or clients quickly and easily. This is not to be confused with JunkFaxes which are similar to email spam. Fax Broadcasting can be a very important factor in the competitiveness of your business.
If you do choose Internet Fax there are many well-known online fax providers you can use such as MyFax, eFax, RapidFax, TrustFax, and Send2Fax. You should also consider some lesser known fax providers such as Metrofax out of Seattle and Faxage out of Denver; sometimes going with a relatively smaller company will give you better individual service... you or your company won't get lost in the crowd or in the large numbers.
Also, many companies and individuals like to consolidate all their phone/fax services into one provider. RingCentral is a popular choice since it gives you virtual phone and fax services all rolled into one.
If you do use an Internet Fax services make sure you shop around to find the best plan that is suited to your needs; plans range from a very modest $20 a year to around $10-$15 a month. Each plan will have a different number of faxes that you can send and receive. Rates are usually based on minutes... so multiple page faxes will cost more with 5 cents per minute the average cost. Keep in mind, International faxes will usually cost more.
Since Internet Fax involves the web and computers, it can be totally automated to meet your needs. It can be used to connect and integrate your whole working network. Also remember, Internet faxing is the wave of the future, if you want your company to remain completely competitive in this brave new computerized world you must have online fax.
Like any business decision, it really comes down to one sticking point, it is not a matter of whether you can afford to use Internet Fax but whether you can really afford NOT to use it. It's Your Call?
Traditional fax machines and Internet faxing
In 1843, Scottish inventor Alexander Bain received the first patent for the fax machine. Short for facsimile machine, Bain's invention worked by scanning a flat metal surface with a stylus mounted on a pendulum. The stylus picked up images from the metal surface and reproduced writing on an electrically conductive surface. Several people made modifications in Bain's invention and took part in inventing the fax machine we have today. Elisha Gray, Arthur Korn, and Edouard Beeline are among the inventors who have contributed to what the fax machine has become.
It took almost 140 years for the fax machine to become an everyday appliance. Several companies tried to develop the fax machine, including Xerox, the company that made significant innovations to the fax machine in 1966. It introduced a smaller version that works by sending transmissions over existing phone lines, enabling documents to be sent from one fax machine to another in about six minutes. Back then, it represented a significant step toward improving long-range communications. For several years however, the fax machine was costly and was difficult to operate. These difficulties were probably the reason why the fax machine was never used in the business sector prior to the 1980s.
Today's fax machine usually consists of an image scanner, a modem, and a printer rolled together in one contraption. The scanner converts the printed content on a physical document into a digital image and the modem works by sending the image data over a phone line to another device. The printer at the receiving end produces a copy of the sent document. Fax documents nowadays usually require five to ten seconds to transmit one page.
The introduction of the Internet in the 1970s took faxing to greater heights. The Internet has introduced cost-effective faxing for business owners and other individuals. Online faxing is proving to be efficient and productive in the business sector. Internet faxing has allowed individuals to receive faxes through e-mails, mobile phones, hand-held organizers, and PDAs. Internet faxing has solved the dilemma of jammed papers, expensive inks and toners, and other problems consumers encountered while using traditional fax machines.
To avail of Internet faxing services, an individual simply has to sign up with an Internet fax service provider, such as Freeifax. Freeifax is one of the fastest-growing providers of Internet messaging and boasts of thousands of satisfied consumers around the world. Signing up with Freeifax enables consumers to gain access to online faxes.
By signing up, freeifax will provide consumers a control panel ability that allows then to check incoming and outgoing fax messages. This Internet faxing service does not require additional devices to function properly, eliminating the need for a bulky machine and cables. These messages are accessible to most parts of the world, provided there is a working Internet connection. These messages are confidential and can only be accessed by specific recipients, therefore maintaining confidentiality and security of messages.
Freeifax offers consumers all the conveniences without paying monthly fees. Packages include free unlimited faxes for only 2.5 cents per send. A minimum reload of $5 is required to keep an account active. These accounts come with free and unlimited incoming messages.
People who use fax machines daily grow accustomed to the flaws that they encounter. Internet faxing has become a wonderful feature on the web for businesses and many individuals due to the reduction of those flaws. This service has bridged the gap of traditional fax machines and web-based communication. It has enabled consumers to save time and money, making their time more effective and efficient. To know more about Freeifax Internet faxing services visit www.freeifax.com.
