Why You Need To Ditch Your Fax Machine
If you keep sending and receiving faxes the ‘old way’, using a dedicated machine over an analog phone line, stop! There is an easier way to send / receive faxes, one that will not only help you be more productive, but will also unleash you from your office. With Web Faxing, your faxes are sent and received over the Internet.
No more dedicated machines – use the internet instead
Businesses are switching to web faxing now more than ever. Why be tied to your office? Send and receive faxes from anywhere you have the Internet. Most VoIP PBX providers offer a web portal for their customers to send faxes and you can receive incoming faxes by email in PDF format so you can read them on your smartphone or computer no matter where you are.
How does it work
To send a fax, simply use your browser to access your VoIP hosted PBX web portal provided by your service provider, choose the file you want to fax, enter the fax number and click ‘send’. Most providers will send you a verification email to let you know that the transmission was successful.
When you receive a fax, your service provider routes it to the email address that you specify in your account. It can be a shared company email address or an individual’s email address; you decide. You can then save your emails to read later or print and delete them.
With Web Fax, you get the same features you would have with a regular fax machine, including a real toll-free or local fax number. When sending a fax, the machine on the other end, whether online or standard, cannot tell the difference.
How to change
Switching to Web Fax is easy. Your provider should be able to “transfer” your number for you. Once your number is transferred, your faxes will simply stop being sent to your dedicated machine and will be sent to you via email.
Here are the top 10 reasons companies are making the switch:
You are never tied to your office
Send and receive faxes from your computer anywhere there is an Internet connection, even from your PDA or smartphone.
Lower total cost of ownership
Eliminate equipment maintenance fees as well as ink / toner and paper costs. And all SPAM faxes can be deleted instead of going straight to your fax machine, where they are automatically printed. Plus, you can save even more money by canceling your dedicated phone line.
Professional and reliable
No more “Load Paper” or “Toner Low” messages.
Sending web faxes is green
With Internet fax, you only print what you really need to print. No more wasted paper from junk faxes, and you can easily keep a digital archive of all the transmissions you want to save. According to GreenFax, government research has shown that fax machines consume 200 billion pages of paper each year in the United States alone. If only five percent of this were done paperless, it could save up to 1 million trees a year.
No more busy signals
If your business has a dedicated fax number, then you know how frustrating it can be when callers get a busy signal. With Web Fax you can receive multiple faxes simultaneously without worrying about the faxes getting lost, not processed, or having to buy a second line.
Mobile text message alerts
Always on the go, but still can’t bear to leave your office because you need to know when that all-important fax will arrive? With most VoIP providers, you can choose to receive an email or text message alert informing you that you have received a new fax.
Keep your current number when you make the switch
When you switch to a Web Fax service, your provider will ‘transfer’ your number for you. That way, you never have to tell your customers what your new fax number is and you will never miss a fax.
One-to-many faxing
Have a large list of contacts you want to fax to? With Web Fax you can send the same fax to multiple fax numbers simultaneously with just a few clicks of your mouse.
No special software to download
By subscribing to these services, you will never need to buy or download any kind of software. All software is cloud-based and can be used anywhere you have access to an internet connection and a browser.
Encryption for security
With any fax-to-email service, the faxes you send are encrypted. Each service has its own unique security features, but they are all designed for one thing: to make sure your faxes reach the sender without the risk of someone else reading them.