The Best Online Fax Services for 2022

Online Fax VoIP Services Make Your Fax Machine Obsolete

If you’re reading this, odds are you send faxes more than the average person. For most people, having a dedicated fax machine seems antiquated and pointless. But anyone who deals with the government knows that faxing is still a big deal. Online Fax VoIP services bring fax service into the future.

A traditional fax machine is tied to a phone line and given a specific fax number. You have to use this fax machine for everything. You use it to send and receive faxes, and seeing as it’s heavy enough to replace one of the boulders in the Strong Man competition, faxing on the go with a device like this is out of the question. So what makes online faxing better? Everything.

What Is Online Faxing?

Instead of using a clunky traditional fax machine to send and receive faxes, you can use any computer to send a fax. All you need is an online fax service, and you’re good to go. You can send a fax to an actual fax machine or to a virtual fax number. When virtual numbers receive a fax, they can route it to a fax machine the user specifies or deliver it to them directly via email.

How Do Online Faxing Services Work?

You often hear about VoIP when you read up about online faxes. Some will even call it a VoIP Fax. It’s true that VoIP services often offer VoIP Fax packages that let you send faxes through your VoIP provider. However, calling it a VoIP Fax is actually a bit of a misnomer.

VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol, but sending faxes has nothing to do with your voice. In fact, the data is quite different: so much so that you wouldn’t use the same protocol to transfer the information. Instead, there’s something called FoIP. As you can guess, it means Fax over Internet Protocol.

The brilliant minds at the International Telecommunication Union came up with T.38, a protocol that allows for faxes to be transmitted over the internet to other devices. Since VoIP also works over the internet, it’s possible to send a fax to a VoIP number if your VoIP provider has this feature.

How Do You Send and Receive Faxes Online?

To send a fax, all you have to do is use the software given to you by your online fax service provider. Usually, this will work through your web browser. However, some internet fax services also have a desktop application or mobile app that you can use. This is very common with VoIP providers, as faxing will be one of several features that you can use in the same VoIP app.

You’ll open that application and then start to create your fax. You can choose a virtual fax number, email address, or the number of a traditional fax machine. You can send attachments or scan in a new document to send. Whatever you attach will be converted to the proper formats and sent as a fax.

On the receiving end, you will have to configure how you want to receive a fax that is sent to you. You can often just open up the app and download it or print it out, but if you would like to have your faxes routed to a machine, you can do that too. You can even fax via email once you add your email account to the internet faxing service.

Why Should I Switch to Internet Faxing?

You should already be getting an idea of why faxing via the internet is the superior method. For starters, it’s the internet! You can access it anywhere on any device. That means you can send faxes from home or from the executive bathroom in the corner office.

But that’s just the beginning of the internet fax benefits. There are several reasons you should consider switching to internet faxing.

Faster Faxes

Traditional faxing means standing in front of fax machines feeding pages in one at a time, and punching fax numbers into the keypad. Your time matters, and if you send a significant quantity of faxes, or faxes of many pages, then you know how agonizing this process can be with a traditional fax machine. Using VoIP providers, or dedicated fax services, you can make it easy.

Since there’s an online interface, you don’t have to deal with antique hardware. You just log into your account and get rolling. You can schedule when the software will send faxes, so you can queue up that serialized novel you’ve been working on with dramatic timing.

You can even send multiple faxes in a single go. Just queue them up or add multiple fax numbers to the same fax to send it to as many recipients as you wish. Now someone will definitely show up to your band’s debut.

Online Fax Services Save Money

We know you’re probably tired of paying $8.99 per month for 14 different subscription services that all rely on an internet connection. But online faxing is much cheaper than traditional faxing, even if you don’t use it all that frequently. The fact is, traditional faxing costs money even when you don’t use it at all.

You need to pay for a phone line whose sole purpose is to field calls to the fax machine. That line costs money even if it’s not in use. Meanwhile, if you’re an infrequent faxer, you can simply pay as you go with an internet faxing service. Faxing online can cost as little as $0.99 per fax.

But let’s say you’re the fax master. You feed the machine until its scanner bulb is dim and weary. How would you like unlimited online faxing for only $10 per month? You can even get better deals if you already use other services that VoIP providers offer. No matter how you look at it, faxing online is cheaper and faster.

Internet Fax Service Provides Privacy

Most people don’t associate the internet with privacy, and for good reason. Generally, we think that anything we put online is susceptible to being stolen or revealed, and while there is a risk any time we upload a file, faxing is a bit different. The bottom line is that traditional faxing is actually less secure than any online faxing service.

Think about it. When you’re sending a fax, do you know who’s at the other end in front of that fax machine? You hope you do, but there’s no guarantee some new recruit without Yankee White clearance isn’t waltzing by the machine when you send the nuclear codes!

Sending faxes online is actually much more secure since only the owner of the virtual fax number can see it. Most online faxing goes to email, so you get all of the privacy benefits of your email account, which is often tied to a mobile device as well.

Free Yourself From the Fax Machine

Fax machines are just awful. Not only are they simple yet somehow hard to use, but they also tend to break at the worst possible moment. Try getting a fax machine repair at the last minute! Plus, fax machines are the exact opposite of portable. Even with a dolly and a long cord, you’re not going to be sending and receiving faxes from the beach any time soon.

You can send and receive faxes online on any device as long as you have an internet connection. Internet fax service knows no bounds. Your phone line gives you one way to access the world; an online faxing service gives you a world of access.

Advanced Features of Online Faxing Services

Online fax is more than just a replacement for your phone line fax service. The power of the internet gives you several other advanced features that definitely make your faxing work easier.

International Faxing

When you need to fax internationally, you know it isn’t going to be free. There’s always a lot of expenses for international affairs, and faxes are no exception. Not only are there higher fees for faxing to an international phone number, but it’s also more complicated since you have to use country extensions and sometimes extra digits from your phone company.

The real cost of international faxing comes from transferring a significant amount of data over the phone line. But the best online fax services will bring the cost down significantly. If you send online faxes to an international user, it will cost the same because it’s all virtual.

If you do need your fax to reach a real machine in another country, the rates will still be much more affordable. Online faxing keeps costs down when you need to go international.

Schedule Your Fax Messages

Another common problem with international faxers is that you have to account for differences in time zones. Sure, it’s 9 AM over here, and you’ve just started your day, but it’s nearly closing time at the German office, and they could have used that fax hours ago. Now you won’t have to set an alarm for 3 in the morning to get that important fax to Europe.

You can schedule when your online faxes arrive, just like you can schedule an email in advance. Whether you want to use this to make other people’s lives easier or just want to schedule your faxes 30 minutes apart so that it looks like you’ve been working all day, scheduling makes it easy.

Group Faxing

Forget about Messenger groups and WhatsApp chat groups. Groups for fax messages is where it’s at. You want to send that cute teddy bear that says “I love you” to several fax machines at once and surprise your friends? With online faxing service providers, it’s only a click away.

Maybe you’re trying to start some sort of uprising, and you’ve decided the best way to encourage the workers to seize the means of production is if they all get a fax at the same time calling for class warfare. Even though your employer will certainly need you in her office afterward, you can inspire a revolution with group faxing.

Toll-Free Fax Phone Numbers

Do you know what’s even better than faxing via the internet? Faxing for free with your internet connection. Internet fax service providers can give you a toll-free fax number. It’ll usually have a set limit of pages per month that it can receive toll-free.

This is a great way to give your clients an added benefit at very little cost to your business. Imagine the poor souls at your client’s office building, stuck using an old fax machine. They’re already miserable, so why not give them a toll-free number so at least they can feel something positive from their faxing experience?

Create the Coolest Cover Page

You young whippersnappers might not understand the concept of a cover page, but it goes something like this. You can’t just send a fax all willy nilly without any sort of context or explanation. Think of your fax as a book. Every book needs a cover that tells you the title and who wrote it, and maybe a fun fact on the back.

Online faxing services will let you save frequently used covers so that you can just make small adjustments or reuse them indefinitely. You even use designers to come up with some very cool designs for your covers. When others receive faxes from you, they’ll know immediately that they’re dealing with a fax wizard.

Electronic Signature

The main reason we still fax at all is that many legal documents can’t just be scanned and printed out. There’s always the possibility that the scanned image was altered before being printed. Since faxes are instantaneous, the files they send and receive are often recognized as being valid for legal documentation.

Of course, you can print out a document, sign it and then proceed to fax it away. But you can save even more time with electronic signatures. These can be configured on your computer or mobile device and applied to any document that you fax. Ask your internet fax service if they support this feature.

Choose Your Local Fax Number

It doesn’t matter where you live; with online faxing, you can get your number in any flavor you want. Maybe you want a different area code that matches your client’s location. Perhaps you’re looking for an international phone number. Or do you want your mobile phone number to become your fax number?

All of those things are possible when you choose one of the best online service providers. Look for reputable companies with a wide range of fax numbers. What else should you look for when comparing online fax service?

Choosing the Best Online Fax Service

Countless online fax providers exist today. Many of these are VoIP providers like Nextiva or RingCentral that also provide online faxing. These can be great options if you’re looking for a complete business phone system that lets you make phone calls and receive faxes on the same numbers.

Regardless of the service you choose, make sure you read the fine print. Many of the so-called “unlimited” services sneakily limit the number of pages you can deliver in a fax. You can fax unlimited times, but perhaps only two pages at once. Watch out for rates that rise after a promotional period ends, or fees for extra features.

Do your research, and you’ll be on your way to online fax heaven.