How to Send a Fax From Your Computer

Traditional faxing is now a thing of the past, you no longer need to use a fax machine to send a fax to anyone. This is good news, fax machines were not only bulky and expensive, but they also brought along extra-problems, that you had to stand, like for example paper jams, busy phone lines, and my favorite: unreadable documents! Yes, sometimes you got a fax that started fine but as you read along words seemed to melt together for an unknown reason!

Thanks to the development of fax to email software and the advances in the offerings of Internet faxing services, electronic faxing has become a main trend for sending and receiving faxes. It has been adopted as the best way to fax by businesses both big and small. And as solutions get better and better, in no time we’ll see that every business will have an e-fax solution!

Let’s take a look at how to send a fax from a computer using an Internet fax service. Nowadays there are many online fax service providers that not only let you send fax via the Internet, but also receive them, they are a great alternative for fax to email software. Getting started with them is as easy as signing up for one of the plans that better fits your case; it is important to do some research on fax service providers before rushing into signing up with any of them. The options are varied and they can quickly confuse you if you don’t have the necessary knowledge. Most faxing services offer a free fax trial, so you can enjoy the sending service for up to 30 days. If you ask me, that’s a lot of time!

I would stay out of fax via internet services that are not well-known and offer much cheaper rates than the standard $10 per month in average great faxing services offer. I’m not saying this because they are cheap, but because from my experience, most of these services also have what I call “hidden charges” or charges that you are not aware of until it is too late. One of these charges are set-up fees; this is a fee you pay for the company to set up your account. You DON’T have to pay for this, it is just a way to make up for the low monthly fee. Besides this, you will also need to consider cancellation fees and overage fees. What are overage fees? It is a price you pay per extra page or per extra-minute once you have no more credit in your plan. Shady services charge you a lot of money on this, so take into account the different options and know your risks.

Here I want to talk about the so-called “free fax services” online. These are advertised as the perfect solution for your faxing needs, but they are only useful in some specific cases (when you have to send a single page to a friend or relative). These services are useless for business purposes, because they send a cover page with advertisements before delivering your fax! An online fax service for business should not contain any type of ad, or else it will project a negative image, in addition, you’ll be wasting someone else’s ink when they receive your electronic fax through their fax machine. Then we have the other issue, the high fees for sending additional fax. Yes! This is not as free as you think, once you send your maximum of 1-3 pages of fax per day they will require you to pay if you want to send more. With the best email fax services to send a fax document online, you can go with the traditional plans and save a lot of money!

Okay, back to what I was talking about… Once you sign up for an online fax service, you need to specify the e-mail address to which the incoming fax will go. This, again is very easy, and the reason why we cal this way of faxing “fax to email”. Then that’s it! You are all set to go and start faxing. Some great companies like Ringcentral Fax and MyFax, have a great way to welcoming new users. On the email they include a quick start guide, so you can get started with basic faxing right away if you need to. Later on you could focus on the electronic faxing features! Once you do all of this, you will log into your account and adjust the settings so you can fax right way. Through this method of faxing, just like with fax to email software, you can send a fax to anywhere, no matter if the person at the other side has a fax machine or a computer. The magic of this way of faxing is in the process! You can receive online fax the same way.

Once you fill out all the necessary information and attach the document you want to send as a fax, the fax servers owned by the Internet faxing service company will convert the fax and well’ that’s pretty it. Fax on your PC doesn’t have to be so complicated! As a matter of fact, the simplicity and speed of sending and receiving a fax online has proven to be one of the biggest benefits of online faxing.

As you can see it is very easy to learn how to send a fax from your PC. If you are worried about security and privacy issue, you should know, that although the fax company sends your message across the Internet, they do not have any copy of your message, and ill is done through encryption. If you are worried about a certain company, I would recommend you ensure they follow all the necessary privacy and security compliances, as they are required. That is another good reason to opt for trusted and well-known web fax services. The same advice could be applied to fax to email software, it should provide you with top security. For big businesses who handle sensitive information, a network fax server might be the best option, as they can handle all faxing from inside, without having to resort on external providers.