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How to send and receive faxes online - Internet Fax "Facts"While broadband internet access has freed many of us from the beeps and squeaks of our old dial-up modems, many of us are still chained to our old fax machine sitting in the corner or on a dusty shelf for when we occasionally need to send or receive a fax. It either ties up a phone line or has to be plugged in and unplugged each time you use it. Internet faxing has been around for a long time, and as it turns out, for most faxing jobs (and ALL receiving fax jobs), it's easier to do it online. The first fax provider service we will look at is eFax. eFax has been around for a long time, and their software, interface, and customer service reflect that history.
Sending faxes online - Internet fax using email or webTo send a fax via eFax, you either attach the document to an email, or scan in the document and attach the scan to an email, and send the email to efax including the recipients fax number. Your documents will be automatically delivered to their fax machine just like a normal fax, and again you did it without a fax machine. This works particularly well when faxing electronic documents like PDF files, Word documents, spreadsheets, etc. You get to skip all those intermediary steps, like printint the document, walking to the fax machine, filling out a cover sheet, dialing the number, waiting for the fax to go through, etc. It can be a real time saver. One problem is dealing with hand-written notes or signatures on hard copies that need to be faxed. To send faxes like that on the internet, you need to scan those signed documents back into your computer and then send that attachment as noted above - this assumes you have a scanner. The eFax Plus account costs $12.95 per month, and in addition, you must also pay for every fax you send (received faxes still free) - 10 cents per page. Your faxes are saved in your online account for 30 days, allowing you to review or resend a document as needed. The Pro account is $19.95 per month with the same per page sending charges, but it also comes with a voicemail account that will forward the messages to your email box (audio attachments) and your faxes (sent and received) are saved online for 1 year. A common task is faxing your resume - now you can do it via email with the click of a mouse! If you want to send a free fax via internet faxing - you may be out of luck, since sending a fax involves phone charges while receiving an incoming call or fax does not cost anything.Best Internet Fax ProvidersWhile eFax may be the best internet fax solution, it is not the only one. Send2Fax and J2's Jfax.com are other leading contenders. Jfax is meant more for managing fax marketing campaigns, allowing higher volumes of pages to be sent, providing statistical reporting, and allowing you to monitor the progress of your batch and maintain a "do not fax" list of people who have asked to be removed from your list. There are no sign up fees or fixed monthly charges, but you do pay according to how many pages are sent - 6 cents in the US for example, 12 cents to Australia, etc. Mail merge pages are generally twice the standard rate. Send2Fax starts at $1.95/month (also requires a $20 deposit and $5 setup fee) and required no special software downloads - all you need is an email account. Send2Fax uses the PDF file format for delivering faxes, unlike the proprietary format eFax uses. They also offer Executive packages which are $8-$12 per month and include 100 or 200 free fax pages, and 10 cents a page over that. We really like Send2Fax as well, especially on the international rates which are very low.
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