 | Low: Start $3.50-$17 a Month; Some As Low As $20-$30 a Year |
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| With a fax service you send and receive your faxes by e-mailing them to your fax service company, which sends and receives them for you. You don't have to buy a fax machine or tie up a phone line -- and you don't have to print out your incoming faxes unless you choose to, which can save paper. Although a great deal of business communication can now be done by e-mail, faxes are still excellent for immediate transmission of signed documents such as contracts or sales agreements. | | |
| Typical costs: | - Charges for Internet/e-mail-based fax services start around $3.50 -$17 a month, although the fees may be higher for heavy-volume faxing, and some services charge a $5 -$10 set-up fee. The less expensive services include only a few or no free pages, while others may allow 130-1,000 free pages each month, depending on whether the pages are incoming or outgoing. Extra pages beyond the allowed amount can be 3 cents - 10 cents apiece, but can cost up to 20 cents - 25 cents a page if you choose to provide a toll-free number (rather than local) to receive your incoming faxes. Some Internet fax services offer a yearly subscription for about $20 -$30 for extremely low-volume faxing. And some companies bill per minute rather than per page, with the average fax taking less than 40 seconds per page.
What should be included: | - With an Internet fax service, , you e-mail your faxes with the document(s) needing to be faxed included as an attachment to the e-mail. The service then faxes the documents for you, and converts your incoming documents into e-mail messages that are sent to you. The fax service provides you with a phone number for incoming faxes, either a local or toll-free number. Typically it's your choice, with the toll-free number costing more although some services provide a toll-free number at no extra charge. Internet faxing makes it easier to schedule faxes, archive faxes or send multiple faxes to multiple recipients, with immediate delivery confirmation. You can make a paper copy of an incoming fax by sending it to your computer printer, or you can save paper by not having to print every fax you receive. Faxes can be sent or received anywhere you have access to the Internet. OnlineFaxGuide.com answers frequently asked questions about Internet faxing.
Additional costs: | - Although several online companies advertise free fax service, be sure to read the fine print carefully. For some services, only incoming faxes are free and there's a charge for each outgoing fax sent. Other free online fax services may only allow a total of 20-30 documents per month, or offer free service for only a trial period, and then start charging.
Shopping for a fax service: | - Before choosing a service, estimate how many faxes you expect to send and receive each month. Then you'll need to compare quality of service; price; availability; customer support; and level of individual attention from smaller or larger service providers. InternetFaxGuide.org posts a list of Internet fax companies both large and small; OnlineFaxGuide.com offers a quick comparison chart of the larger online fax services.
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Article updated January 2009 |
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