Things You Should Know About Faxing
Before the regular use of computers to send email messages, faxes, short for facsimile, were used to send scanned print material over a phone line. If you filled out a form and needed to send it across the country quickly, you would use a fax machine to dial the fax line of where it needed to be sent. With just a push of a button, your form would feed through the machine and a copy of the form would reach its destination immediately.
While some faxing has gone by the wayside since email has become a regular source of communication, many businesses still use this method to receive important documents quickly.
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The Pros of Using Faxes
Faxing is perfect for projects with a sense of urgency. If you need to get a document to its destination quickly, you fax it, so it can get there nearly instantly. When a business needs a signed document, most still require it to be faxed rather than emailed since the written signature is the most legally binding.
Faxing is also a more secure form of document transfer than through traditional Internet means. The telephone line through which the fax travels adds a layer of encryption to avoid losing important information to competitors.
Email Faxing as a Telephone Faxing Alternative
A major con to sending traditional faxes is that most people don't have home phone lines and don't own fax machines anymore. Instead, they keep computer equipment and use cellular phones as their main form of communication.
Without the means for a traditional fax, this can cause problems when suddenly requested to fax important documents. Luckily, email faxing has bridged the gap between the two technologies.
With email faxing, a user without a traditional phone line or fax machine can send a document to a recipient's fax machine. All a user needs is an Internet connection and use of an email fax company. Users can even receive faxes straight to their email if a client is sending it from a traditional fax machine.
For instance, email fax services by Metrofax give many options for users to send faxes over the Internet. They offer these services, among others:
• Receiving faxes from a machine to your email
• Sending faxes from email to a fax machine
• Sending and receiving faxes from smartphones and other mobile devices
• Small business accounts
• Corporate accounts
• Free trials
With this kind of technology, email faxing solves the logistical problems of traditional faxing for those without phone lines.
