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Online Fax Side-by-Side Comparisons |
Click on a company name below to see a online fax review for that company |
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What Is an Online Fax Service?
An online fax service is the next step in office automation and online integration. It acts as a proxy fax machine, allowing a user to send and receive paper faxes from ordinary "physical" office machines using online "virtual" fax machine software. Faxed pages are sent, received and retrieved using a web-based interface or directly through the user’s e-mail account, with no indication to any other office that the provided phone number is anything but an ordinary office fax machine. All operations are handled through the fax provider’s servers, including archival functions for messages and multi-person accessibility. |
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Why Use an Online Fax Service?
Universally accessible. Instead of being tied to a physical office location, online fax services can be accessed anywhere via an Internet connection. Both sending and receiving functions, as well as an archive for previous messages, become no more complicated than a web browser.
Convenience. An ordinary fax machine is one more office device to maintain, supply with special paper and toner, service and repair as needed, and takes up valuable desk space. An online fax account provides a “virtual” fax machine with none of these hassles.
Cost effectiveness. Online fax services do not require the repeated purchase of toner, special paper nor the additional expense of a dedicated fax telephone line. And unlike computer-based fax programs, there are no additional software packages to purchase or install.
Environmentally friendly. An online fax service is one step closer to the paperless office. Faxes become electronic instead of paper, toner is no longer necessary, less electricity is used, and the discarded and wasted cover pages on each transmission are eliminated entirely. |
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What to Look for in Online Fax Services:
Standard of service. Reviewing these plans for online fax services, Value-Compare.com has compiled a “standard of service” that should be a minimum for most customers. Your requirements will depend very much upon your individual needs and goals for your office or home use.
- Around $10.00 per month
- At least 300 included send/receive (combined) pages
- No more than an additional $0.10 per overage page
- Service from 5 or more e-mail accounts
- Archived faxes for at least 1 year
- 24/7 phone and e-mail customer support
We do not recommend selecting an online fax service based on a single criteria or product name, such as supported software or commercial affiliation. A basic online fax service should include features sufficient for your immediate needs without additional or incremental costs.
Sending and receiving limits. Online fax services charge a flat monthly fee that includes maximum numbers for pages sent and received through the customer’s account. Once these numbers have been exceeded, additional charges are incurred on a per-page basis.
Junk fax filters. Monthly page quotas can fill up quickly unless the fax service provider has junk-fax filtering software. This function should also include accommodation for failed transmissions (sent or received) without counting toward the monthly page totals.
Fax times versus page counts. Most online fax providers establish a baseline that one faxed page takes one minute or less to transmit. Verify that there are no penalties in either additional costs or against monthly page counts for faxes sent or received that take more than one minute of transmission time. |
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