Can You Send a Fax Without a Phone Line?
Some slow-moving businesses and government agencies may not accept documents over email, forcing y'all to fax them in. If y'all are forced to ship a fax, you can exercise it from your reckoner for free.
Nosotros've previously covered means to electronically sign documents without printing and scanning them. With this procedure, you lot tin digitally sign a document and fax it to a concern — all on your computer and without any printing required.
How Fax Machines Work (and Why They're Then Inconvenient)
This isn't as easy every bit information technology should be. Fax machines are all continued to the plain erstwhile telephone lines. When you use a standard fax auto, that fax automobile places a phone phone call to the number y'all specify. The fax car at the destination number answers and the document is transmitted over a call.
This process was invented before the Internet and seems laughably archaic at this betoken. To perform a fax, a person may type up a document, print it out, and scan it into the fax machine which sends it over the phone line. The person receiving the fax may then scan the faxed document and turn information technology back into a digital file. They've come up full circle — the document was sent from i computer to another computer with much boosted work and lost image quality.
RELATED: How to Electronically Sign PDF Documents Without Press and Scanning Them
Ideally, you'd be able to submit a certificate via e-mail or a more secure online method. Many businesses consider fax a secure method of transmitting documents, just it actually isn't — if someone was snooping on the phone line, they could easily intercept all the faxed documents.
There's no mode to connect to a fax machine direct over the Net, every bit the fax machine is simply continued to telephone lines. To perform a fax online, nosotros'll need some sort of gateway that accepts documents via the Net and transmits the document to a fax machine. That'due south where the beneath services come in. Requite them a document and they'll do the annoying work of dialing upward the fax automobile and sending your document over the telephone line.
You Could Fax With But Your Computer, But…
You could skip the below services, of course. Microsoft Windows even contains a Fax and Browse awarding that allows you to transport faxes. The catch is that yous'd need your reckoner connected to the phone line — yeah, this means that you'd need a dial-upward fax modem. You'd also need a landline telephone connection and yous'd have to tell people to stay off the phone when y'all're sending faxes, only like in the old dial-up Cyberspace days. Of course, if you lot were faxing a lot, you could pay for a dedicated fax telephone line — this might even be necessary if you were receiving a lot of faxes.
This plainly isn't ideal. Certain, if you need to send quite a few faxes, go ahead and buy a fax machine or modem and hook information technology upwardly to your landline. But you lot probably don't need to send and receive faxes this often — you hopefully just need to ship the occasional fax whenever you lot crash-land into an organization that's stuck in the past.
Scan the Certificate or Use an Existing Digital File
RELATED: How to Scan Documents to PDF with Your Android Phone's Camera
The basic process is uncomplicated. Start, you'll need to scan the document you want to fax, just every bit if you were going to send that document over email. if you don't accept a scanner lying effectually, you may desire to try scanning information technology with your smartphone. If the document is already a file on your calculator, congratulations — yous don't accept to browse annihilation.
With the document now in digital form, yous can transport it along to a service that will do the annoying fax work for you lot.
Send Faxes Online, Complimentary
At that place are so many online fax services out there that it's hard to make an informed decision nearly which one to cull. The beginning thing to consider is what kind of a user you lot are, how often you lot'll be faxing, and what features you lot need.
Power User: RingCentral Fax
If you are going to be sending sensitive faxes all the time, or y'all work for a company and y'all're trying to choose a service, RingCentral Fax, which is partially endemic by Cisco and AT&T, is probably the best option for your needs, especially since they have a lot of great security features and support for multiple users with separate fax lines.
It has all the features y'all tin can imagine, including integrations with Outlook, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and y'all tin fifty-fifty get a toll-costless number. It also has a lot of security features that would be useful for businesses or people that are transmitting secure information.
Of form, if you just desire to send a few faxes, you can sign upwardly for one of their inexpensive plans… and then just cancel after a month or two.
Occasional User
If yous do need to send the occasional fax, we recommend signing up for a gratis trial of MyFax, which will let you lot send up to 100 pages, which is more than pages per month than nigh people take to fax per year. If you practise demand to fax frequently, yous can upgrade to a regular plan.
Receiving Faxes
If y'all do need to receive faxes, you lot'll have to sign up for a paid service. The service will need to found a defended telephone number for your fax line, and that costs money. RingCentral, MyFax, and many other services will exercise this if you pay.
RELATED: How to Electronically Sign PDF Documents Without Press and Scanning Them
Luckily, yous should at least exist able to get a complimentary trial — RingCentral offers xxx days of free fax receiving, for example.
There are many fax services to utilise, and if you but need to send the occasional fax, y'all can manage to do that for free, but if you want to receive a fax, you lot'll end up needing to sign up for a trial business relationship. You tin always cancel if you lot want.
Image Credit: Matt Jiggins on Flickr, David Voegtle on Flickr
Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/168841/how-to-send-and-receive-faxes-online-without-a-fax-machine-or-phone-line/
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