Online Fax – What is an “Email to Fax” Gateway?

Needless to say, in today’s computer-controlled world, the Internet or online faxing has become very popular among all segments of the population. Despite this popularity, many individuals and business owners still do not fully understand how online faxing really works. You often hear this question:

What is an email-to-fax gateway?

In other words, how do I use my current email system to send a fax to a traditional fax machine? What gateway or fax program do I use? While any computer with a fax modem can send a fax, most people and businesses these days turn to online fax service providers to handle all their faxing.

Your online provider can take your email and send it to a fax number or machine. This is what really confuses some people, how can my email be turned into a fax? The answer lies in our original question: these online providers are actually “email-to-fax gateways” that can process your email and route it to a traditional fax machine or send it to another email address . Your message or fax is sent as an email attachment; most of the time your message/fax is in a PDF or Tiff file.

Your email-to-fax gateway is really this online fax provider that acts on your behalf to handle and process all your faxes or messages.

Once you sign up with your chosen provider, you’ll be given a local or toll-free fax number that you can send to all your contacts. If you have a well-established business fax number and don’t want to lose this vital connection to your customers, many online fax services will allow you to “port” your existing number to their services. Although there is usually a small fee associated with this transfer.

Now, once you’ve chosen a provider, you’ll also be provided with an online account or interface, where you’ll log in to review your messages. Just think of this as an email account with the added ability to send faxes. Just like an email account, you can check your messages/faxes anywhere and anytime as long as you are connected to the Internet.

In fact, these “email to fax gateway” services are really a simple form of “cloud computing” where you have outsourced your faxing to a remote third party host or server. Just as we have now turned to the web and computers to send our mail, we can do the same with our faxes using one of these online providers.

However, unlike many email accounts that are free, purchasing a fax account or provider will cost you $8-$10 per month. Although there are many cheaper services available, it’s worth shopping around. Also, there are some “pay as you go” services that can be very cost effective if your faxing requirements are very low.

Now each provider or gateway will have slightly different conditions and rates. So you need to check how many faxes you can send each month, both incoming and outgoing? You should also check what the “overage” charge will be, should you go over your monthly limit? You should also check international rates because carriers sometimes charge more to send these messages.

Other things worth checking, how many email addresses can you connect to your fax number? This is important if you want all your company messages to be sent to different workers or departments. How long will your faxes be stored online? What are the support hours and support number in case things go wrong?

Regardless of additional terms and conditions, most modern businesses now have at least one fax number online. This gives employees and customers the means to communicate with the company anytime, anywhere. Plus, these services are completely paperless and much cheaper than traditional services because you don’t need to set up or maintain a dedicated fax phone line, or fax machine for that matter.

In general, opting for an “email to fax gateway” service will fully integrate all of your communications with your computers and the web. This may be a very smart business move on your part, but like all business decisions, is it your call?