Features of Internet Fax Service

Internet fax plays a central role in today's world of Internet-based communications and people are bidding adieu to traditional fax equipment with all its concomitant bother. The chief function of Internet fax is to send and receive faxes from your existing email account - thus obviating the need for any additional phone lines, fax modem or fax machine. When a fax message is received, it gets routed to your inbox.

There are a host of Internet fax features - here is a list of the salient ones:

• Using a toll free or local number, the user will be able send and receive faxes to and from any fax machine.
• Incoming fax messages will reach your email inbox and conveniently be available in an online account for easy retrieval.
• Absolute secrecy is maintained as outgoing faxes are transmitted over an encrypted connection. Rest assured your faxes will go through to the sender without any apprehension of them being picked up by any third parties. Further, the user can retain incoming faxes in a password-protected online account.
• The unique facility of fax logs for users who have massive client lists, and are having to send/receive sizable quantities of fax messages every day. This features allows you to maintain a detailed and regularly updated record of who's called, what number was used, and the time the message went through.
• Software for fax editing is available to facilitate preview and print faxes, design custom cover sheets and effect electronic signatures.
• Free fax software is available to electronically sign and edit faxes.
• The user can obtain text messages on his/her cell phone or via PDA with fax alerts.
• Feasible to store exhaustive record of faxes in Web-based account.
• As opposed to a traditional fax machine, Internet Fax lets you block junk faxes as easily as you block junk email. You will thus save time and money on printing costs.
• With some services, you can type in your mobile phone number into your fax-to-email account, and thereby receive alerts by means of a text message.
• There is number porting facility. If the user wants to switch from conventional fax machine to an online fax-to-email service, without giving up original fax number - certain services will allow you to port your existing fax number to their online service.
• Companies with a single dedicated fax number don't need to fear clogged lines. You can have multiple faxes sent to you simultaneously without fax messages getting lost, and more importantly without the need for a second line. Group faxing to multiple clients simultaneously is possible with just a few key clicks of your mouse.

Environmentalists are gleeful that fax machines have gone digital by allowing businesses to transfer paper faxes into digital ones availing the fax-to-email web-based services on the Internet. GreenFax (a government research agency) has come out with a shocking revelation that fax machines consume few billion pages of paper each year in the United States alone - not to speak of the entire world. Environmentalists argue that if even five percent of fax messages were done without paper, the world will be richer by more than a million trees a year.

Tags: email inbox, apprehension, fax machine, printing costs, internet fax, mobile phone number, traditional fax, fax modem