I’m looking for an online fax service. Can you tell me what you know about them? Anything to look out for?
If I subscribe to an online fax service and receive a fax from a traditional fax machine, will the sender receive a confirmation fax? If so, does the sender only get it when the recipient actually looks at the fax? What happens if the recipient’s computer is off?
If I use the online fax service to send a fax to a traditional fax machine, do I get a confirmation fax?
I realize that for most people, a confirmation fax is just a nice feature but in this case, it’s a necessary feature. The ability to receive a fax in a way which is no different from the point of view of the sender is also desired: the people who will send me faxes are likely to be rather set in their ways.
Of course, if I can get all that without subscription and get a traditional number in my area, that’d be ideal but I’d be surprised.
Not sure if they will receive a confirmation fax, but their fax machine will indicate that the fax was sent successfully.
When the fax is sent, it is routed through the servers hosted by the company that is providing your online fax service, so the senders machine will indicate that the fax was sent successfully when it is processed by your providers server. Your provider’s system will then store the fax as a PDF in the cloud for you to view and/or email you a copy of the fax. Most will do both.
Most services will provide you with a notification that the fax was sent successfully either via email or in the online interface.
The person sending the fax shouldn’t be able to tell that they are sending it to an online fax rather than a fax machine. If you have very specific needs, you can always sign up for a free trial and test it out. Here is a comparison website for online fax services: findafax.com. The site also lets you view a list of the services and filter by feature, price, etc.
In order to get a number in your area, you’ll have to pay a subscription fee, but they are pretty inexpensive. A lot of services are less than $10/ month, and if you pay annually, your discount can drive it to less than $5/ month and that includes 500 send/ receive pages per month.