Being able to find a fax service near you can be a minefield of frustration and disappointment.
With COVID-19 plummeting most people into a remote-working environment, getting easy access to your office fax machine, or any fax machine at that, is likely to be an impossible task. You could buy one for your home office; however, fax machines are expensive. They are also large, bulky and resource-intensive.
Alternatively, you could spend ages scrolling through the results of search engines to find that your nearest physical fax service provider is tens of miles away. In the UK, physical stores offering fax services are few and far between. You could pop into a local hotel, post office or library to see if they have a fax machine they would let you use, though there is no guarantee they’ll have one, and there is likely to be a charge if they do let you use it. Ryman stationery shops offer a printing and fax service, charging £1.50 per page you want to send or receive as fax (£3.50 if it’s for an international recipient). Though these stores tend to only be found on the highstreets of busy cities so they might be hard to get to if you live out of town.
At this point, you would be forgiven for crying out in despair, “THERE MUST BE ANOTHER WAY!”.
What if we told you there was?
What if we told you that as you are reading this, we know there is a fax service sitting innocently on top of your desk right at this very moment? Or charging on your bedside table — or squeezed into your trouser pocket, digging into your leg.
With roughly 43 million fax machines used to send billions of fax documents every year, at eFax we understand the necessity businesses have for their employees to be able to access a secure and flexible fax service 24/7.
This is where our digital fax solution comes in.
The Tech Revolution: Faxing at Your Fingertips
Location, location, location.
Here at eFax, we understand the level of importance the location of our fax service has for our clients. That is why we offer our service in the most prime place of them all: at your fingertips.
Our solution is simple. Utilising the advances of cloud technology, we have built a secure and effortless service that enables you to send a fax from your laptop, desktop, mobile phone — any device you choose. All you need is a good internet connection and a low-cost eFax subscription. No fax machine required.
Online faxing is a straightforward practice that eliminates the need for the legacy fax machine. It allows you to send and receive fax documents over the internet using phones, computers and tablets. Instead of transmitting physical paper files, our system operates using digital documents like PDFs. You upload your document to your eFax account and send it using our custom-built online portal.
This process means you don’t have to print off documents to fax them. However, if you want to fax a physical document, you can always capture it using smartphone cameras for easy upload to our service. You can also easily view and retrieve all archived faxes.
The technological revolution of these services means you can also use our online fax services to send documents directly to a fax machine. You can also have fax documents sent to your eFax digital account from a traditional fax machine. This process is achieved through custom eFax document converter tools that ensure files submitted by digital systems and physical fax hardware are compatible with the recipient’s technology. Other core communication tools, such as email, are incapable of performing this action.
No obligation. No set-up fees. No risk.
Why Do Businesses Still Need to Fax?
Believe it or not, fax in the modern day is still prevalent.
While usage has decreased since the 70s and 80s, many businesses still fax. It has a few significant benefits over any other kind of document communication format. The highly visual nature of fax documents make them easy to dissect and extract information quickly, and the nature of sending image files improves the legal authenticity of the content. As a result, you’ll find industries like healthcare, legal, and finance all rely on fax just as much today as they did thirty years ago. This reliance has a trickle-down effect on other sectors.
Fax is also a key tool for businesses that operate internationally and for those considering global expansion to reach new customers and improve net profits. A lot of countries opt to use fax as their main method of communication, believing it to be the most secure way of sharing their documents. A great example of this comes from Japan, where fax machines are prominent in almost all industries. Without the ability to fax, companies will struggle to succeed in this international market.
However, while the use of fax for communication has stayed in high demand, and fax machine sales have remained strong globally, our need for a physical fax machine has been steadily declining. This decrease in the necessity for fax machines is best highlighted by national telecoms provider BT announcing that they will shut off their ISDN and PSTN services by 2025. The move brings to an end the use of analogue phone lines and moves communications technology into an entirely online space.
Traditional Faxing vs Online Faxing
Why is there an urgent need to upgrade your old-fashioned fax machine to an online fax service?
The fax machine is a piece of technology that has truly stood the test of time — up until now. While it stands proudly in the corner of your office, like an unchanging relic from a bygone era, the fax machine still carries technical issues that — in any other piece of hardware — would have been updated and resolved. Issues with fax machines include:
- Fax negotiation failure
- Communication errors
- Paper jams
- “No Fax Detected” warnings
- Destination number blocks
- “Number Busy” notifications.
If you use a fax machine regularly, you’ve probably experienced all of the above at least once. These problems mean the fax isn’t sent properly and productivity is hampered.
What we can deduce from this is that while the fax itself is a great method of communication — it’s visual, it’s easy to use and it’s legally authentic — the fax machine is not fit for purpose in the modern world.
Online faxing offers the same fundamental service of the physical fax machine but brings it into the digitised age. There are also a lot more additional benefits of switching to a digital solution:
- Increased Data Security — Fax machines were not built for modern data security threats. They are easy to hack and come with a wealth of other problems, such as the increased risk of human error and a high chance of unauthorised file access. The physical files from machine faxing are also easy to misplace or damage. These risks can create major problems for businesses, especially in light of new data compliance laws. eFax, however, features a wealth of security benefits that help to secure your documents and bring fax data security in line with 21st-century demands.
- Lower Costs — eFax is a much more cost-effective solution for your business. Monthly subscription costs are low, and there are no additional fees. You don’t have to pay for the resources required to send paper fax. You also don’t need to pay for fax numbers, phone lines, maintenance and the actual costs of the units themselves.
- Flexibility — With the rise of remote working comes the need for solutions to facilitate the demand. Fax machines are not supportive of flexible work. They are not mobile or remotely connective. eFax, however, is a completely remote experience. You can send online fax from anywhere you have an internet connection, which means flexible working becomes easy for any employees who need to send a fax as part of their job. Finding a fax service has never been so easy — or so close.
For an online fax solution that is never far from your grasp, join the millions of businesses that subscribe and use our services each and every month. Get instant access to all our fax technology by signing up to our cloud fax service and start your free trial.