4 Easy and Hassle-free Alternatives to Faxing

What’s more outdated, faxing or paying with a check at the grocery store?  It’s a toss up but at least writing a check doesn’t require a machine, a business phone line, paper and ink.

Thousands of businesses maintain a separate business phone line for faxing; some businesses retain multiple lines.  The average business line, with taxes and surcharges, costs at least $30 a month.  A business fax machine costs $300 or more.  Figure in the cost of paper and ink and you wonder why any business still faxes.

Probably the number one reason that businesses still fax is that they want to retain their fax numbers.  The fear here is that a business will miss out on a piece of business because a client will try to transmit a document to a fax line that was discontinued.  This shouldn’t be a concern because the sending party is notified when a fax transmission failed and almost every business has a website where they can list their correct fax number.

We can show you a number of reasons to stop using fax machines and look for other alternatives to fax.

Alternatives to Faxing

The following are four ways to send and receive documents that are less expensive and wasteful than old-fashioned faxing:

Scan and email:

If you don’t have the documents saved electronically, they can be easily scanned, saved, and emailed.  Typically, the recipient will end up scanning a physical document that was faxed and saving an electronic version anyway.

Electronic faxing services:

If your customers or clients don’t own scanners, they can fax documents to an electronic faxing service that will then send the documents to your email.

FTP:

File Transfer Protocol is the computer language used to transfer files from one party to another, over the internet.  If you have documents that customers need to access, they can be placed on a website that clients can sign into and download.

Google Docs:

Google Docs is a free service that allows you to save and store documents.  You can provide access to specified clients who can access, download and print the documents.

Those are just four lower-cost alternatives to faxing.  Sending and receiving documents with any of them will save your company money and give it a more modern image.

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