If you are here, you probably want to use fax services for your business or transmitting an important conversation for a one time use. Either way, you aren’t alone. Fax is a prominent and one of the most used methods for formal communication around the world.
There are many businesses who have integrated fax systems for their entire offices and all the communication is carried out exclusively through it. In fact, even the government suggests using fax for sending your documents to any official government agency.
This is all due to the high security and speed offered by fax services. Further, the chances of someone not reading their fax is very less as compared to them not reading their email. Therefore, the reliability when you are transmitting documents via fax is unparalleled.
However, while the fax service is not dead, phone lines and fax machines definitely are. You no longer see businesses commonly offering you fax services on the street, advertising their bulky fax machine that takes up almost half of the counter space.
Therefore, today you are going to learn about a cool way to fax without a phone line to any corner of the world.
Part
1: How Fax Machines Work (& Why People Avoid Using It)?
Understanding how fax machines work gives you an insight on why people needed phone lines in order to send and receive faxes.
Fax machines are connected to telephone lines, which work on analog signals. Sending a fax through a phone line is similar to calling someone on their landline phone. When you fax a document from your end, the document gets converted to fax readable format and travels on the phone line. It is then received by the receiver’s fax machine and printed out for them. The same process follows in reverse when you receive a fax on your fax machine.
Inconvenience
of Faxing through Phone Lines
There are a lot of reasons for why people avoid faxing through their phone lines. Some of the most common ones include:
- Faxing through phone lines require you to purchase additional hardware like fax machine, paper, toner, ink, with regular maintenance for the machine. The costs of these can run very high. Therefore, it is a very costly investment.
- You need to keep your fax machine turned on 24×7 if you want to receive a fax through phone lines. If you switch the machine off, you will miss the faxes that are sent in that time period.
- At times, you might have to jump through hoops to get a telephone line to your home and a fax number from them. A fax number is mandatory if you wish to fax.
- You can choose to print the faxes you like. You can also directly fax softcopies of the documents. There, you will save a considerable amount of paper through this.
There are a lot of other downsides to faxing through phone line. This is why, even people who own a fax machine do not use it to send and receive faxes.
Part
2: Can I Fax Without a Phone Line?
To answer your question in a single word- YES. While fax signals only travel on phone lines exclusively, it is still possible to send and receive faxes without having a phone connection on your end. In fact, this doesn’t even require you to have a fax machine or a fax modem.
Many users aren’t aware that there are online fax services which allow you to send faxes over the internet. You might be thinking that it sounds the same as email, but it is quite different. These faxes are received by the other person right on their fax machine. To them, it is like you have a high end fax machine of your own.
While most fax services allow you to send faxes through the internet, the way that I am going to discuss today lets you receive faxes as well as send them. Not only that, it even gives you a free fax number of your without a phone connection.
Part
3: Send Faxes Online, Free
As I mentioned before, there are countless services that give you the comfort of sending faxes online. However, here is the best online fax service that is used by a majority of fax users across the world. You can use it to send and receive faxes absolutely free.
CocoFax-
Handles Sensitive Fax Documents With Ease
CocoFax is the go-to online fax service for anyone who wishes to integrate fax with their business and even for people who just want to use fax once or twice.
CocoFax offers a range of fax solutions that provide you online fax services, starting from the free plans which you can use to evaluate how online fax works.
Since most people who use fax do so due to the security and confidentiality of the documents, CocoFax employs some of the toughest encryption protocols in the world to keep your data completely private. Not only that, the service is very fast, secure, and reliable.
Not only that, CocoFax integrates with any possible workflow that your business uses. It has single click solutions to fax from your web browser, email, Google drive, smartphones, and many other platforms. The convenience you get with CocoFax is not hard to imagine if you try.
Occasional
User- Free Fax Number
If you just want to use fax once or twice, you can get a fax number from CocoFax absolutely free. This number can be obtained by going to their website and requesting for a free fax number right on the homepage. You won’t have to share any payment details for the same, making it 100% free.
This free fax number lasts for a limited time and offers you limited fax usage, which is going to be enough for you if you just want to use the service once or twice. However, if fax is something you use regularly, the subscription plans (at negligible costs) might interest you.
Regular
User- Permanent Fax Number
If you are a regular user, you should consider creating a CocoFax account. When you sign up for an account, you get to choose your own custom fax number from countless available options. You can select a fax number that you like the most, and keep this number permanently.
Further, when you create a CocoFax account, you get a 30-day free trial period along with it. You can use this time to evaluate CocoFax’s services thoroughly. If you cancel your subscription during this time period, you are not charged even a single cent.
This is what makes CocoFax my favorite online fax service. Believe me, if you get a fax number from CocoFax, you are going to consider it as one of the best professional decisions you make for your brand.
Now let us learn how you can send and receive faxes online without phone lines via CocoFax:
Part
4: How to Send Faxes Without Phone Lines
If you want to send faxes without phone lines, CocoFax offers you multiple ways for the same. I will describe you the steps for the most common way used by professionals:
Sending
Fax through Web Browser
You can send any document present on your smartphone or computer as a fax directly from the CocoFax web browser. You won’t need any fax service for it, and the process is as easy as something can be. The awesome part is that your faxes remain synced with all your devices without having to download an app of any of these devices.
If you want to send faxes without phone lines through your web browser, you just have to follow these steps:
Step 1: Register for CocoFax through their website. You get to choose your own fax number, along with the 30-day free trial period.
Step 2: Once you register, you will be taken to your dashboard. You can login to your dashboard at any time later through CocoFax’s website.
Step 3: Click on the ‘New Fax’ button on the corner of the dashboard. The popup to create a fax will open.
Step 4: Enter the fax number of the receiver in the ‘To’ field. You can enter a note to the fax in the ‘Subject’ field. This name will appear on top of the fax document on the receiver’s end. Anything you enter in the body field appears as a cover page to the fax to the receiver.
Step 5: Attach the document(s) that you wish to fax with the ‘attach’ icon. CocoFax supports a variety of formats, including: docx, pdf, xls, xlsx, png, and jpg. If you attach multiple fax documents, they will be merged as a single document. Further, you can also enter the cloud link of your document as well.
Step 6: Click on the ‘Send’ button. CocoFax will immediately transmit your fax to the receiver and you will get a detailed delivery report in your email inbox.
As you can see, the process is very easy and similar to sending an email. Further, the delivery reports in your email inbox are just an added comfort that can turn out to be very helpful at times.
Part
5: How to Receive Faxes Without Phone Lines
Receiving faxes through CocoFax is an added feature that is absent in most other online fax services. Further, even when receiving faxes, you get a lot of benefits that are missing if you using the fax machine and phone line setup.
Once you have created an account with CocoFax with the steps mentioned earlier, you will automatically start receiving your faxes. As you read before, you get a fax number from CocoFax when you create a CocoFax account. People can send you faxes on this fax number.
When someone sends you a fax, you immediately get a notification from CocoFax in your email inbox. When you open this email, you will find the details of the sender there. The fax document is added as a PDF attachment to this email.
The advantage here is that you have the choice of whether you wish to print this fax or not. This saves a lot of paper as well as other resources. Further, you can also forward the fax directly with a single click.
Also, you won’t have to keep any device switched on 24×7 in order to receive your faxes. CocoFax automatically receives them on your behalf.
You can also check all your received faxes in the ‘Inbox’ tab of your CocoFax web dashboard (which you can access by logging into the website).
If your computer is a Mac, you can also check this article to fax from Mac.
Part
6: Fax from Smartphone
You can also fax directly from your iPhone and Android smartphone by using CocoFax’s web dashboard. Not only that, CocoFax also offers email to fax features, which allow you to fax from your email app on your smartphone.
Therefore, if you don’t have a softcopy of the document, you can simply click a picture of the hardcopy. You can then fax it directly with a single click.
Email
to Fax
In order to use the email to fax feature, you just have to open your email client and click on the option to create a new email. Drafting a fax here is similar to creating an email. The only difference is that in the ‘To’ field, you add the fax number of the receiver followed by ‘@cocofax.net’.
For faxes sent from US to US, the sender needs to add ‘1’ before the fax number. If the fax number is 123456, they have to enter:
Takeaways
As you can see, faxing without phone line is a lot easier and a lot better. All you have to do is use CocoFax, and consider your job done. In fact, I think you should try it out now and send a free fax to any fax number to see if it is the right app for you.
