Document Scanning

It's a classic case of too much technology for the job.
Office scanners, or a document scanning service can make real nice electronic copies of your paper files. However, you don't really need, or even want, the high resolution files that most scanners produce. Unless you are copying arcetictual designs.....

The solution; fax it to yourself. All fax machines reduce resolutions and thus create smaller files - easier to manage and send as an e-mail attachment.

I recommend most any internet fax service for this.

Realtors and Mortgage Brokers

Currently the biggest market for web fax services is the real estate industry. Contracts need signatures, then they need more signatures. The industry has tried several 'electronic signature' programs but they all have steep learning curves.

So, faxing is still one of the main tools used in the industry.

Most professionals only use the 'receiving' part of their web fax program. Send them a fax and it goes to their e-mail as a .pdf attachment. Then they just file it on their local drive.

Scanning Documents Using a Fax Machine

Scanning documents has been creating a few problems lately. Seems that most folks are scanning everything at the highest resolution. Thus, a simple 5 page document can be 5MB+ and too large for many e-mail programs. Plus, sending such huge documents will quickly fill someones email box quota.
An option is to just fax the documents to yourself. If you don't need print quality documents then this works great.

Simply compile all the documents needed and run them through any standard fax machine. The faxing process automatically reduces the resolution, typically under 100KB per page. When it arrives in your in-box, simply rename the document and file it in an appropriate folder on your local drive.

If you need to fax something to a person without a fax machine then you can simply fax the document to yourself, then forward the e-mail on to them.

Market Development of Fax Services

The market is currently dominated by J2 Global. Their main website is eFax.com but they also have several other web properties including fax.com, rapid fax, send2fax, jblast and a few others.

As the brand leader in this field, they have good support but the highest service fees and most restrictive end user policies in the industry.
For example, they are the only company that will NOT allow you to transfer your fax number (port fax number) to a new carrier. Remember when the cell phone carriers used to do that...it took an actual 'act of congress' to open up the market. That has not happened with fax numbers.
Well, eFax has a good reason to try to hold on to their existing customers. Market pricing has dropped to half of their current rates - and most new customers choose a different carrier. Today, a common price point is under $10- a month for up to 500 pages. In fact, there are even some free (limited) services available. So, if they allowed their customers to move their numbers to a lower cost carrier, they would probably loose a good portion of their business.

Ask any competitive efax service provider and they will tell you that they frequently get letters from the lawyers at J2 Global. Mostly, they threaten to sue the small operations for even the grayest of trademark infringements, like mentioning on their website that they are cheaper than eFax. They play hardball.

However, since the technology behind fax servers is very mature, even the smallest providers are using state of the art equipment. Basically, the same service for half the price.

Types of Web Fax Services

Inbound or Outbound - most people only use one of them.
Fax providers use 'leased lines' - just like cell phone providers. The pricing behind leased lines is that it's more expensive to send 'outgoing' faxes than to receive 'incoming' faxes.
So, you will see web fax plans available with differing usage limits.
Today, most users are just 'receiving' faxes. i.e.; a signed contract, or an order from a distributor.
Outbound faxes have largely been replaced with e-mail blasts.

Can't believe I still fax things...

I remember when my company got one of the first fax machines commercially available. Very few companies had them yet and we used it just to send reports to the company headquarters. This technology, for sure, was going to put FedEx out of business.
Then, as soon as other local companies started getting machines the junk faxes started. First it was joke lists. Then it was advertisements. Spam was invented.

Today, the humble fax machine is still in every office. Still providing something that personal computers can't yet do; getting signatures on paper.

However, with the advent of email fax services, web based e-mail faxes actually run through spam filters.