Although we sell fax machines, supplies for fax machines, and fax switches, which can all help you manage your faxes, I am going to suggest you get rid of your fax machine entirely (or save it for limited outgoing faxes). Why? Simply a plain old fax machine (thermal, laser, or plain paper) is an outdated method of using fax technology.
There are two alternatives I will look at here and explain the benefits from my own experience. You might find some combination to best fit your needs and budget.
First, there are various "fax switches" which are designed to share different devices on a single phone line (ie: use one phone line for a fax and regular phone/answering machine). These generally work well within their limitations. The most significant limitation is you still have one phone line and it is shared. You can talk on the phone or receive a fax. You cannot do both at the same time.
Let's look at an option where you can receive faxes all day long and not have it interfere with the use of your one phone line at all. If you talk on the phone 24 hours a day, you can still receive faxes 24 hours a day. How? It's simple with an internet based fax service.
The one I like best for receiving faxes is Packetel. Once you sign up you are assigned a fax number (one limitation is that they might not have your area code available). Any fax sent to that number is emailed to you (you can change the email address anytime, and also have a single fax number send the faxes to several email addresses at the same time). The cost is just a few dollars a month. For the cost of a regular phone line you can have several fax numbers.
We find this service tremendously useful for a number of reasons. We can assign different fax numbers for specific purposes, ie: we have a fax number just to receive sales tax exemption forms. These forms all end up in one email address and can be processed efficiently. None of our phone lines are tied up receiving faxes. No wasted paper (or phone line time) for junk faxes. Other fax numbers are assigned to specific employees and one for general faxes. It helps get the faxes to the person that needs them and only those that we need on paper are printed.
A packetel fax line for receiving faxes and a regular fax machine for sending can be an excellent combination (and I think in many cases a great alternative to a fax switch).
Ring Central offers a full voip, voicemail, fax solution via the internet. I don't find the voice features to be of interest (though you might). The fax reception with packetel works so well I haven't explored that option from Ring Central. However, the faxing capability was of great interest.
Once you sign up for Ring Central, a "printer" is installed. Anything you print to that printer, is of course faxed. It works much like the fax modems. However, it doesn't use a phone line and I haven't encountered any of the frustrations of a fax modem with their service.
It is a great alternative to printing a document only to shove that document into the fax machine and then end up with a big pile of paper. There are a few things I don't like, they default to high resolution when standard would work for most things. An email is sent to you indicating that a fax has sent properly or failed. It would be nice to have a better way of tracking failed faxes to resend them
For sending one page documents that you don't have on the computer it works well. For example, I use the Canon scanner toolbox and just tell it I want to "copy" a document and select the fax printer. Off it goes.
Since all the faxing is done through the internet, it is quick and you don't tie up a phone line. If you have large documents to send that don't originate on your computer, the plain old regular fax machine is what you need.
Ring Central charges a monthly fee and a per minute charge for outgoing faxes.
Of course, Packetel and Ring Central are of tremendous advantage to those who are outside the USA as you have "free" access to sending and receiving faxes in the USA.
These and other internet base fax resources can help you get the best out of fax technology and eliminate a lot of the frustration of trying to share a phone line.
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