When you don’t have a fax machine, or you don’t want to use it, then you can send and receive faxes through the Internet. There are services online that allow you to do so. These services give you a virtual fax number which will be used by your Internet faxing software to send and receive faxes. You can then print a fax, send it off to another recipient and save it on your computer.

The advantage of using Internet fax is that you won’t need a fax machine to receive faxes. A person who is sitting in a fully-equipped office environment wants to send you a fax immediately. Your problem is that you don’t have a fax machine, and his problem is that he doesn’t have an Internet connection. You can resolve this matter by telling that person your virtual fax number and receive fax from his fax machine on your desktop!

The companies from which you buy a faxing service may charge you a monthly fee depending on many factors. If you have requested to have a toll-free number then it may cost more than having a local number. Similarly, if you have to send faxes off to numbers that are not local then you will be charged some extra fee. Some services limit faxes only to local numbers. So you will have to search on the Internet for the kind of service you need.