Online Faxing Remains Competitive

Despite the digital age in which we live, thousands of companies still use fax machines. Yet thousands more use online fax services, and for good reason.

Online fax services can be more economical and, in some cases, more secure. They eliminate the need to own a fax machine and supply it with paper and toner cartridges, and to acquire a dedicated phone line for the fax machine. Maintenance for fax machines also can be costly.

Fax machines range in price from about $40 for a small model to as much as $1,000 for a large model designed for extensive faxing. Most companies will spend from $300 to $600 for a fax machine.

Comparatively, online fax services cost from about $4 to $50 a month, depending on the plan. Several companies offer discounts for annual use. Most have limits on the number of faxes you can send and receive, usually from 175 to 500 per month for a basic plan. They charge additional per-fax costs beyond those limits.

That's why it's important to compare plans and pricing when you're looking for an online fax service. It's also why companies have a multitude of offerings and plans to lure customers and outsell competitors.

Online faxing is not just for small- to medium-sized businesses. Large banks, insurance companies, governments, hospitals, health clinics, mortgage and title companies, realtors and others use online fax services. "We've got accounts that do over several million pages a month," said Mike Lewis, vice president of sales for AirCom LLC, owner of AirComUSA and FaxPipe.com.

The privately held Provo, Utah-based company has been a player in the online fax industry for 16 years, since the introduction of AirComUSA. FaxPipe.com was launched about five years ago. Lewis says there likely are thousands of online fax services, many of which are quite small. His company's largest competition, he said, are fax servers – a device that connects a computer to a phone line and allows faxes to be sent and received from the computer in a manner similar to email.

One of the larger, more aggressive players in the online fax industry is J2 Global Inc., owner of eFax and several other online fax services. The publicly traded company had $316.11 million in revenue for the third quarter of 2011, the most recent quarter available. That includes revenue from online fax services and virtual phone systems, online backups and hosted email.

Many businesses still have traditional fax machines to send purchase orders, signed contracts and other documents, Lewis said. "There's probably more fax machines in the world now than there ever has been."

That's good news for online fax services. Companies without fax machines enroll in a service to be able to fax to clients and businesses that rely on fax machines. Having an online fax service enables digitized companies to continue to do business with landline, paperbound enterprises.

It also makes for a more robust industry as companies vie for every customer out there. That's why AirCom LLC treats even the smallest customer as if they're a large, multi-national corporation, Lewis says. Small business leads to big business, he says, and the field for online faxing is filled with scores of companies competing for market share.

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