Network and Voice
Hosted Fax
Hosted fax sends and receives faxes through a provider's cloud service instead of a fax machine, a fax server or a phone line in your office. An incoming fax lands in a mailbox as an email attachment. To send one, you email the document to the destination number. You can keep the fax numbers you have by porting them to the new service.
- 5 companies on the shelf
- Coverage
Buyer's checklist
Eight questions that decide this purchase
Think these through before you buy. Answer what you can and your quote comes back faster. Skip what you cannot, and we will work through it with you.
- 01
What do you have today: fax machines, a fax server of your own, a hosted service, or a mix?
- 02
Who sends the faxes: people, a business application, or both?
- 03
Roughly how many users, how many fax numbers and how many pages a month?
- 04
Do your existing numbers need to move with you? Settle porting before you sign, because your partners already have those numbers on file.
- 05
Which rules must you be able to document, such as HIPAA, PCI, GLBA or SOX?
- 06
How should people reach it: email, a web portal, inside Teams, an API, or a gateway that keeps an existing machine working?
- 07
Which applications and processes depend on a fax step today?
- 08
Are you buying fax alone, or together with phones, texting or a contact center?
No company matches every box you checked
That usually means the combination is rare, not impossible. Clear a filter, or add the service and we will go find who can do it.
Capabilities come from published supplier material. We confirm them for your addresses before anything is quoted.
More on what it is
Fax has outlived every prediction of its death because it leaves a verifiable trail. Patient records, signed agreements, property contracts and banking instructions still move this way, and the organization on the other end often requires it.
There are several ways to reach the service, and the right one depends on who is doing the faxing. People use email, a web portal, or a button inside a collaboration app such as Microsoft Teams. A business application uses an API, a connection that lets software send and receive faxes with no person handling each page. A site that cannot give up its machine yet can keep it, with a small gateway box that connects the machine to the cloud service and needs no phone line.
A good platform also does the chores. It retries automatically when the far end is busy. It gives an administrator one dashboard for users, roles and activity logs. The more capable ones add scheduled delivery, encryption and automatic archiving, and can read an incoming fax and route it to the right person or system without anyone touching it.
Know three things before you buy. Moving off a fax server you run yourself is a migration project, with workflows to untangle, and it does not happen overnight. A bundled plan does not always cover every destination, so check the places you actually fax. And cloud fax services are not interchangeable. Heavy or regulated volume calls for a provider built for it.
Fax is also one of the devices left stranded when copper phone lines are retired. If that is what brought you here, read Voice Lines and SIP Trunking as well.
Who needs it
- You handle patient records, signed agreements or property contracts, where a verifiable trail still matters.
- You are a bank or a financial firm moving payment instructions and account paperwork.
- You are moving your phones to the cloud or into Teams, and the fax machines are what is left over.
- Your faxes still run through multifunction printers wired to phone lines.
- You are closing a server room or a data center, and the fax server has to go somewhere.
- A business application needs to send or receive faxes with nobody standing at a machine.
If you send a handful of faxes a year, you do not need a project. A basic email-to-fax plan will do, and many cloud phone providers offer one as part of the package.
Signs you need it
- Faxes get misdialed, lost or misfiled because a person handles every one by hand.
- There is no fallback when the fax line, the machine or the server goes down.
- Nobody is sure the way you handle faxes today would satisfy an auditor.
- IT spends real time keeping an old fax server alive.
- Volume swings from a trickle to a spike the current setup cannot absorb.
How IT Raven helps
Add Hosted Fax to your quote list and tell us your volumes, your numbers and what faxes touch in your business. A person takes that to the fax and cloud communications providers in our 500+ partner network and sorts them on what matters for you: whether they serve people or applications well, the standards they can document, and the destinations their plans really cover.
Fax usually rides along with a bigger move. If the phones are changing too, we quote Cloud Phone Systems in the same request, and one provider can often handle both. We stay on one thread through number porting, the cutover and the retirement of the old server and lines, and the same team is here afterward.
How buying works
The store is the easy part. Staying on the account is the job.
Anyone can show you logos. The reason to buy here is what happens on install night, and on the ticket you open nine months later.
- 01
Build your quote list
Add services and companies as you shop. No form stands between you and the shelf.
- 02
We bring back real options
A person shops the bench against your addresses, then walks you through what fits and what does not.
- 03
We handle the order and install
Paperwork, site survey, install dates, cutover night. You get one thread, not five vendors.
- 04
We stay on your account
Same team for moves, adds, tickets and the next renewal. That is the part everyone else drops.