- Traditional or Online Fax Number?
- Benefits of Using Online Fax Services
- 1. How to Find a Fax Number Online
- 2. Visit Your Company’s Website
- 3. Send a Fax to Your Email
- 4. Send Fax Online to Your Colleagues
- 5. Contact Fax Service Provider
- 6. Get a Fax Number
- Online Fax Services
- Traditional Fax Machines
- Virtual Phone Faxing
- Faxing App
- Dedicated Faxing Services
- Frequently Asked Questions
It’s easy to forget things such as your fax number because you don’t usually send faxes to yourself. That’s why it’s good to have it handy in the footer of your website or on some dashboard of your faxing service.
People used to write it on sticky notes and stick them to the machine just to remember the number. Now, it depends on the type of service you use. So, let’s discuss ways you can find your fax number.
Traditional or Online Fax Number?
How to find a fax number will largely depend on what you’re using, a traditional fax machine or an online faxing service. If you’re using a traditional faxing machine, you can probably contact your provider to see what your number is.
With an online faxing service, it’s much easier because you can just sign into your account and look at your dashboard to find out what your number is. You can try other things to figure it out, and we’ll discuss that right after we talk about the benefits of using online faxing services.
Benefits of Using Online Fax Services
The main benefit of online fax services is the convenience of it. Almost everywhere we have internet access, and as a business, you probably have a very reliable internet connection thanks to your internet service provider. Apart from convenience, there are other benefits like:
- Digital integrations: You can use fax on your email account, and you can integrate it with almost any kind of cloud storage. You can also use mobile apps for faxing at this point if your online faxing provider offers such a solution.
- Lower costs: The cost is low because there’s no need for maintenance of additional hardware, or phone lines, and there’s no paper. Plus, it’s energy-efficient as there’s no need for a fax machine to be on all the time.
- Compliance and security: All the transmissions can be encrypted, there can be different access controls assigned based on user credentials, and there’s something called HIPPA compliance as well.
- Effectiveness: The fax transmission is fast because it’s instant over the internet, and you can instantly send multiple documents to several people at the same time. Plus, it’s easy to have a reference for what you’ve sent and received.
- Environmental benefits: There’s no paper, so there’s not that much waste. But, the power usage is also very low.
- Scalability: It’s easy to adapt to new users, add new fax numbers, assign entire departments, make local and toll-free options, and make all sorts of adjustments to fit your business needs.
- Better workflow: It’s also easy to integrate these services with business applications to streamline your workflows. You can also automate workflows for routing faxes to different departments or people based on the rules you set up.
- Collaboration: The best thing about it is that you can easily collaborate with people as everything is available online.
1. How to Find a Fax Number Online
Using an online faxing service is convenient because it lets you send and receive faxes using the Internet. So, you don’t need a fax machine, but you need a functioning device with an internet connection. Here’s how you can get your fax number from these services:
- Log in: Go to your online faxing service and log in using the credentials provided to you when you subscribed to the service.
- Go to your dashboard: When you’re logged in, go to the dashboard of the service or your profile page.
- Locate fax number: Your fax number should either be in your dashboard or under your account info in the settings.
- Check your welcome email: If it’s not in those sections, take a look at the email you received when you set up your account with the online faxing service.
- Contact support: When all the previous steps don’t yield the result you want, contact your support and simply ask them for your fax number.
It’s good to take a look at your email as well if you’re using an online faxing service because you’ll usually get notifications on the email when you’re sending or receiving a fax, and these should include your fax number.
Try searching your inbox with keywords such as the name of your service or search ‘fax number’. If you can’t find it, go through spam and other folders, and take a look at old emails as well. With these steps, you should be able to find the fax number.
2. Visit Your Company’s Website
Usually, companies keep their contact information on their website, and this includes the fax number. So, you can go to your company’s website and look for it in the ‘contact’ section, or in the help and support section.
The trick with the ‘Contact Us’ section is that there might be a general fax number available there, but you may want to check for fax numbers depending on their department. So, try visiting departmental pages.
You can also try finding it in the employees’ directory of your company. Check the directory against a specific name or department, and you’ll probably notice the fax number there, as it is usually part of the contact information of an employee or department.
If your company doesn’t diverge that kind of information for some reason, you can check with the IT department, or take a look within a dedicated folder in your company’s directory. But, you can always ask a colleague, this might be the easiest way to do it.
3. Send a Fax to Your Email
To send a fax to your email, you need to integrate a fax service with your email address. For that, you need to choose a provider, create an account, configure the email, verify it, and install the necessary software. After all of this, you can send a test fax to see if it works:
- Receive a test fax: When you’re done setting everything up, send the test fax from another machine to your new number.
- Check the email: Take a look into your inbox to see if you’ve received anything. There should be an attachment in the email to view the fax.
- Make a note of the number: Take a look at your fax number in the footer of the message and save it somewhere so you don’t forget it.
Still, most online fax services will let you see your fax number on the dashboard or as soon as you register your account. It’s highly probable that some of these services come with a welcome mail that is sent to your inbox with the fax number.
4. Send Fax Online to Your Colleagues
Another approach to finding your fax number is to send a fax online from your online faxing service dashboard to a colleague’s fax number. It’s likely that they’ll get an imprinted number of the sender on the document, and you can easily see it from there.
5. Contact Fax Service Provider
The best bet for figuring out your fax number is to contact your online faxing service provider. There’s surely a ‘Contact Us’ section with the number of your service provider where you can just click the button and open up a chat channel or even call them if you’re using your phone.
Don’t hesitate to do this if you feel embarrassed, the support team is there to help out on any challenge you may face, even the challenges such as forgetting the fax number you were assigned when you subscribed to the service.
6. Get a Fax Number
Depending on what kind of fax number you’re looking for, or better yet, what kind of faxing setup you’re looking for, you can opt for five different fax solutions. These include online faxing, a fax app, a dedicated faxing service, a traditional fax, and a virtual phone service fax.
Online Fax Services
To get a new fax number, choose a good online fax service provider with a comprehensive set of features, great pricing offers, and good reviews from customers. Create your account, and verify it.
Usually, providers allow you to pick your fax number including toll-free numbers, and you can customize it to fit your location. Once you are done with this, you’ll probably get an email confirming your fax number and account details.
Traditional Fax Machines
If you still have a landline service provider, you can reach out to them to ask about adding a fax line. It can be a separate phone line just dedicated to faxing. We recommend this to avoid interruptions.
The provider will probably set up your fax line at a certain cost, and they’ll also have to activate the line. Once that’s done, you can connect your fax machine to that line, and you can send a test fax to make sure it’s working properly. With all of this, you’re surely going to get a new fax machine number.
Virtual Phone Faxing
Apart from online fax services, there are also virtual phone service providers that offer faxing as a service. Make a good pick of the virtual phone service provider, again by looking at the features, pricing, and reviews.
Sign up to create an account, you’ll probably need to add your personal or business information for that. Pick a plan that suits your budget and your needs, and you’re all set. Now, all you need to do is select your number.
When you select your fax number by going through various available options and picking the right locale, the option which is a vanity number or a toll-free number, you also need to activate the number per the instructions of your provider. But, during the process don’t forget to write the number down or copy/paste it into your notes.
Faxing App
Not all online services have it, but a good online faxing service will have a mobile fax app. The app should be compatible with your phone or tablet, and the same process goes for the previous services.
Create an account and check if your app comes with a free service, like a limited-time trial where you can send and receive faxes from a fax number. Once the trial is over, you can choose your number and activate it.
Dedicated Faxing Services
There’s still an option called ‘dedicated faxing services’. There are local business centers, office supply stores, and other spots that offer faxing services. You can always go in and ask about the availability of fax numbers.
If they have an available fax number, you can sign up for it, rent it from them, or subscribe to it, and you can choose from the available options. Finally, you can use the number to send and receive faxes.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is your fax number your phone number?
It can be because a fax machine number needs to be commenced to a phone line to work. But, it might not be the same as your phone number if you’ve asked for a different line for faxing.
- Do all printers have a fax number?
They might not have a fax number assigned to them, but you can assign it if the printer has faxing capabilities. You’ll be able to tell by finding the ‘fax’ button. If there’s no such button, then it’s likely that the printer doesn’t have the capability.
- How do I look up a fax number?
The easiest way to do it is to go to the ‘Contact Us’ section of your company’s website. This is where it’s written on most websites.
- What is my fax number?
It’s the number assigned to your fax machine for faxing purposes or the number you can find on your online dashboard for an online faxing service.