Advantages and Disadvantages of Fax Technology Today
Like email, fax is also a method of communication. Yet, faxing may seem like an antiqued method of communication today, but many companies still use it. However, it might not be an acceptable form of sending or receiving information from the first glance.
Actually, with the technological changes, fax has also been developed involving modern ways of usage. Fax, which is also called telefax, is the transmission or reproduction of documents that is done through wire or radio waves. The primary method of faxing is fax machines, but nowadays, many online tools have been developed that allow sending fax without having a machine. It means that you can send faxes from any device with the online tool installed on it.
So, fax is another option of sending or receiving scanned documents, and before using it, one needs to be sure what fax exactly is and whether it is worth using.
What is Fax and Why Use it?
The origin of fax comes from the name of facsimile which is also called telefax or telephoning. It is used in telecommunications to transmit various written paper documents, including text, diagrams, drawings, letters, articles, even images.
In the past, the fax machine had a tail. It used to be bigger and couldn’t send a large number of documents. Nowadays, the technological changes also influenced fax technology, and it started getting more modern and convenient to use. Fax machines or fax tools are interrelated with telephone lines. The facsimile of the written information is transmitted to the addressee, and it is simultaneously reproduced on paper automatically in the receiving machine or device. The main document is scanned with a fax machine that interprets the text as a graphic image and then converts it into a bitmap. So the data is exchanged into electronic signals via telephone. The receiving device converts the signals into a copy of documents.
It is essential to mention that nowadays, fax machines are used to send or receive information, and there are many online tools that do the same function as the machines used to do. Those tools are also connected to a phone number; they all have fax machines attached, but people can use that tool to send faxes without concern about the backend. One of the reliable online faxing tools is CocoFax.
Online faxes are also connected with emails which means that security is on the highest level here. To bring more privacy, you can install an SPF checker into your email, an email-authentication technique used to prevent spammers from sending messages on behalf of your domain when applying an online faxing tool. This gives the receiver information on how trustworthy the origin of an email is.
The Advantages of Fax Technology
Though many people may say that faxing is an old method, it benefits users and marketers.
Convenient to use
Though emails are considered more modern communication methods while sending documents, faxes are more accessible and handier. All you need is a fax machine or online fax tool and recipient number. With fax, you can enter large numbers of documents, while emails are limited to some megabytes. You will need either to send several emails or wait a long time to send the paper. This will speed up your startup email marketing strategy and provide better results.
Fax makes it convenient to send and receive the information immediately. You can also use the Android app for your android device to send faxes from anywhere. It means that you don’t need to be in the office to use the fax machine for faxing, but you can use your online fax tools to transmit any information at any time.
Increase marketing results
Faxing is used to increase marketing results and engage your customers. Fax marketing is the process of using the fax channel as a means of direct marketing to communicate quickly and almost simultaneously with your corporate clients or potential customers. It helps to speed up the sales process, attract new customers or strengthen customer loyalty of current clients. You can use eCommerce analytics tools to measure your marketing performance with faxing. It will show that fax documents sent are received on time, and their recipients attend to them almost immediately and, as a result, are read and acted upon. That is, the rates are increased.
Besides, faxing can help improve your social media management which will allow spending less time but get more efficiency. That is using a coordinated marketing strategy to promote your business on various social platforms—however, this time, by fax.
Increase speed
Faxing has a higher level of speed to send information in seconds. It is impossible to send large files by email, but it will take you just seconds to send any information to the recipient by fax. As technology develops day by day, faxing methods are also getting improved, and the speed improves twice as much. While fax machines may run out of ink, or you may get bored scanning and sending the documents, online fax tools make that process easy without barriers.
Nowadays, many cryptocurrency companies create e-faxes that allow paying for faxes with e-coins. For that purpose, many companies use the crypto tracker to track the user’s investment charts or will enable you to instantly browse and get a pulse of the entire crypto market. With online faxing, you can transmit non-PDF file types, including JPEG, PNG, MOV, and MP3 files, with fast speed. So you can even create promo videos and use fax to spread among customers. It will take you less time than any other tool and engage more customers in a few minutes. Online faxing providers also allow you to add digital signatures to your faxes and save the details of your fax recipients, all of which will require you just seconds.
The disadvantages of Fax technology
Like any communication tool or device, faxing also has its disadvantages. Let’s consider some of them:
Cost
As faxes use phone lines, they will cost you as much money as calling. In this case, you need to consider that you need to send faxes worldwide, and therefore, you will need to view prices that may differ from country to country. Moreover, if the document is large, the costs of sending the papers will become huge. So, many people can’t afford it. You can also use online fax, but mostly they are not free. You will need to subscribe to a monthly/yearly plan to send documents. The higher the price is, the more features and abilities the plan will provide.
Storage capacity
Old fax machines didn’t have any memory to store the required information. So they just printed each document from line to line. Nowadays, this issue is somehow solved but is not that accurate as it needed to be. This is because today’s fax machines have RAM like computers, but they temporarily store the information. So now, the few pages can be stored in the fax machine’s memory, allowing it to scan and print the pages, not lines.
Moreover, you can create a logo or something visual and print it out successfully. The fax also allows you to reprint or resend faxes if the previous one failed. But one should remember that the memory is not permanent and is removed by itself after a few minutes.
The situation is slightly different for online faxes, but it also has a memory limit depending on the plan you are subscribed to. Moreover, besides the memory limit, it has a storage limit from a few days to months, which depends on the subscription plan. Therefore, even with technological changes, it is impossible to store the chain of all your faxes on the fax tools. And it restricts you from faxing the same document after a few months as that document will already be removed from your fax tool, so you will need to scan and print it again to send information. This comes in handy when, for example, you provide short term rentals in NYC and need to send necessary paperwork.
Technology failure
No matter what kind of device or tools for B2B we are dealing with, it will fail one day. For example, what refers to fax machines, the paper and ink can run out, or the device can just stop working due to technical issues. It will prevent you from sending faxes until the problem is solved. This situation is also common for online faxes. If there is a hiccup in your internet connection, or if the power at the service provider's base of operations goes out, then your communication could be put on hold.
Conclusion
To sum up, we can mention that faxing is another efficient option of communication. And it can take you just seconds to send a large variety of essential documents overseas. Moreover, it is a reliable tool; you need to decide whether you need a fax machine or an online faxing tool to make communication possible. Of course, as with any device, faxing also has its cons of storage limit or technology failure. Still, it also helps you increase your marketing results by using a large fax channel to promote your product, which is done with more speed and improves the marketing.
So having appeared very recently, faxing has become an essential communication tool. Use it or not is your choice as you need to decide the goal of your communication and take into account costs which are also crucial for individuals or businesses.