The internet and email can serve as your fax machine!

There are services that provide for faxes and supply you with a "Virtual" fax line in your own home area code for a reasonable fee. The fee is often much less than paying for a physical telephone line.

The primary advantages of these services aretwo-fold. You receive your fax via email and can view and print only those you need as hard paper copy. You can discard the rest or save them as a pdf file or keep them in your email inbox. You do not have to pay the phone company for an expensive second line.

You will still need a traditional fax machine or scanner if you wish to send faxes out to other locations, however, you can simply plug this machine into the same line you use for voice. You can even leave it turned off when not sending a fax.

Some of the virtual fax companies provide for outbound faxes as well as for broadcast faxes to a whole list of numbers. Review the costs of sending vs. the cost of sending from your own machine.

Two of the players in this market are MaxiMail ( which we use and recommend ) and eFax which is more costly and which we left due to less than great customer support.