Email to fax
Get email to fax capabilities with RingCentral, and add another secure, compliant communication channel to your business. All without the expense and hassle of fax machines and other outdated infrastructure.
How to send a fax via email with RingCentral
Today, business fax has evolved. Rather than bulky hardware, forward-thinking companies use an online faxing service to send and receive faxes over the internet.
RingCentral, an industry leader in business communications, provides internet faxing features in its unified communications solution. You can send and receive faxes from your computer using your RingCentral account or through your RingCentral app. The same goes for your mobile device.
Moreover, you can also email fax numbers from a trusted account, and access secure and compliant faxing that way.
How can you send a fax from email?
Email fax with RingCentral starts with connecting a trusted email account, like the one attached to your company email address, to your RingCentral account.
To do this, follow these instructions:
- Log in to your RingCentral online account.
- Click on Settings, then go to Outbound Calls/Faxes.
- Click on Fax Settings.
- Go to Faxes Sent Via Email.
- Enter your trusted email in the field box under Email addresses permitted to send faxes.
- You can also enable the option Omit cover page when email subject is blank so that when there is text on the subject line, a cover page is automatically added.
- Click on Save at the bottom right.
After that, you can now send faxes using your trusted email account. To fax by email in this way:
- In your email client, create a new email.
- In the recipient box, enter the 10-digit fax phone number of the person or business you’re faxing followed immediately by “@rcfax.com”.
- Attach the file you want to fax.
- Add text on the subject line if you're going to add a cover page.
- Send the fax via email.
Sending fax over email is really as simple as that with RingCentral.
Receiving faxes: Can you fax to an email?
When you set up fax through email with RingCentral, you can also receive faxes to your email address. Aside from being stored in your RingCentral account, internet faxes will also be sent to your email inbox as attachments that you can then forward as a fax or standard email.
When might you want to send fax from email?
That’s how to send fax via email covered, but when might your business want or need to? There are a number of scenarios where an email to a fax number or vice versa might be your best option:
When faxing is more familiar than email
Some businesses have been using fax since they started and don’t feel the need to make changes to their process. If your customer base is more than willing to fax their documents to purchase products or services, who are we to say that anything needs to change.
At the moment, faxing works for them. Whether email is a better choice or not, businesses tend to stick with what works and will not risk change unless they need to. You, however, can reap the benefits of unified digital communications, while still letting them fax you, if that’s what they want.
Besides, some businesses cater to people who do not want anything to do with technology, which brings us to the next reason.
When customers are resistant to modern technology
Like businesses that do not feel the need to shift from fax to email, some customers don’t feel like learning to use the internet and email.
The older generation, in particular, can be uncomfortable using modern equipment like computers and still prefer using traditional technology like telephone and fax. And what do you know, these people from the older generation also tend to be the decision makers not only in businesses but in households as well, so you cannot ignore their preferences.
That’s another reason it doesn’t hurt to still be open to having fax as a means to send and receive relevant documents, so as not alienate people who are resistant to modern technology.
When industries still prefer fax
There are industries that still rely on faxing for official document transmissions and will not accept documents sent only through email. This is especially true for those industries that highly regard the security of data for their transactions.
Businesses in the healthcare, financial, and legal industries, in particular, are still very much using fax for daily transactions. The practice isn’t about to change anytime soon, either, especially when the government itself is encouraging its use.
When the government encourages faxing over email
A big reason why faxing is still very much in practice is the firm belief by the government that faxing is more secure than email. It may not be explicitly stated in HIPAA, but most companies believe that faxing is more compliant to its standards than email.
Even the FBI CJIS standards do not allow the transmission of criminal justice information via email unless it is encrypted, but they allow it via fax.
When fax is more affordable than encrypted email
For many industries and for a lot of government institutions to accept email as a valid document transmitting tool, it has to be encrypted. For many businesses, investing in encrypted email isn’t really worthwhile when it’s only needed in very specific circumstances. Especially when faxing already fulfills the role of a secure document transmitter at a significantly lower cost.
When you want to do business internationally
If you're going to transact with companies and government institutions outside the US, don’t be surprised to find out that they’ll require you to send necessary documents via fax instead of email.
Countries like Japan and Germany still rely on faxing a lot. And even though the European Union is now encouraging the use of e-signatures, many still prefer the old-fashioned way of printing the document to apply a physical signature and sending it back via fax.
What you get with email to fax from RingCentral
Fax via email, then, is very much a beneficial communication channel for modern businesses. If you trust RingCentral to provide you with email to fax functionality you get:
A highly secure email-to-fax service
Faxes sent via RingCentral—whether from the RingCentral app, the RingCentral online account, or from a trusted email—are protected by high-level encryption. This prevents data breaches and other forms of traffic interception that targets your fax transmission.
Also, since you’re no longer printing the documents to be faxed, there’s no more chance of it being seen by others because the soft copies are stored in password-protected accounts. In comparison, traditional fax prints everything. Documents printed by a fax machine tend to stay in fax trays for a while, which makes them open to all prying eyes, including people with bad intentions.
A mobile internet fax service
You can access your email from anywhere there’s an internet connection. With email to fax via RingCentral, then, you’re also able to enjoy the same benefit for your faxes.
You and your employees are no longer limited to faxing in the office because you can send faxes from anywhere through your email account, without the need for a fax machine.
Same goes for receiving a fax. You can access faxes sent to your fax phone number in your email inbox account as attachments. From there, you can simply download the file, print a specific page if needed, and send as a fax or email as needed.
An environmentally-friendly fax service
Traditional fax machines aren’t great friends to the environment. They’re made of plastic that will take hundreds of years after its last use to dissolve and will be added to the massive heap of waste in landfills. They also continually use power and contribute to your business’s carbon emissions. Lastly, they waste a lot of paper printing everything that’s sent to them.
Email faxing services, on the other hand, let you fax without a fax machine. This means there’s no deteriorating hardware that will take years to dissolve. Also, there’s no printing required, which will severely reduce your company's paper consumption.
A flexible fax phone number
In the same way as a fax machine can only be used in the office, traditional fax phone numbers can only be used in tandem with the fax machine. Once you and your employees leave the office, you no longer have access to the faxing service and your fax phone number.
The opposite can be said for an online fax phone number, which can be accessed from anywhere. Any fax sent to this number will be received in the user’s RingCentral account or their email inbox.