Web faxing services are not only significantly cheaper than the traditional phone lines, they also help you move closer to a paperless office.

There are different ways of sending faxes over the internet—some services offer a web-based interface where you can type in the text message in a web form (similar to writing a mail in Yahoo!). Or you can send the fax as an email message to a special address given by the internet fax company. (I say special because the email address itself contains the number of the destination fax machine)

If your fax message contains formatting and images, you may upload that as a Word or PDF document to the web server of the fax service, specify the fax number and it will automatically print on the destination fax machine.

The next important question is how to choose a fax company from the hundred odd services that exist on the web—well, it depends on your budget, frequency of use (are you a heavy user?) and where you intend to send faxes (the destination city / country).

The Phone Company is the pioneer in internet faxing. They allow you to send text messages and rich-text documents as faxes to most destinations in the world for free.