Some people might be surprised to learn that fax is still alive and well today. Government agencies and healthcare providers in particular use fax for a lot of their communications because of the security benefits fax offers. If you're looking up how to send a fax online via email, you may need to know if you get a delivery confirmation with an email fax. Fortunately, the answer is yes: you almost always receive delivery confirmations with email faxing services. 

Do You Receive a Confirmation When Your Fax Is Delivered via Email?

With traditional fax machines, a reassuring confirmation page is printed out once the receiver's machine has printed out your fax. With email faxing services, you almost always have the same function. 

The only difference with email fax is, the confirmation page will usually be delivered to your email. You may also be able to check the delivery status of a sent fax in your email faxing service's dashboard. 

The Information Provided on Your Confirmation Page

When your email fax is delivered, your confirmation report will usually include data such as the delivery status (successfully delivered or failed), the sender and recipient's fax number, the date and time of delivery, and the number of pages sent. The report will usually also contain the name of the PDF document delivered. 

This email is very important to many people, as it confirms that the fax made it to the recipient. Anyone unfamiliar with email faxing may also find it reassuring to see that email faxing is reliable and works. 

What Happens if the Fax Wasn't Successfully Delivered?

In the case of a failed delivery, your confirmation report will tell you that the delivery failed. In this case, the recipient's fax machine may be turned off or there may be some other issue at their end. You might want to call them to check all is well.

Also, if a fax fails to deliver, make sure that you entered the recipient's fax number correctly when sending. Your confirmation report will show you the fax number you entered. Dialing errors are less common with email faxing, as both your email faxing service and email provider can save each number as one of your contacts. But when inputting a fax number for the very first time, mistakes can happen.

How Long an Email Fax Takes To Deliver

If you've just sent a large email fax, and you're worried because you haven't yet received a confirmation report, you may need to be a little more patient. Email faxing is usually much faster than traditional faxing, but delays can happen, especially if you're sending a large fax with many pages that include graphics. 

Small and simple emailed faxes can take under a minute per page to send, and they sometimes deliver within seconds. Graphics create a great deal more data to send over telephone lines, so an email fax with pictures or charts may take up to five minutes per page to send. 

The Benefits of Email Fax Over Traditional Faxing

Sending a fax by email with a good email fax service is faster, cheaper, and more convenient than using a bulky fax machine. You can deliver and receive PDF faxes from pretty much anywhere at any time, just like sending and receiving ordinary emails. 

Email fax is also extremely secure, which is an important concern with many fax users. When you send an email fax, the data is encrypted before traveling from your laptop or phone to the email service provider. This makes it impossible for anyone to read should it be intercepted. Once decrypted securely by the email fax service, your fax is turned into the binary code of telephone lines. It's then delivered directly end-to-end to the recipient's fax machine. 

How To Send a Fax Online 

Sending an email fax is as easy as sending an email. First, you need to sign up for a quality email faxing service. Then, connect your email to the faxing service. Now you can compose an email and enter the recipient's fax number with the format required by your email faxing service. Finally, attach the PDF document you wish to deliver and hit “send.”

Send your first Gmail fax today for free at Afax.com. All you need to do is follow a few simple steps. A few minutes later, your recipient's fax machine will spring to life and start printing your fax. 

Matt Gerchow

Matt Gerchow is an author, marketer, inventor, husband, father and yoga enthusiast. He enjoys travel to distant lands , fine wine, time with his family and dinner with friends.