Found yourself online looking for fax services near me? There's some good news: you don't have to go stand in line. You can send a fax in seconds from your own computer. You can even send a fax from your smartphone or tablet if you prefer. Let's explain how.

Your Closest “Fax Services Near Me:” How it Works

Get an Email Account

If you don't already have a Gmail, Hotmail, or Outlook email account, get one now. All of these are free, and signing up takes just seconds. All of them will work with the third-party fax service that you will sign up with next.

Sign Up With aFax

There are several third-party fax services available, and aFax is one of the best. It's simple and intuitive to use, and you get a 30-day free trial. If you just need to send a single fax, you can just use the trial and be done. If you're a regular faxer, it's worth getting a permanent account and your own fax number.

Compose an Email

Your next step is just to pull up a new email as you usually would. In the address field, you will put the phone number of your recipient's fax followed by the suffix that will send it on to your third-party fax service. In the case of aFax, that's “@onafax.com.”

Remember that there should be no special characters, like dashes, or parentheses, in your phone number. Just use the numbers themselves. You can send to multiple fax numbers at once and even to international fax numbers if needed.

Attach Your Fax

Instead of putting writing in the email body, as you would with a regular email, you will attach whatever documents you want to send as a fax. You can attach a variety of document types, but they will all be changed to PDF before being sent to your recipient. It's usually best to just send a PDF to begin with.

Compose a Cover Letter (Optional) and Send 

You might not need a cover letter at all, but if you do, you can choose from the templates provided by the fax service or put your own cover letter into the subject line of your email.

Get On With Your Day

That's it! You don't have to stand by a fax machine, hoping and praying that it went through and wondering if it's smudged or if you put it in wrong. You can just go about your day as normal, and you'll get a text message confirmation when it has been sent. It usually takes a couple of minutes for this to happen, but no more than that.

Why Do I Have to Use a Third-Party Service?

Your email provider does not offer a fax service. That's because international faxing standards require a fax to be transmitted over a telephone line. Email is transmitted over the Internet only. Your third-party fax service will take your documents and send them over a telephone line as required.

Isn't It Cheaper to Find a Fax Service Nearby?

You won't find a cheaper way to send a fax than online! A good online fax service like aFax will offer a free trial or a free number of pages so that you can actually send the single fax free of charge entirely. If you end up needing to send faxes regularly, you'll be paying pennies a page. If you go down to your local office supply store, they are going to charge you dollars a page.

You won't find a better, faster, or cheaper way to send a fax right now than with aFax. Visit aFax now and get your fax sent!