Look Before you Leap: Part 2

Posted by: Jen Robinson

In my last blog post, Look Before You Leap: Part 1, I discussed how Aptela offers a flexible, easy-to-use phone solution that gives your business a professional feel whether it's 2:00am on a Monday or 2:00pm on a Friday. You own your numbers and can take them with you whenever you move. This next part covers the challenges small businesses can face when trying to find a web-based faxing service, and how Aptela can help. Remember, a fax is attached to a phone number as well, so any number porting issues you can run into with a primary business number can also, unfortunately, occur with fax numbers.

Web Faxing Services:

Web-based electronic faxing services are often used by businesses to save money on phone lines, fax machines, paper and toner, while allowing users the freedom to be able to send a fax from wherever they can get online. Please make sure you can port your number away if you decide to use a web-fax service provider. Many are not true telecom companies, so they are not required to port your numbers to a new carrier if you leave their service. You are essentially leasing your numbers from them, just like numbers from an executive suite/virtual receptionist service as discussed in Part 1. I have seen many customers struggle with wanting to move their virtual fax to a new service provider, with no way to force the current provider to port the number away. Aptel can help - you own your numbers, and you will be able to fax at a minimal monthly cost that integrates right into your every day Aptela online usage. In addition to feeling confident about keeping your numbers, you can take advantage of these exciting features:

Fax-to-Email Integration - Forward your faxes to one or more email accounts
Large Online Fax Storage - Store thousands of faxes online or download them to your desktop
Web Access to Faxes - Retrieve your faxes from any device connected to the Internet
Receiving Faxes - Set up one or multiple fax numbers. Faxes can route to individual users or departments.

So before you choose a phone service and/or a fax service, think about what is most important to your small business. If you need a professional, reliable and easy-to-use service that caters to small businesses, you may want to consider Aptela. We're here to help!