Faxing a document using your web browser may be faster than using a traditional fax machine, but how long does it take to send a fax? How about receiving a fax?
Faxing online will take a couple of minutes at most to fax a typical number of pages. For some faxes, it will take under a minute. But why is faxing not instant?
Traditional fax machines use telephone lines to send documents remotely, which is much faster than physically mailing a document (which can take days!). For many years, your only option was a fax machine, which is a bulky device that you have to purchase and connect to a phone line. Today, your fax machine alternative is a web-based service like Fax.Live, which handles all the faxing from your web browser with no additional third-party downloads.
Of course, faxing a document isn’t instant. It will still take a little bit of time. In this article, we’ll cover how long sending a fax over the web takes and what can affect the fax speed. We’ll also explain why there are delays with faxing, even with a web-based service.
Why Do Faxes Take So Long to Send?
Fax machines take longer to send documents than emailing because they generally use an inefficient handshake and transmission protocol from the dial-up modem days. The information that you transmit to a fax machine is typically sent over a phone line, not the World Wide Web. Because of this, faxes are pretty secure. But, they’re also kind of slow.
A phone line can have potential connectivity problems that prevent a fax machine from sending the fax document successfully. A fax line can also be considered “busy” if it’s currently receiving a fax, which will either make the fax take longer to send or result in the fax not being sent. There could also be issues with the recipient’s fax machine, which makes it take longer to send.
Faxing online is generally faster than faxing by a traditional land-line fax machine, but there are still factors that affect how long it takes to send and receive faxes, which we explain in the next section.
Remember that Fax.Live always lets you know if a fax failed to send. If there’s an issue with the recipient’s fax number, you’ll know within a few minutes.
What Affects Fax Time?
There are a few different factors that will make your fax take more or less time to send, both online and using a fax machine.
What slows down a fax machine
- Number of pages: Longer documents will take a longer time to transmit. If you’re sending a 10+ page fax, it may take several minutes to fax your document.
- Fax machine defects: If the recipient’s fax machine is out of paper, ink, or has a jam, it may take longer for the fax to send than normal, especially if the recipient’s fax machine doesn’t have enough memory to store your sent fax. Occasionally, the fax will fail, and you’ll need to wait for the recipient to resolve the issues with their fax machine.
- Phone line disruption: If the phone line is busy, has an outage, or other issue, the fax may take longer or fail to send.
- Contents of the fax: Documents that contain primarily words are easier for a fax machine to transmit than faxes that contain lots of colors, images, and graphics. A graphically heavy document will take a lot longer to fax than a text document.
What slows down a digital fax
- Number of pages: The longer a document, the longer it takes to send, whether you use a fax machine or Fax.Live’s online digital fax service.
- Your devices’ speed: As with any type of online activity, the speed of your devices (modem, computer) affects how quickly documents can be uploaded and transmitted.
- Your internet connection: The more bandwidth you have, the faster documents will upload.
- Recipient’s issues: Issues on the recipient’s end can cause problems with fax transmissions. See our troubleshooting guide for help.
How to Speed Up Faxes
Try to remove extraneous elements of your document, including images, and fax text-based documents. Use a strong internet connection; a wired connection is better than a Wi-Fi connection. Consider faxing during off-peak hours, when faxes may be more likely to go through without interruptions; that said, off-hour fax machines may not be attended to, leaving your unread fax vulnerable to falling into the wrong hands.
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