Being a small business owner, you may find yourself in a situation where you don't have the necessary equipment to complete a job. It's not a matter of being unprepared, but of being asked for unexpected items, such as a faxed document. When you start a small business, you invest a great deal of money into office supplies and, if you are like most people, you don't purchase unnecessary equipment.

Fax machines seem so outdated in this Internet age that you probably chose not to buy one during startup.

If you are thinking about buying a faxing machine, you may want to reconsider. If you should find that you need to fax a document but don't have the equipment, you're in luck. Yes, you can now fax over the Internet.

During my own encounter with this situation, I found a great resource for finding the best Internet faxing services. I'd like to pass that on to you, but first, I'd like to cover some of the potential benefits of using an Internet faxing service, so stick around.

We all know that fax machines can be unreliable. You spend ten minutes trying to figure out how exactly the fax machine interprets phone numbers because it wants codes you have never before considered when dialing out. Once you find the magic number, you spend another ten minutes feeding documents through the machine because “transmission failed.” When you fax over the Internet, you don't have to waste your time or patience with this nuisance.

If you are asking, “Okay, great, but what does it cost?” you might be pleasantly surprised. Compared to the purchase and upkeep of a new fax machine, the costs of an Internet faxing service are reasonable. Some companies charge a small monthly fee while others sell their services on a page-by-page basis. You'll have a chance to do a side by side comparison of the best two companies in just a moment.

The service is especially cost effective if you need to fax documents by way of long distance telephone numbers. Now, of course, that all depends on the services included in your phone plan. If your phone company allows free long distance calls, then you might not see any savings with long distance faxes. If, however, your phone company tacks on excessive charges, you should look into the online service.

Internet faxing services reduce the cost of long distance calls by transmitting your data to the location nearest your data's destination. You also have the option of using an 800 number or getting your own personal fax number. You can attach your documents to an email (from most types of software) and quickly fax them over the Internet.

Now that you know the advantages of sending faxes over the Internet, you're ready to start investigating web-based faxing and virtual fax services to find the one that suits your needs.