Also known as "IP fax" in the communications services market, says Hostopia, fax-to-email services enable users to send or receive fax messages on their computers via email applications.

"The benefit to this is having the ability to send or receive fax messages without the expense and inconvenience of owning a physical fax machine and additional phone line," says Hostopia in its press release.

"Fax-to-email is in high demand as a business service with annual growth of over 25 percent according to a prominent category study published by Davidson Consulting," says Paul D. Engels, Hostopia's chief marketing officer. "Our wholesale customers such as telecoms and broadband companies are eager to offer these services to their SME customers."

Hostopia says the service can be branded by customers and sold as a standalone service or as part of a bundle of services, such as web hosting and business email. It can be billed directly by the telecom or sold on a referral model where Hostopia performs the billing and end-user support.

The company suggests a price starting at $9.99 per month, which allows for 300 sent or received pages.

According to Hostopia - citing the Davidson Consulting report on IP fax services - demand for fax-to-email is driven largely by small enterprises that rely heavily on faxing in day-to-day business. This demand includes the need to be mobile while receiving important documents via email on a PDA or smart phone.

Hostopia has been focused on growth in the past few weeks through strategic acquisitions. Last week, it signed an agreement to acquire Tucows' shared hosting customer assets, including approximately 14,000 Domain Direct, NetIdentity and ItsYourDomain customer accounts.

In March, Hostopia also signed a definitive agreement to purchase the customer assets of web hosting provider Luxomovera, which operates as uplinkearth, adding another 12,500 small business customers to Hostopia's unified web services platform.