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Sometimes you have to send a fax. Chances are good, however, that you don’t have a fax machine. Even if you do have access to one at your workplace, there’s a good chance you will be working from home and not be able to access it during the pandemic. You can still pay to use a physical fax machine at your local office supply store, but they aren’t cheap to use and are generally difficult to understand. Additionally, you need to make sure that your intended recipient actually receives a readable copy of your fax, which also involves waiting for confirmation.
(Editor’s note: eFax, MetroFax, MyFax, and SRFax are owned by J2 Global, the parent company of PCMag publisher Ziff Davis.)
Although all-in-one printers have largely replaced stand-alone fax machines, online fax services allow you to take the machine off the hook completely. These services provide a fax number that you can use to send or receive faxes through a web portal, email, or even mobile and desktop apps. Faxing is always a pain, but these services help modernize the experience.
Fax from the web
All of the fax services we tested offer a web interface, but their usefulness varies widely. Well-designed software can inspire trust in users, while archaic services can undermine it as well. If you use a service frequently, you want one that doesn’t cause unnecessary friction.
HelloFax and mFax lead the pack when it comes to having well-designed, highly functional web interfaces that don’t hamper your workflow. eFax, MetroFax, and MyFax have identical interfaces that look like webmail inboxes from decades ago. Yet even though these interfaces may not be intuitive, they send faxes reliably. The interface of Biscom 1-2-3 is particularly bad, as you cannot actually send or receive faxes from it.
Sending a fax from an online portal is usually straightforward – all you need to do is enter a phone number. Most fax services also provide an online address book, which makes it much easier to send faxes to the same contact in the future. You can also include a cover page with your fax in most cases. When it comes to attachments (which are all sent as images), all of the fax services we tested support a wide range of file types, although the file size limits vary. The majority of the services we tested allow you to preview attachments before sending them. Some services, such as Biscom 1-2-3, HelloFax, Fax.Plus, and eFax, include tools to create and apply digital signatures through their web interfaces, desktop apps, or mobile apps. For a more streamlined list of options, see our feature on how to send and receive a fax online.
Mobile fax
The majority of online fax services offer Android apps and iPhone apps, which are useful when you don’t have a scanner handy or want to connect to your computer. With a mobile fax app, you can simply take a photo of a document and send it on the go. Among the services we tested, Biscom 1-2-3, eFax, Fax.Plus, iFax, MetroFax, MyFax and RingCentral offer mobile applications. We much prefer online fax services with a dedicated mobile app, but at the very least their web interface should have a responsive design that resizes well for mobile screens. FaxZero, mFax and SRFax all have very usable sites via mobile browsers.
Good mobile fax apps should have a few standard features, such as a contact book, sortable fax inbox, and a way to preview attachments. A clear and intuitive design is also vital. This is true for all applications, of course; in the case of fax applications, it can also help users forget about the old underlying technology.
Email to fax, fax to email
Modern businesses and employees are familiar with email workflows, and most of the fax services we tested offer similar fax-to-email functionality. Concretely, fax services convert received faxes into email attachments and, conversely, forward fields and attachments in emails to their fax equivalent. Since you can send emails from anywhere, this approach makes a fax service more universally available.
The process of sending a fax to email is fairly straightforward and doesn’t vary much from department to department. Basically, you type the fax number – including the country and area code – in the address bar, followed by an email domain specific to the fax service (e.g. [email protected]). The subject line and body text appear on the fax cover page, while attachments appear as separate pages. Your fax number appears as the sender, so there is no confusion as to the origin of the message.
How much does it cost to send an online fax?
Most of the fax services we reviewed charge a monthly fee. What you get in return is a page assignment to use for that month. Some companies distinguish between the number of pages you can receive and the number you can send, which we find unnecessarily restrictive. Other services offer a page pool – a more flexible approach. With a fax page pool, you don’t end up paying for, say, received pages that you never use. Bundled page plans also make it easier to avoid overage charges, which are a per page charge assessed when you exceed your monthly allowance. These rates vary between 3 and 12 cents per page, depending on the service.
Depending on your service, your plan probably doesn’t include international faxing, although faxing to Canada and the UK sometimes doesn’t incur additional charges. Most companies require users to pay additional fees, sometimes on a graduated scale based on the recipient’s location, and usually per page. We prefer services that deduct an equivalent number of pages from your monthly allowance, rather than those that charge you an additional fee per page.
Setup fees are annoying, and luckily they are rare in the world of online fax services. Only one of the services we tested, eFax, charges one ($ 10).
Send a free fax
HelloFax and Fax.Plus both offer one-time free page allocations to send, but the FaxZero free tier is your best option, as your fax page allocation is replenished every day. FaxZero allows you to send up to five faxes per day (each fax can have up to three pages and can include a cover page). There is simply no reason to go for a paid service if all you have to do is send a fax every now and then. Yes to receive faxes are a requirement for you, so free service is not an option.
Your fax number
Most services allow you to select an area code and assign yourself an available phone number for receiving and sending faxes or choosing from a list of available numbers. Most also allow you to forward an existing fax number if you have one. If you don’t want people paying to fax you, consider getting a toll-free fax number.
Most fax services offer free toll-free numbers. Other services, such as RingCentral Fax and iFax offer personalized numbers. For example, 1-800-DOG-WLKR would be appropriate for a new dog walking startup that needs a fax number.
Some services are better than others when it comes to subscribing to an international number. For example, eFax and MyFax allow you to select a fax number with the country code of your choice at no additional cost.
Online fax performance
Most online fax services perform well the basic fax function. In the past, we made sure that a real fax machine was involved in our testing, considering it important that a digital replacement work with the device it is meant to replace. However, we no longer have fax machines in our offices.
For our testing of online fax services, this was a minor issue. Instead of sending faxes between a physical machine and an online service, we simply sent faxes between two different online services.
Tap Send
The prospect of buying a fax machine and paying for a dedicated landline to send occasional faxes probably sounds ludicrous to most people – and for good reason. Unless your recipient absolutely needs you to send information by fax, other tools, including email and file sharing services, can get the job done. For those rare cases where you have no other choice, an online fax service is much more convenient than a traditional fax machine. With a wide choice of powerful services, you’re sure to find one that meets all of your home and office faxing needs.
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