The free eFax mobile app is linked to your personal account, so you can send and receive electronic faxes on your smartphone without the need for a landline or fax. What about receiving faxes? If you still have a multifunction printer that includes the fax service, you may be able to get rid of it if you switch to an online fax service. You must have a paid account to receive incoming faxes using all the fax services we've seen. To recover incoming files digitally, sign in to your online fax service account or, in some cases, you can have them delivered to your email inbox. Faxing is still a hassle, but the best fax services modernize the experience. Here's a list of the best fax services, followed by more information you may need if you're learning how to send or receive a fax without using a fax machine.
For people with moderate faxing needs, Fax Plus works great for free. Anyone can submit 10 pages free of charge; if you need to send more pages, they cost 20 cents each. On the free tier, you can send faxes but not receive them. Fax, Plus is great for people who have mild to moderate faxing needs.
If you need to send a free fax just once and the fax is less than 10 pages long, Fax, Plus is great. If you need a unique number for inbound faxes and you typically send and receive fewer than 200 pages per month, Fax, Plus is the most affordable fax service you can find. If you need more than what the lowest Fax Plus plan offers, we recommend Hello Fax. FaxZero is a free fax service that can meet most of your faxing needs.
While relatively simple, it's the most generous free service we've seen, replenishing page assignments every day. You can send up to five faxes per day and each fax can have a maximum of three pages (plus one cover). However, faxes from paying customers take precedence over free ones in terms of delivery speed. In addition, with the free version, FaxZero adds its own branding to the covers and the total size of the fax file cannot exceed 25 MB.
HelloFax offers some faxes free of charge. If you need to send a fax, you will receive 5 pages for free (for a lifetime, not per month)). After that, it costs just 99 cents per fax for faxes of up to 10 pages, plus 20 cents for each subsequent page, with no subscription required. Another advantage of HelloFax is that it offers easy, self-service cancellation through your account.
For free users, HelloFax is a great option if you need to send a single fax of 5 pages or less. It's also ideal if you have very modest but recurring faxing needs, since a 10-page fax costs less than a dollar and doesn't require you to have a subscription, and you also have access to an excellent online interface for keeping track of the faxes you sent. RingCentral is ideal if you run a medium or large company with significant faxing needs, although it's really ideal if you're also looking for another type of business communication and can buy them all together at a good price. Another benefit is that RingCentral allows you to use the same phone number to receive voice calls and send text messages as you do to send and receive faxes.
Online fax services allow you to send and receive faxes without using a fax machine. To send a fax, you usually generate a PDF or scan the pages of the document you want to send. After that, you upload the file to the fax service. Then fill in additional information, such as the recipient's name and fax number, and if you wish, you can add a cover page.
The online fax service takes care of the rest. The recipient receives the documents just as if they had sent them through a fax machine. Sometimes, you can send a fax via email, which we'll discuss later. To receive faxes through an online fax service, you must have a paid account, which will provide you with a dedicated fax number. In most cases, you can sign in to a web portal to retrieve the digital versions of the faxes you receive or send them to your email.
If you plan to use an online fax service regularly, such as sending more than one or two faxes a month, you'll want to have an account with a paid subscription plan. Otherwise, you can get by with a free service, such as FaxZero, or you can pay for fax without a subscription using HelloFax (which is now owned by Dropbox and, in some places, is called Dropbox Fax). All of the fax services included here offer a web interface, but their usefulness varies considerably. Well-designed software can inspire user confidence, while archaic services can weaken it just as easily.
Of the services we tested, HelloFax is the best when it comes to having a clear and highly functional web interface. When you send a fax from a web portal, all attachments (i.e., fax pages) are sent as images. All of the fax services we've tested support a wide range of file types, although the file size limit varies. Most services allow you to preview attachments before sending them.
HelloFax also includes tools for creating and applying digital signatures. For more information, see our article that explains how to send and receive a fax online. Bundled page plans also help avoid paying overuse charges, which are per-page charges that are charged when you exceed your monthly allotment. These rates are usually around 10 cents per page.
HelloFax charges just 5 cents per page for page excess, which is the lowest rate you'll ever find. Depending on the service you use, your plan may not include sending international faxes, even faxes from the U.S. Sometimes there are no additional costs from the US to Canada and the UK. Some payment plans include international coverage.
It's not unusual for an online fax company to charge an additional fee for sending an international fax, sometimes gradually, depending on the recipient's location and usually per page. Fax, Plus allows you to send 10 pages for free, every time, from your account. In the same way, HelloFax allows you to send 5 pages for free. FaxZero allows you to send 5 faxes per day for free, and each fax can include 3 pages plus a cover page. FaxZero's business model is based on advertising.
There's simply no reason to opt for a paid service if all you need to do is send a fax from time to time. If receiving faxes is a requirement for you, then you need a payment plan. Most online fax services offer Android apps and iPhone apps. With a mobile fax app, you just need to take a picture of a document and send it.
Of the services included in this list, Fax, Plus, and RingCentral offer mobile apps. We prefer that online fax services have dedicated mobile applications, but at a minimum, they should have a mobile website. FaxZero and SRFax have sites that are highly usable through mobile browsers. HelloFax allows you to send a fax from your mobile device, but you have to go to your email account to do so.
Modern businesses and workers are familiar with email workflows, and most of the fax services included here offer similar fax capabilities to email. In practical terms, fax services convert received faxes into email attachments and, conversely, convert email fields and attachments into their fax equivalent. Because you can send and receive emails from anywhere, this approach makes the fax service more universally available. Most services allow you to select an area code and assign it a phone number available for receiving and sending faxes or allow you to choose from a list of available numbers.
Most also allow you to transfer an existing fax number if you have one. If you don't want people to have to pay to send you a fax, consider getting a toll-free fax number, which is usually free once you have a paid plan. RingCentral offers personalized numbers for your fax number, although we only recommend RingCentral for medium and large companies that send or receive a large number of faxes each month. Some industries continue to rely on faxing for several reasons, and knowing who to turn to when you need to send a fax to one of them is much easier than running around, pages in hand, to find a company that offers internal fax services.
But faxing documents isn't the only way to deliver documents, so be sure to check out the many secure methods for sharing files and sending encrypted emails. If you're a business user who needs an efficient fax service or an individual who sends only a few pages a month, FaxBurner is the best free fax application available. It is the most suitable for companies and companies that want to send faxes without problems and securely and, at the same time, be able to access and manage faxes from anywhere. Plus, without relying on a traditional fax machine, you don't have to worry about your fax falling into the wrong hands.
HelloFax, which now belongs to Dropbox (and in some places it's called Dropbox Fax) is an excellent online fax service that offers a great user experience, great value for money, and an integrated editor that makes it easy to manage attachments. If you decide to use a fax on your iPhone, you won't have similar problems, since you'll be able to access all the faxes received on your mobile phone or email. This allows you to send a fax to any local or international fax number using only your phone, computer or tablet. While today there are several ways to send a fax, using a fax app on your Android device is often the most convenient option.
There are also free fax apps like FaxBurner, but keep in mind specific limitations, such as the total number of outgoing fax pages. One is to use a free fax service, which isn't the best solution for businesses with high-volume faxing needs. FaxBurner's free fax app turns your iPhone, iPad, or email address into your own portable fax station. You can also send and receive HIPAA-compliant faxes and ensure compliance with SOC 2 and ISO 27001 standards by faxing sensitive information.
With FaxBurner, you can send and receive faxes from anywhere, which means sending faxes is now so easy how to send an email. eFax allows users to send and receive digital faxes using email or a web-based application instead of traditional fax machines.
