Nextiva vFAX Lowest Price Editors' Rating Pages Per Month 300 Pages Sent or Received 750 Pages Sent or Received 100 Pages Sent, 200 Received 300 Pages Sent or Received 500 Pages Sent or Received 300 Pages Sent or Received 150 Pages Sent, 150 Received 500 Pages Sent or Received Overage Charge 5 Cents Per Page 5.9 Cents Per Page 10 Cents Per Page 7 Cents Per Page 3 Cents Per Page 12 Cents Per Page 10 Cents Per Page 3 Cents Per Page Free Setup International Numbers (Outside Canada, UK, US) Toll-Free Numbers Convert Existing Number Mobile Apps Read Review. Max Eddy The Best Online Fax Services for 2019 Look to these top-rated services the next time your paperless lifestyle is foiled by the need to send a fax. Fax To the Future Sometimes, you need to send a fax.
EFax is the global leader in online fax. Send & receive faxes by email. Get a local, toll-free or international fax number. Fax from anywhere with our mobile app. Use unlimited storage. Find out why eFax is the leading online faxing service or find the best plan for you by calling (800) 958-2983. Jan 3, 2019 - We will show you how to Fax online From Your Computer using 7. To connect your phone line and fax using 7 different operating systems.
The odds are, however, that you don't have a fax machine. You could always pay to use a fax machine at a FedEx Office. You could stand there, trying to figure out how to make the thing work, trying to discern which way to load your documents into the machine, and so on. Then you probably need to wait around for a phone call confirming that yes, in fact, your fax has been received and all the pages are readable. Otherwise, you might have to come all the way back and do the whole thing over again.
And you would, of course, have to pay for the pleasure of the experience. Although the beige beast with the modem screech has been largely replaced by the, online fax services let you get rid of machines altogether. These services provide a fax number you can use to send or receive faxes through a web portal, or even via email. The future has sent a fax to today.
Email to Fax, Fax to Email Modern businesses and workers are very familiar with email workflows, which let online faxing services slip right in. That's because fax services convert received faxes into email attachments, and conversely transmute email attachments into faxes. This is true for all the services I evaluated, although some require the use of email and others do not. And because you can email from anywhere, this approach makes the fax service available on both desktop and mobile devices. It's a great way to start. Simply type the fax number—including country and area code—into the address line, followed by an '@' and an email domain specific to the fax service. The subject line and body text appear on the fax cover page, and any attachments are faxed as separate pages.
Best of all, your fax number appears as the sender, so there's no confusion about where the message originated. Some services, such as HelloFax and eFax, include image editors and tools for applying digital signatures. These are great tools for filling out forms that must be sent via fax. Both include the ability to add text over documents before faxing, so you can easily fill out forms even if you don't have an editable PDF. Alternatively, you can snap an image using your smartphone and send the photo to your computer. There are even apps, such as and, that make it easy to digitize documents with only a smartphone. Most online fax services include very capable mobile apps, too.
Outside of Email All the faxing services we tested have some form of a web interface, but not all of them are created equal. Most of the fax services let you download or preview sent and received faxes from a web interface. That's handy for offices that are trying to cut down on email clutter, or just prefer a more focused experience. RingCentral Fax doesn't let you preview your faxes, but you can download some from the website. Biscom 1-2-3, on the other hand, is all about email. You cannot send, receive, or view faxes from the Biscom 1-2-3 website. Sending a fax from an online portal just takes a few clicks.
Most fax services provide an online address book, making it much easier to send faxes again in the future. Most include some kind of cover page that you can use to carry a message to the recipient. HelloFax is the exception, but it includes surprisingly powerful image editing tools, so affixing additional text to an attached file (or adding a digital signature) is simple. EFax, MetroFax, and MyFax have identical interfaces that look like webmail inboxes from a decade ago. Send2Fax is similarly clunky, but in a different way. They're not pretty, but they do work reliably well.
Nextiva vFax requires Flash to operate, a feature deprecated on most modern browsers. Its interface is a bit slicker but still has a somewhat janky feel. RingCentral Fax is much easier on the eyes, but all the faxes we tested pale in comparison to HelloFax when it comes to the interface and user experience. This service is sleek and modern, and even allows drag-and-drop file attachment from its online fax tool —an inexplicably uncommon feature among the competition.
Looks matter, especially if it's something you plan on using frequently. But the appearance of software can also communicate confidence and trust to the user.
If your service looks outdated, it's hard to feel confident that it will work as expected. Time to Pay the Faxman All the fax services we've reviewed charge a monthly fee. What you get in return is an allotment of pages to use for that month.
Sometimes companies distinguish between how many pages you receive and how many you send. That's the case for and MyFax. Other services we've tested offer a pool of pages, which is the more flexible approach. With a pool of fax pages, you don't end up paying for, say, received pages you never use. Editors' Choice winner RingCentral Fax is notable for providing an unmatched 750 pages per month with its cheapest plan.
Pooled page plans also make it easier to avoid paying overage fees. These are per-page fees assessed when you exceed your monthly budget of pages. Nextiva vFAX and MetroFax have the lowest fees, at a mere 3 cents per page. That's not bad at all. Send2Fax, on the other hand, has the highest, at 12 cents per page.
If you sign up for the free trial of our Editors' Choice winner HelloFax, when it expires you'll be switched to a pay-as-you-go plan where each fax costs 99 cents. That's a handy solution, if you don't need to fax often. Note that, depending on your service, international faxes may not be included in your plan. Biscom 1-2-3, for example, is explicitly for domestic faxing. Most companies have users pay an additional fee—sometimes on a graduated scale depending on the recipient's location, and usually per page.
This fee is generally extracted in the form of additional pages from your monthly allotment. A fax service might deduct two or three pages from your allowance per page you send to a particular overseas locale. If you do a lot of business overseas, be sure to check the fax company's terms of service before faxing to Timbuktu. Setup fees are annoying, and thankfully they are a rarity in the world of online fax services. Only one of the services, eFax, charges one. That service costs $16.95 per month, and tacks on an additional $10 fee when you create an account. Fax Features All of the fax services we looked at have the same core features.
The most important is a fax number. Most services let you select an area code and assign you an available phone number for receiving and sending faxes. Some services, like eFax and MyFax, even let you select a fax number with the country code of your choice for no extra fee. All the services also let you port over an existing fax number, if you have one.
That saves you the step of telling regular fax contacts to update their databases, which we like. Don't like making faxers pay money to reach you? Consider getting a toll-free fax number. Most fax services offer toll-free numbers free of charge.
You can also select the area code for your fax number, and here is where several faxes services diverge. Most fax services cover only area codes within Canada, the UK, and the US. EFax and MyFax in particular have many international fax numbers available. Biscom 1-2-3 is the exception. It not only does not have international fax numbers (and, remember, can only send faxes domestically), and it also does not let you select your own number. Instead, it just assigns you one.
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RingCentral Fax, on the other hand, goes so far as to allow you to choose vanity numbers. Online Fax Performance By and large, these services perform the basic function of faxing acceptably well. The only real trouble we ran into was a quirk with eFax, MyFax, and MetroFax. These services are all owned by the same company, although each has different rates and pricing. During testing, we discovered that it's impossible to sign up for a new account on these services if you've already used your email address with one of the others.
That's odd, but it's unlikely to be a problem for most users, who will only require, or sign up for, a single fax service. We have always tried to make sure an actual fax machine was involved in our testing. It's important that a digital replacement be able to actually work with the device it is intended to replace, after all. But this year was different. This year, we discovered that PCMag had finally thrown out its last remaining fax machines. Moreover, our phone lines had been removed. Copper landlines, it seems, are going out of style.
As far as our is concerned, 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. But that got us thinking: If we're sending faxes between two non-fax machines, how many other people are doing the same? Isn't that just a really complicated email? Moreover, how long will copper landlines persist?
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Hit Send Buying a fax machine and paying for a dedicated landline just to send the occasional fax is a tough sell these days. Online fax services can do it all, and do it better, for a single monthly fee. And with plenty of capable services in the space, you're sure to find the one that's a perfect fit for your home or small business. (Editors' Note: eFax, MetroFax, MyFax, and Send2Fax are owned by j2 Global, the parent company of PCMag's publisher, Ziff Davis.). Pros: Excellent interface. Integrated support for digital forms and signatures. Converts existing fax numbers.
Team options. Integrates with other services. Free, send-only option. Flexible international options. Cons: Few non-US fax numbers available. No dedicated mobile apps. Bottom Line: HelloFax is an outstanding online fax service offering an unmatched user experience, excellent value, and a built-in editor that makes dealing with attachments simple.
It's our Editors' Choice for fax services.
Even if you can't get rid of faxes, you can get rid of your fax machine! By removing paper from the process, HelloFax has removed your need to own a fax machine. With HelloFax, everyone in your company can conveniently send and receive faxes online. There's no more time spent waiting by a fax machine for a fax to arrive or for confirmation that it was sent.
Instead, incoming faxes go directly to the recipient's inbox and outgoing faxes are sent online, all from your computer. No fax machine needed! Best of all, there's nothing someone sending you a fax needs to do differently! Your customers can still send faxes to the same number the same way they always have been. You can transfer your number to us and start receiving faxes electronically without any downtime or risk of losing any faxes.