What is an online fax? How do I choose?

Internet Fax
Reviews
internet fax reviews


Email Fax

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Online Fax Service

  • Reviewed Plan
  • Monthly Fees
  • Annual Payment Discount

  • Hidden Fees
  • Start Up Fee
  • Free Trial Period
  • Free Incoming Pages
  • Free Outgoing Pages
  • Users in Plan
  • Online Fax Storage
  • Customer Support
  • Premium Upgrades
  • Corporate Packages
  • Send Faxes by email
  • Incoming Overage Pages
  • Outgoing Overage Pages
  • Start Faxing Now!

RingCentral

30 Day
Free Trial

  • Fax 700
  • $9.99 $8.89
  • $7.99/month
    $7.11/ month
  • No
  • Free
  • 30 Days
  • 500 700 Total
  • Combined
  • 30, but
  • Unlimited
  • 24/7
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • $0.06
  • $0.06
  • visit website

MetroFax

30 Day
Free Trial

  • Essential
  • $7.95
  • $6.63/ month

  • No
  • Free
  • 30 Days
  • 500 Total
  • Combined
  • 10
  • 1 Year
  • M-F 8-9 EST
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • $0.03
  • $0.03
  • visit website

MyFax

30 Day
Free Trial

  • 500 Pooled
  • $10.00
  • $9.17/ month
    $8.33/ month
  • No
  • Free
  • 30 Days
  • 200 500 Total
  • 100 Combined
  • 5
  • 1 Year
  • 24/7
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • $0.10
  • $0.10
  • visit website

Nextiva

30 Day
Free Trial

  • Single User
  • $8.95
  • $4.95/ month

  • No
  • Free
  • 30 Days
  • 500 Total
  • Combined
  • 1, but
  • 6 Months
  • 6-6 MST
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • $0.03
  • $0.03
  • visit website

eXtremeFax

30 Day
Free Trial

  • eXtremeFax 600
  • $7.99 $6.99
  • $6.67
    $3.99/ month
  • No
  • Free
  • 30 Days
  • 600 Total
  • Combined
  • 30, but
  • Unlimited
  • 24/7
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • $0.07 $0.05
  • $0.07 $0.05
  • visit website

eFax

30 Day
Free Trial

  • eFax Plus
  • $16.95
  • $14.13/ month

  • No
  • $10.00 Free
  • 30 Days
  • 150
  • 150
  • 5
  • Unlimited
  • 24/7
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • $0.10
  • $0.10
  • visit website

*eXtremeFax is the same service as RingCentral with lower pricing and lower overage rates. Note: If you’ve signed up for a free trial with either eXtremeFax or RingCentral before, you aren’t able to receive a free trial with the other service.

Note: The pricing and plans on our site aren't available everywhere. Please use our '30 Day Free Trial' links to get the special pricing.

What is an online fax?

Online Fax (also known as email fax, internet fax, and digital fax) utilizes an online fax service provider to convert a facsimile transmission into a digital file that can be received via email and vice versa. Online fax services bridge the gap between the older fax technology, which is well established in today's business environment, and email transmission of documents. In the simplest terms, when you sign up with an online fax service, you will be assigned a dedicated fax phone number that will convert incoming faxes to email attachments that are automatically sent to your email address. The majority of these services also allow you to send attachments (like Word documents, PDF's, or pictures) to physical fax numbers that are received just as if you had sent them using a standard fax machine. Most online fax services will send you your documents in a number of different file formats, such as TIF or PDF files.

Why use an online fax service?

Lower Cost: Typically the monthly fee you pay an online fax service is less than the cost of a dedicated phone line, and you have no long distance charges. In addition, you don't have to own a fax machine, which also means you don't have to buy paper or toner. Even if you decide to print your faxes, you can still delete junk faxes or other documents you do not need to keep, which will reduce consumption of materials.

More efficient use of time: Many carriers allow you to set up multiple receive emails, so your faxes are automatically delivered to whomever you choose. Because you are receiving faxes via email, you will also receive them on email enabled PDA's. You can then review faxes and take action.

More reliable: You will no longer have to deal with the limitation of your phone line or fax machines. This means no busy signals, no running out of paper, no paper jams, etc.

Environmentally Responsible: Reducing consumption not only reduces costs, it's the responsible thing to do for the environment. Printing every junk fax or bad transmission creates trash and costs money.

Security: Most online fax services support high level encryption technology. Furthermore, you can designate which email addresses faxes are sent to, which is significantly more secure than having sensitive documents sit in a shared fax machine.

What to look for in an online fax service:

Market Standard: After reviewing plans with all the internet fax service providers on our list, FaxCompare.com came up with what we consider to be "market standard." Some providers have better pricing and some fall short. However, this is a pretty good yard stick with which to measure everyone.

  • 30 day free trial
  • No start up fee.
  • $9.95 per month
  • 300 total pages (incoming and outgoing combined).
  • $0.10 per minute for overage pages.
  • No Hidden Fees
  • 24/7 Customer Service
  • Send/Receive capabilities.

We do not recommend selecting an online fax service based on brand name recognition. There are many reliable online fax services with good customer service that are priced within FaxCompare.com's "market standard" criteria. More well-known carriers may charge more for the same features that are available from lesser-known, less expensive carriers. (Use the above online fax comparison chart to check current prices and features)

Pages v. Minutes: Some providers quote rates in minutes and others in pages. Those that quote rates in pages are assuming that it takes 1 minute or less to transmit 1 page. However, they all state that the actual time to transmit a page may vary.

Why use FaxCompare.com?

FaxCompare.com was created as a result of our own frustration in choosing an online faxing service. We have spent over 100 man hours, plus more in ongoing updates researching all the different online fax services and organizing the data so you can make an "apples to apples" comparison of the different services and select a provider so you can get back to business. We are committed to providing a quality resource to individuals and small business owners that will save time and alleviate the frustration we went through in selecting an internet fax service provider for ourselves.

Over 100,000 people have used our website to compare online fax services, and we hope you will use it, too.

Click here to return to our comparison grid and compare the top online fax services »