Sending a fax online is pretty much like sending an email, so if you have been sending e-mails for the past years you should not have any trouble at all with email faxing. To start, you will need to sign up with a web fax service. You don’t even really need to invest any money at this stage since many fax providers offer nowadays free 30 day trials with many benefits.

After signing up you will be able to use your email address to send a fax, so next time you won’t even have to think about turning on the big, bulky an outdated traditional fax machine.

Here’s a great image that pretty much explains how fax email services work (I found this on MyFax’s website, so credits go to them).

How do email fax services work explained

Okay, so you open a new message to send and on the “To:” field you enter the number you want to send a fax to in the following way: faxnumber@faxservice.com. When you do this, the fax service will process your faxing request through their fax servers.

All documents you want to send as fax, must be attached in the email. Depending on your fax email service provider, you will be able to handle different file formats, however the market standard is to manage common “office formats” such as Word documents, Adobe PDFs, and of course the TIFF file format, used by fax machines.

If you want to insert text on the cover page, you can do so by typing the text on the message field. Finally, you press SEND, and that’s it. As you can see it is way simpler than pressing various buttons on a fax machine and it delivers your documents with speed and clarity.

You can also send a fax through each of fax service provider’s interface. Choosing a service with a friendly interface can save you a lot of trouble in the future. The process is very similar and of course very easy.

Here’s a list that will be of great help if you want to know all the different options available. I have included a little overview of each one of them to help you a little, but for full info you might want to visit their homepage.

If you know of any email faxing service that hasn’t been listed here, please let me know so I can update this list.

Ringcentral Fax
Ringcentral Fax is one of the most successful online faxing companies in the Internet. They offer solutions for different users in the form of plans. Their basic plans allows 300 pages of faxing and there are no set up fees. You can also take advantage of their free trial offer for 30 days.

MyFax
MyFax also offers a 30 day free trial and allows different plans for different needs. It is one of the services that offers compatibility with most file formats – this is extremely convenient if you need to fax all sort of documents through your computer. It allows multiple users and their plans can be paid monthly or annually.

101Fax
This email fax service is very inexpensive but unfortunately its quality is also low. The feature of unlimited inbound faxes sounds very good. But they would do better investing on a better interface and customer support. Still an OK alternative for a cheapest option.

AirComUSA.com
AirComUSA offers one of the poorest solutions for Internet faxing. Although they give you a toll free number with no fees, they do charge a set up fee for their service, only offer 6 days of fax storage and the worse: there are not included minutes n the monthly fee.

CallWave
This Internet fax service fits in the “standard group”. For $9.95 a month you can receive 150 pages and send 100. It offers online storage for 6 months, but there are other services that at the same price deliver more. One feature that I don’t like of Callwave, is that they put their brand in the cover pages.

Clickfax
A company that don’t even meet the standards of modern Internet faxing. For $9.95 a month you only enjoy 50 pages of faxing (incoming and outbound combined). I certainly don’t recommend ClickFax, but I’ve put it here to make a complete list.

eFax
If there’s something eFax excels at, that is customer service. I’ve used their service before and they have been always really helpful. These guys also offer storage for 1 year and allow multiple users. The cons? Well, start-up fee of $10 and less amounts of faxing volume when compared to other services.

eXtremeFax
eXtreme Fax is a pretty good fax service, maybe because they are an old version of Ringcentral Fax. You pretty much enjoy the benefits of Ringcentral at a slightly lower price. What it lacks is of an improved interface and advanced features that now Ringcentral Fax offers.

Fax.com
This is yet alternative that doesn’t stand out for bringing an extra to their customers. At a price the same as top fax services, Fax.com doesn’t provide a good customer support experience for the price you have to pay. Better stick to more reliable alternatives.

Fax2Mail
This is a faxing solution offered by Premiere Global that is also included in a communications bundle. As a mere faxing tool it just doesn’t provide a competitive solution. As with many services out there its main problem is the poor customer service. Its price is higher than better solutions and you have to pay a high start up fee of $20.

FaxAge
Now we are talking about a plan that actually has a competitive pricing. For $7.95 a month you can send 150 pages and receive 150 additionally, this service has a low start up fee of $5 but the problem of limited customer support remains.

RapidFAX
This is another one of the best service providers, its offers adjusts to the market standards (no set up fees, they offer a 30 day free trial and low overage charges) all for $9.5 a month. The free trial period allows you to fax 300 pages, which is a lot for a free trial! The bad thing about RapidFAX is that you only can have 2 users per account, but if that doesn’t bother you it remains as an excellent alternative!

SaveOnFaxes
This company offers one of the lowest monthly plans, but they also have a high start up. If you only have low faxing requirements this may be good choice, specially because they provide a great customer support. If you often go beyond your plan though, keep in mind that they have expensive overage fees, they also lack of fax storage capabilities.

TrustFax
TrustFax is a great option for people who have high incoming faxing volume needs. For $9.95 you can receive up to 400 pages per month but you can only send 125. They have a limited trial offer BUT unlimited fax storage which puts it opposite to SaveonFaxes. It also doesn’t have start up fees.

MetroFax
MetroFax has to be the best offer for users who plan to manage high volumes of faxing. Their plan of $12.95 per month allows for 1000 pages of fax combined, and extra fees are charged per page not per minute. They do have a start up fee, but is at areasonable price: $9.95. They currently have no free trial offer, but when you sign up for one month, they give you the second one free of charge.

Other Faxing Services

These are more email fax services. I still haven’t had the chance of review them, but I will put a little review later on. Feel free to learn more about them.

• FaxFreeedom
• FaxMicro
• FaxSer
• GoFaxer
• GreenFax
• Jconnect
• Maxemail
• OneFax
• Packetel
• PayPerFax
• Send2Fax
• SimplifyFax
• SmartFax
• SRFax

Email fax services help you to save money by replacing your traditional fax machine. Traditional fax machines are very important to business, as you do need faxes, but they cost money to run. You have to worry about the long distance costs, the costs of the machine, the paper and toner that you need for the machine, and other types of fees that you will have with fax machines. Without them, however, you can’t accept information from clients or customers that need to send faxes, and it is going to be even harder for you to figure out what you are going to do.

Therefore, you should look in to email fax services. These are services that you can use instead of your traditional fax machines. They are going to allow you to have plenty of chances to send and receive faxes, but you’ll also be able to save money.

With email fax services, you still have that fax number that you need to have so that people can send you faxes. However, when the fax arrives, it is converted to a digital file and goes to your email inbox instead. This means that you only have to print it out if you need it, but you can save it digitally, and do whatever you need to do with it in the meantime. It also means that you are going to be able to decide which of the faxes will get printed and which won’t, instead of, like with a traditional fax machine, where they are all printed.

The other step in a fax machine is actually sending faxes, and with email fax service, you can do this as well. However, you also use your email to send faxes. You can send faxes through your email to traditional fax numbers, and on the other end, the faxes will arrive just as if you have sent them in a traditional manner. This is going to be great for you, because it means that you can have the right type of fax for your needs, no matter what those needs are. With the best email fax services, you should be able to get the right faxes at the right time, and send just what you need, whenever you need it.

If you are unsure whether to spend money on getting to find the best email fax service, know that most providers offer free trials of their service for as long as 30 days.  This is more than enough time to send any urgent fax and at the same time take advantage of their features.  Later on, you can decide if you want to keep using the fax service for a monthly fee or better try another email fax service provider.