My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.
Humaaans – Pablo Stanley’s new project—a free illustration library that features fully customizable humans! There is an almost endless amount of assets to mix and match from so you can create just about any human you want.
CanIRank – If you use an SEO tool, there is a lot of data output that can be overwhelming. CanIRank is different—the platform is powered by AI, so it gives you data and actionable recommendations.
Video by CoPilot AI – Video by CoPilot AI makes it easy to create personalized videos at scale. With this new product, you can record snippets and Video by CoPilot AI will edit, stitch, and process all the videos for you.
These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me@ducttape
If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.
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Online fax services are better than traditional faxing in every way. By digitizing the process, you can send or receive faxes from your phone and retrieve an old fax with a simple file search.
Here are the best online fax services—many of which you can start using for free.
Not all online faxing services are the same. You’ll find affordable services for folks that send the occasional fax, and deals for offices that fax at high-volume.
There’s also a few solutions with extra privacy and security safeguards for companies in law, healthcare, and financial services.
In this post, I’ve covered the price, benefits, and any potential drawbacks of the best faxing services available.
Nextiva is a well-known name in business communications. They offer online fax as a standalone service called Nextiva vFax.
For less than $10, you can use Nextiva vFax for up to 500 pages a month.
This is a modern solution that works from any device. Each fax is secured with 256-bit SSL encryption, and you can track all faxes through a web portal or receive inbound faxes directly in your email inbox as PDFs.
You can send faxes through the online portal, by email, or through a tablet or mobile device.
Nextiva does not currently support international faxing and the web portal could be more intuitive. However, most businesses will appreciate how easy it is to manage faxes. Storing, sharing, retrieving, controlling access–it’s very straightforward.
This is a great opportunity to solve fax for your business. You benefit from Nextiva’s world-class network, but you don’t have to purchase all of their services just to get fax.
Nextiva offers three vFax plans:
Essential: $7.95 per month billed annually for 500 pages
Professional: $13.95 per month billed annually for 1000 pages
HIPAA Compliant: Contact sales
The annual pricing is shown above, paying month to month is a few dollars more.
If you need fax for your business, this is a very affordable all-in-one solution. Some of the lighter online fax services don’t have the
Ooma is business phone service provider that includes online fax as part of their trusted Ooma Office suite.
Ooma Office is a cloud business phone system with top-notch business features like an unlimited number of extensions, a virtual receptionist, call forwarding, conferencing, call recording, voicemail transcription, and more.
You can also get access to their Ooma Faxing feature. It’s a completely online service, so you’ll never have to pay for or repair a physical fax machine again.
Plus, Ooma Faxing is free and included with any Ooma Office plan.
While many people still need faxing features, not many business phone systems include this feature anymore.
Ooma Faxing supports both inbound and outbound faxing, and administrators can add the virtual fax feature onto any users’ extension in the company.
To access the virtual fax features, Ooma users just need to go through their end user portal to send one out as a PDF. When a fax is sent to their phone extension, users will receive it in their email inbox.
In the portal, any user and all administrators can review their virtual fax records. The only drawback is not being able to save outbound faxes, but if you are sending it yourself, you can simply save a copy before sending.
Ooma Office offers two subscription tiers:
Ooma Office: $19.95/mo per user
Ooma OfficePro: $24.95/mo per user
Ooma Faxing is included with both plans. It is free to add the virtual fax feature to any user’s phone extension.
While Ooma Office does have an excellent mobile app, virtual faxing must be done through the website, as users must access their portal to send a fax. Users will receive faxes via email, so they’ll get them from anywhere.
With over 10 million users across the globe, eFax is the world leader in online faxing. It’s simple: send an online fax from anywhere using your smartphone, computer, or tablet.
You don’t need a fax machine–it’s as simple as downloading an app or sending an email. Use your existing number or choose your own local, toll-free, or international number. eFax lets you have up to 10 numbers with a single account
Getting started with eFax is simple, too. Select an area code based on your location, or choose a toll-free number based in the US. One of the major standouts of eFax is the ability to send international faxes, which isn’t offered by every online fax company.
If you already have a fax number for your business, you can convert it to eFax. It’s worth noting that novelty and custom fax numbers are not available with eFax.
As I mentioned earlier, faxing is commonly used for scenarios when signing documents is required. eFax has an integrated electronic signature feature, which allows you to sign documents without having to print anything.
eFax offers unlimited online storage to safely keep your faxes on file for the lifetime of your account. It’s easy to locate documents by searching for keywords.
Speaking of security, eFax won’t deliver fax content directly to your email inbox. Instead, all inbound faxes are encrypted and hosted securely. You can download any confidential faxes from there without having to worry.
If you’re using online cloud storage services like Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud, eFax lets you fetch files from there and send them out via your virtual fax.
Here’s an overview of the eFax pricing structure:
eFax Plus — $16.95 per month
Send 150 pages
Receive 150 pages
$10 setup
eFax Pro — $19.95 per month
Send 200 pages
Receive 200 pages
$10 setup
They also offer eFax Corporate solutions with custom pricing based on volume. You’ll need to request a quote from their sales team.
These prices are actually a bit high compared to the competition. You can save some money and get two free months if you sign up for an annual plan instead of month-to-month. If you go over your monthly page allowance, you’ll be charged an additional $0.10 per page with each plan.
Overall, eFax is simple, straightforward, and popular. The mobile app is modern, and you’ll benefit from high-quality faxes.
eFax does fall short in terms of value. There are more affordable options out there, and it’s not great for high-volume users. Try the eFax free trial to see if it is right for you.
MetroFax offers online faxing at an excellent value. With plans starting as low as $8.30 per month, it’s a top option for small business owners and personal use.
There’s no setup cost, no hidden fees, and every MetroFax plan comes with the same set of features:
Mobile fax app
Dedicated local and toll-free number
Ability to transfer your current fax number
Fax multiple recipients at the same time
No long-distance charges
No long-term contracts
Automatic retries and instant confirmations
The web interface is a bit outdated, but it’s fine. You can send, receive, and store your faxes for life on your cloud account.
The MetroFax app is definitely one of the better mobile fax options out there. There’s not much you won’t be able to do directly from your phone, and it works well on Android or iOS.
Unlike other platforms we’ve seen, you won’t pay any activation fee to get started. Just create an account or download the app if you want to fax on the go.
MetroFax has three plans for you to choose from. As I mentioned, every plan comes with the same great features, so you are really just focused on your page limits.
Essential: starting at $8.30 per month for up to 500 pages
Best Value: starting at $10.79 per month for up to 1,000 pages
Professional: starting at $26.96 per month for up to 2,500 pages
These prices reflect the cost with an annual subscription. It’s slightly higher to purchase month to month plans. Paying for Essential month-to-month costs $9.95, for example.
You won’t need to sign a contract with MetroFax, and you can cancel your service at any time without penalty. Access all of your faxes from the online portal or your mobile phone.
It’s a no-frills platform that keeps faxing costs low, but MetroFax has not cut corners where it counts. Send a range of file types, including multiple document types, spreadsheets, and image formats.
Overall, MetroFax is a solid choice for all of your online faxing needs. I wish the web version was a bit more user-friendly, but stick to the mobile app and you’ll be fine. Try MetroFax for free to see if it is the best fax service for your faxing needs.
Fax.Plus is a budget-friendly online fax service that works great for companies that fax a predictable amount each month.
They offer a straightforward free plan as well as annual rates starting at $5 per month.
Customers get a user-friendly interface, with a great mobile app too. This is definitely a bonus, since so many services on our list seem to excel at just one or the other.
You’ll be able to keep costs down, no matter how many people need to fax. Set quotas for how many pages a month each user gets, or put a hierarchy in place to make sure everything is ready for an audit.
For a cheap online fax service, Fax.Plus offers quite a bit of extra features and benefits at each plan level. Let’s take a closer look at what you get with each plan.
Free — $0
10 total pages
$0.20 per additional page
Send faxes only
Unlimited storage
Multiple fax recipients
Electronic signature
Basic — $5.99 per month ($4.99 with annual plan)
100 pages
$0.10 per additional page
Dedicated fax number
Send and receive faxes
Premium — $11.99 per month ($9.99 with annual plan)
300 pages
$0.05 per additional page
All Basic features
Export fax logs as CSV file
Business — $19.99 per month ($14.99 with annual plan)
800 pages
$0.05 per additional page
Multiple fax numbers
5 team members
Slack integration
Enterprise — $59.99 per month ($49.99 with annual plan)
3,000 pages
$0.03 per additional page
All Business features
Unlimited team members
Zapier integration
Fax.Plus API
Priority support
Advanced security controls
The options are flexible and extensive, to say the least. But overall, I’d lean toward the Basic or Premium plans for something budget-friendly.
The Business plan is good too in terms of the price, but you’re limited to just 800 pages per month, which won’t accommodate high-volume users.
You can add a vanity fax number to your plan for $19.99. It’s free to sign up for Fax.Plus. There’s no time limit to the length of the free plan. You’ll just start paying per page when you go over the 10-page limit.
MyFax is another excellent option if you’re planning to send faxes from your mobile devices. But the overall standout of this online faxing service is its simplicity.
The set up process is incredibly easy. MyFax is a fax-by-email service. You can deliver messages to recipients with traditional fax machines as well as those with an online fax service.
Although MyFax is simple, it does fall a bit short in terms of security. They also don’t have an option for digital signatures.
So I’d recommend MyFax for personal use as opposed to anything business-related or faxing sensitive information.
Plans and pricing are as follows:
Home Office User — $10 per month
Send 100 pages
Receive 200 pages
Small Business User — $20 per month
Send 200 pages
Receive 200 pages
Power User — $40 per month
Send 400 pages
Receive 400 pages
Each additional page costs $0.10 when you exceed your limits for all plans.
Again, I’d really only recommend MyFax for personal use. Even the Small Business plan and Power User plan are pretty limited in terms of how many faxes you can send per month.
For comparison purposes, you can send and receive a total of 2,500 pages from MetroFax for less than the cost of the MyFax Power User plan. So if you are a high-volume fax user, you can get a better value elsewhere.
A free trial of MyFax is only available for the Home Office plan. It’s worth trying out for a month to see if you like the platform.
RingCentral Fax — Best Online Fax Service For Sole Proprietors
RingCentral Fax is a great solution especially if you’re a small business owner, freelancer, or contractor who anticipates slightly more faxing than your average entrepreneur. Their cheapest plan offers you up to 750 pages per month with $0.059 per additional page. That’s a pretty solid deal.
I like RingCentral Fax because it has a modern interface, offers fax scheduling, and supports attachments for large files. Another benefit of this provider is that you won’t be charged for a toll-free fax number.
Getting started with RingCentral is simple. Just choose your number and log in online or through the mobile app. Then you can start sending and receiving faxes from any device.
You’ll have the option to send online faxes to groups, receive notifications for all fax activity, and block any incoming faxes without caller ID.
RingCentral Fax keeps an online file log of all faxes sent and received, so it’s easy to go back to access those as a reference.
Here’s the plan and pricing breakdown for RingCentral Fax:
Fax 750 — $12.99 per month
750 pages
$0.059 for each additional page
Online customer support only
Fax 1500 — $17.99 per month
1,500 pages
$0.049 for each additional page
Phone and online support
Fax 2500 — $49.99 per month
2,500 pages
$0.039 for each additional page
Phone and online support
As you can see, the rate for additional pages is lower with each pricing tier, which is different compared to some of the other services we’ve reviewed so far.
RingCentral Fax isn’t perfect. The quality of the faxes could be a bit better, and you won’t be able to send any international faxes. But overall, the plans offer a decent value.
HelloFax — Best For Small Teams and Cloud Storage Integration
HelloFax offers a great fax service with a smooth and intuitive interface.
HelloFax stands out from the competition with its cloud storage integration features and team options, which is great for small business owners.
It works with Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, and Evernote to provide seamless access to your files, no matter where they live. The interface could not be easier to navigate.
Another reason why we love HelloFax is because of its built-in editor. This makes it extremely easy for you to deal with any attachments.
Unlike eFax, which counts sent and received faxes separately toward your monthly allowance, HelloFax groups them together. In my opinion, this is a much better pricing structure.
Here’s an overview of the plans and pricing for HelloFax.
Free — $0
5 total sent pages
No team features
Home Office — $9.99 per month
300 pages per month
5 team members
Professional — $19.99 per month
500 pages per month
10 team members
Small Business — $39.99 per month
1,000 pages per month
20 team members
The free send-only plan is extremely limited. It’s really only intended for someone who needs to send a one-time fax that’s less than five pages. Otherwise, there’s not much else you can do with it.
For just $10 per month, you can send and receive 100 more pages than eFax, for half of the price. Plus, HelloFax won’t hit you with any setup fees.
All paid plans come with a 30-day free trial and discounted rates for annual contracts.
While HelloFax is great, it does have one significant pitfall that’s tough to overlook. There isn’t a dedicated mobile app, which is a bit disappointing. But if you can look past that, HelloFax is still a great option to consider.
As the name suggests, FaxZero costs zero dollars to you. It’s true–FaxZero is free for a small number of pages each day.
More than 20.5 million faxes have been sent using the platform.
Using FaxZero is simple. Just navigate to the website and fill out the fax form. You don’t even need to create an account. Simply enter your name, company (optional), email address, and phone number. Then enter the name and fax number of the recipient.
Once that information has been filled out, you can send up to three pages by attaching a file. The cover page does not count toward this limit.
You can send up to five free faxes per day, for a total of 15 free pages daily. That’s pretty good considering you don’t have to pay for anything.
The downside of FaxZero is that you can’t receive any faxes. But it’s the perfect choice for an occasional user who just needs to send a quick fax.
FaxZero also offers an “Almost Free Fax” plan, which costs $1.99 per fax. This allows you to send up to 25 pages and removes the FaxZero branding from the cover page.
I probably wouldn’t consider the paid plan unless it was just a one-time occurrence. There are other affordable plans out there that provide much better value and benefits with monthly plan options.
The bottom line is simple. If you don’t have a fax machine and want to send a short fax for free online, FaxZero will be your best option. Beyond that, it’s extremely limited.
The “S” in Sfax stands for secure — which is perfect for an online fax option that’s tailored to healthcare companies.
Whenever medical records are sent through any medium, privacy and security are the top concerns. Sfax is a HIPAA-compliant fax service that allows people to send, receive, manage, annotate, and digitally sign medical and other documents without a fax machine or printer.
In addition to the enhanced security, Sfax can also improve your healthcare workflow process, since printing and manually signing documents is not an effective use of time.
Sfax makes it possible for your remote staff, or anyone who is traveling, to send and receive essential health documents from anywhere.
Since Sfax is designed for the healthcare industry, it offers flexible options for total control. You can manage your users to set access, permissions, and security options for each person.
It’s also easy for groups and teams to collaborate, view, manage, and export documents.
You can use Sfax with multiple locations, multiple numbers, and multiple sub-organizations all on the same plan. You don’t need a separate account for each location, and the number of users for each account won’t be restricted either.
Let’s take a look at the plans and pricing options for Sfax:
Standard — $29 per month
350 pages per month
Unlimited users
Plus — $49 per month
700 pages per month
Unlimited users
Contender — $99 per month
1,500 pages per month
Unlimited users
Sfax also has custom Enterprise plans for high-volume users needing 2,500+ pages per month. You’ll be charged $0.10 per page for each page over your monthly limit.
As you can see, Sfax is pricey. But it’s worth it for medical practices or any company in the healthcare field. As of now, Sfax only supports faxes being sent in the US and Canada.
To test out the service, Sfax offers a 14-day free trial.
Biscom 123 is one of the best options for email-to-fax on the market today. I recommend it for people who need to fax, but not all the time.
It’s a very simply solution that’s going to save companies money if they don’t need high-volume faxing or advanced administrative features.
You can send a fax directly from your email app using the following format:
RecipientName.RecipientFaxNumber@biscom123.com
The subject line of the email you send will also be the subject of the fax cover page. The body of the email will be the memo of your cover page. But you can’t customize anything else on the cover beyond that.
Simply attach files you want to fax directly to the email. Attachments get converted into fax image files and transmitted to the recipient.
You’ll receive a confirmation email once all pages have been successfully transmitted and sent.
While Biscom 123 integrates with email, it does have a strange drawback compared to other online fax services. You can’t send a fax from the web interface.
The Biscom 123 mobile app has its flaws as well. But you must use it to link with your existing email platforms. You might experience some glitches and crashes using the app.
Biscom 123 offers two simple plans:
Individual — $7.99 per month
30 pages
One user
$0.07 per page over 30
Small Group — $14.99 per month
300 pages
Up to five users
$0.07 per page over 300
You can try Biscom 123 free for 30 days without entering your credit card information. It’s a good options for occasional users, but definitely has its fair share of limitations.
How to Find the Best Online Fax Service for You
This is the methodology we used at QuickSprout to build this guide. We believe these are the most important factors when it comes down to the best fax service.
Make sure your chosen online fax service meets your specific needs for the following criteria.
Use it to help guide your own decisions.
Document Archives
The best online fax services make it easy for you to access both sent and received faxes after you originally access them. Sometimes these archives will be limited to just a year of archives, however.
It’s important to know your archive limits before you sign up. You don’t want to lose access to important documents or forget to budget additional storage if yours runs out.
You also want to find something that makes it easy to stay organized. Does your fax service let you add tags to files? Are files automatically stored, or do you have to remember to save files every time you fax?
Cloud Storage Integration
In addition to archives within the faxing platform, you can always keep your documents forever by moving them to cloud storage systems like Google Drive or Dropbox.
Another benefit of cloud storage integration is the ability to send faxes from those platforms. This is much easier than the alternative of scanning, uploading, and attaching.
Many of my recommendations for online fax services have integration with popular cloud storage providers, and it’s no accident. eFax, for example, has pre-built integrations with Google, Dropbox, Box, iCloud, and more.
If you can find an online fax service that integrates with the cloud storage platform you are already using–great. It’s going to save you time, money, and make staying organized a lot easier.
Multi-Platform Access
The point of an online fax service is the ability to send a fax from anywhere and any device: computers, smartphones, tablets, iOS, and Android devices.
While most online fax companies offer a mobile app, that’s not always the case. Plus, some mobile apps are better than others. Some companies have an excellent mobile app, but outdated web interface.
Make your decision based on what platform you plan to use the most for faxing. The best online fax services work across many different platforms, which makes it easier on employees. If they are away from their desk, will they still be able to send and receive that important fax?
Page Limits
None of the online fax services on our list have the ability to send or receive an unlimited number of faxes. Each platform and plan comes with limits on a monthly basis.
If you exceed those limits, you’ll be hit with a per-page overage charge. You’ll want to find a plan that meets your needs without going over those monthly restrictions.
If you fax at high-volume, unlimited page limit plans are definitely the way to go. Offices that fax less can probably benefit from shopping around to find a plan with acceptable limits at a great price.
With Nextiva, for example, you can send up to 500 pages a month with their entry-level online fax plan. It’s less than $8 per month, so you really shouldn’t be paying a lot unless you are faxing every day.
The Top Online Fax Services in Summary
Faxing has evolved, but it is still around. People are getting rid of bulky fax machines in their homes and offices and moving to more streamlined electronic solutions.
A good online fax service saves you money on paper and saves time on otherwise tedious tasks. They’re affordable, easy to use, and you can usually try them for free.
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