Internet Fax Service Features
Send a Fax Online With These Fax From eMail Features
Below, you will find descriptions of the electronic fax service features common to most of the reviewed fax to email service providers.
Please see the individual reviews of the online fax service providers for additional information about each service.
To see a side-by-side feature comparison between the fax from email service providers that we review, please see the online fax services comparison page.
Free Trial
All of the reviewed best online fax services offer a FREE 30-day trial. You can use the services for up to 30 days without being charged. This lets you see if the particular service is right for you.
If you cancel before your 30-day trial is finished, you will not be charged anything. Therefore, if you find that a particular email and fax services provider doesn’t work for you, just give another one a try and utilize their free trial period.
Toll-Free or Local Fax Number
All of the reviewed fax via Internet services offer you the option of either having a local or toll-free fax number. There is no additional setup charge to have a toll-free fax number.
Note: If you have a toll-free number with eFax Plus, there are no included inbound pages. Every single inbound fax will cost you 20¢ to receive. The other two services do include toll-free inbound faxes in their monthly-included pages.
Additional Fax Numbers
If you need an additional fax number, all three reviewed fax via email services offer you the option of purchasing them. You could get a fax number in a city where you are not located, allowing customers to fax to you without incurring toll charges. This also gives the impression that you have a local presence.
RingCentral Fax charges $4.99 per month, per additional number. Myfax charges $10 per month, per additional number. eFax Plus charges $16.95 per month, per additional number.
Included Pages
All of the reviewed fax over Internet services come with a certain number of inbound and outbound pages included with the monthly fee. A page is considered up to 60 seconds of transmission time. A fax page that takes longer than 60 seconds - a photo for instance - may be considered two pages. Most fax pages take less than 60 seconds to send.
Note: If you have a toll-free number with eFax Plus, there are no included inbound pages. Every single inbound fax will cost you 20¢ to receive. The other two services do include toll-free inbound faxes in their monthly-included pages.
Additional Page Charge
If you use more than the monthly allocated inbound and/or outbound pages, you have to pay a per-page fee for each additional inbound and outbound page. If you find that you continually receive and/or send more pages than come with your monthly plan, it might be wise to upgrade to an Internet faxing solutions plan that offers more included pages. Both RingCentral Fax and myfax offer multiple plans, where eFax Plus does not.
Send a Fax Online
With any of the services we did an Internet fax review on, you have the ability to send a fax online either via the online interface, or directly from email. RingCentral Fax and myfax also fully integrate with all Microsoft Office applications.
RingCentral Fax offers faxing from any Microsoft Windows application, via the RingCentral Fax icon on the application toolbar, or from the File menu.
Receive Fax Via eMail
Any one of the reviewed Internet fax service offer the ability to have inbound faxes forwarded to multiple email addresses so that you have a copy of the incoming fax as soon as it arrives. The fax via email comes to you attached to an email sent by your Internet fax service provider. This attachment can be either in PDF or TIFF file formats. You control which file format you wish to receive faxes by email.
Cell Phone Notification
RingCentral Fax and myfax allow you to receive a text message via your cell phone when you receive an inbound web fax. This allows you to know the instant an important fax has been received.
eFax Plus does not offer this feature.
Length of Online Storage
Not only do you have the ability to receive your incoming computer faxing message, but you also can log onto your Internet fax service provider and view the faxes online.
RingCentral Fax will save your faxes on line for only a 30-day period, while both myfax and eFax Plus save your faxes online for 1 year.
Sign & Edit Faxes Online
RingCentral Fax has a very powerful FaxEditor software, which is a free download. FaxEditor gives you the ability to edit and sign a faxing from computer document, without having to print them out. This is incredibly useful if you receive a faxed document that only requires your signature. You can electronically place your signature on the document and refax it, without ever having to print a hardcopy.
eFax Plus offers a similar service, allowing you to edit and sign faxes online.
Currently, myfax does not offer this feature.
Create Broadcast Faxes
RingCentral Fax and myfax both have the ability to create broadcast faxes. This simply means that you have the ability to send a fax online to more than one fax number in a single fax transmission.
If you have to fax something to multiple recipients, broadcast fax saves you the time of having to send online fax to each individual fax number. With broadcast fax, you create one fax, one cover letter, and send it to multiple fax numbers at one time.
eFax Plus currently does not offer this option.
Block Junk Faxes
RingCentral Fax and myfax have the ability to block unwanted junk faxes. You set the criteria for which you determine a fax to be junk via the Internet fax service interfaces of both electronic faxing services, and they will then flag certain faxes as being junk faxes.
eFax Plus does not offer this service.
