For the most part, faxing documents has become obsolete. In times of email, cloud storage, and easy downloads, there are few if any reasons to send faxes. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t come up though – and if it does, you may find yourself struggling to find a machine to send or receive faxes on.
Thankfully, there is a fairly easy, and best of all, free, way to send and receive faxes these days – and that would be to use an online service. When the whole world switched from fax to email, these online services emerged, in order to make it easier for people who hadn’t moved with the times yet to keep going – and many of these services are still available. We made a list of some of the best ones.
eFax Free (Receiving only)
eFax is one of the few services that allows you to both send and receive faxes for free. Most services only allow you to send, rather than receive – not so this service. Although sending them is only available in the paid version, you can still use this service to receive faxes. You can get up to 10 faxes per month, and they’ll be sent straight to your email.
It’s a full service – you can download an app for on the go faxing, your faxes are stored on a cloud for 30 days, and though you are limited in file service, this is the perfect choice for casual fax-receivers.
GotFreeFax (Sending only)
This Freemium service lets you easily send faxes for free – on a single page service, you write, attach files, and send your fax in minutes. The paid options are just that; optional. If you occasionally have to send faxes but not receive them, this service is a great option. Their limit of two faxes per fay is also very reasonable – should you need to go over, their pay-per-fax service is still a lot cheaper than most subscription services.
FaxZero (Sending only)
This is a great service to use if you want to send free faxes occasionally – though you are limited to five faxes per day and 3 pages per fax, the easy to use service makes this a solid choice. FaxZero does put its branding on the cover page but don’t worry – the contents of your fax themselves won’t be affected.
FaxBetterFree (Receiving only)
This receipt-only service is great for semi-casual fax receivers – you get assigned a receiving number and you can keep it for as long as you want, as long as you get faxes at least every 7 days. You can store up to 1000 pages total, and receive 50 per month. The paid version allows you to send and receive, of course, and its low pricing options make it one of the more attractive paid options as well.
Honourable mention: Microsoft Office Fax
If you have an active Microsoft Office subscription, you actually already have access to a fax service – though it requires a bit of a setup. You can send faxes from Outlook, Word, Excel or even PowerPoint, and you’ll also need to have the Windows Fax driver installed on your machine and a modem and a phone line to send your faxes through. The modem makes it a less than attractive option for most users. Still, if you find yourself with a suitable setup and meet all the requirements, you can use this service to send your faxes instead of an outside service!
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