7 Best Online Fax Services of 2023

The best online fax services provide a secure and convenient way to exchange faxes online. They offer capabilities beyond what a physical fax machine can do—unlimited cloud storage, custom fax cover sheets, usage reports, and app integrations. More importantly, they meet high-level security and compliance standards for protecting sensitive files. Monthly plans start at $9, and the number of fax pages and feature inclusions vary across providers.

Based on our expert review, the best online fax service providers are as follows:

• FAX.PLUS: Best overall for security and compliance offerings
• RingCentral Fax: Best for high-volume faxing
• Dropbox Fax: Best for low-volume faxing
• eFax: Best for sending large files to multiple users
• Nextiva vFAX: Best for remote fax users
• mFax: Best for developer-friendly programmable faxing
• SRFax: Best for health practitioners

Best Online Fax Services at a Glance

FAX.PLUS: Best Overall Online Fax Services

*Pay annually to save up to 22% and get three months free.

FAX.PLUS is our overall best online fax service because it employs a variety of security and compliance measures, ideal for handling highly sensitive data. Security features include data encryption, fully encrypted archives, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack protection. It also adheres to a wide range of compliance regulations, such as data residency, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and Service Organization Control (SOC).

FAX.PLUS is also our top pick for the best free online fax services because it offers a free plan with 10 free pages before signing up for any of its paid packages. In addition, this provider has the cheapest monthly plan on this list, starting at $8.99 for 200 pages. It supports high-volume faxing, extensive integrations, and multiple fax numbers and users.

On the downside, FAX.PLUS is lacking in a few high-level features most fax providers offer, including custom fax cover sheets, file sharing, fax to email, and e-signature for desktop users. If you’re looking for a free service like FAX.PLUS that has more generous offerings, try Dropbox Fax. Its free plan includes unlimited storage, international coverage, and an e-signature functionality.

FAX.PLUS Features

• Analytics dashboard: Monitor your account’s monthly usage and the number of faxes each member sends and receives based on billing cycles.
• Document optimization: All documents pass through an advanced image processing engine to get optimized for fax transmission. This results in a more enhanced fax quality and shorter transmission time.
• Confirmation report: All sent faxes have a confirmation report that includes the date, transmission date, number of pages, fax cover page thumbnail, and QR code.

RingCentral Fax: Best for High-volume Faxing

*Try the RingCentral MVP plan for unlimited online faxing, starting at $30 per user, monthly.

RingCentral, the industry’s leading business phone system, offers a fax service designed for sending large volumes of faxes to multiple recipients. Send faxes to a maximum of 50 recipients at a time or activate Fax Broadcasting if you need to send more. There’s no busy signal, allowing you to receive faxes simultaneously and get real-time alerts by SMS, email, or on your desktop.

Aside from high-volume faxing, we chose RingCentral Fax as one of the best online faxing services due to a number of standout features. Fax scheduling lets you send faxes based on a specific date and time and choose from a variety of customizable cover pages for a more personalized touch. Upgrade to the RingCentral MVP plan to access a wide range of business phone features and collaboration tools.

RingCentral Fax’s monthly rate is one of the highest you’ll pay for a base plan among the fax services we reviewed. There’s no option to scale down due to its single-plan structure, which may not appeal to small businesses with low-volume faxing requirements. In this case, consider providers like FAX.PLUS or Dropbox Fax, which offer a free plan and more scalable pricing options.

RingCentral Fax Features

• Advanced fax blocking: Block faxes from specific phone numbers, area codes, prefixes, or phones with no caller ID. Customize your advanced blocking options based on your needs.
• Fax scheduling: Schedule your fax when you want to send it. Choose the date and time and follow the normal faxing procedure.
• Multi-device faxing: Send, receive, and manage faxes using your desktop, tablet, or mobile device.

Dropbox Fax: Best for Low-volume Faxing

*Annual billing is available.

Dropbox Fax is our best online free fax service for small businesses with low to moderate faxing needs. Like FAX.PLUS, it has a free plan that lets you start out with free five outbound pages, along with the opportunity to earn 20 more by completing the items on the “Get Free Pages” tab. Once you’ve used up all the free pages, you will only be charged 99 cents for the first 10 pages and 20 cents for each page after that.

Dropbox Fax has built-in e-signature capabilities that let you add your signature, date, text, and checkboxes before sending a fax. Users have the option to send a high-resolution colored fax for image-heavy documents. It also accepts long-distance faxing, where you get charged for the pages used. Note that international destinations require additional pages.

Dropbox Fax doesn’t have a mobile app to support remote fax users. In this case, consider Nextiva vFAX, which lets you use your tablet or smartphone to send and receive faxes. Access your faxes in one intuitive mobile interface and set up SMS alerts for incoming and outgoing fax documents.

Dropbox Fax Features

• Third-party integrations: Dropbox Fax integrates with Google Drive, Evernote, Dropbox, and One Drive for sending and retrieving faxes in the cloud.
• Electronic signature: Get your fax documents signed securely online and add annotations, including the date, checkboxes, and custom text.
• Online fax number: Dropbox provides a fax number that works as a fax line, which you can use for receiving faxes from physical fax machines or any computer fax service.

eFax: Best for Large File Sharing

*Save up to $37.90 on the annual plan.

eFax earns a spot on our list of the best online fax services because of its efficient file-sharing capabilities. While most email services limit file attachments to up to 25MB, eFax lets you send files up to 3MB in size to 20 recipients at once. This lets you share high-resolution images, large presentations, and videos without compressing the file. Each recipient will receive a downloadable link in their email to access the file securely.

eFax users can choose a local, toll-free, or international fax number upon sign-up. If you need a U.S.-based phone number, search numbers by area code, state, or toll-free. If you opt for an international phone line, you can choose from a large inventory of numbers based on a particular city. You can also transfer your current fax number to your eFax account.

Unfortunately, eFax has poor customization options for fax cover sheets. This is a must-have feature for companies that want to protect the integrity of a fax document, preventing it from being read or seen passively by anyone. A better alternative would be RingCentral Fax, which offers a wide range of cover page templates, including classic, confidential, formal, and urgent.

eFax Features

• Address book: Integrate your current address book with your eFax account so you can keep track of your digital contacts, including their fax number and email.
• Fax search: Organizes your faxes by adding keyword tags for quicker retrieval. Find a fax using specific criteria, such as keywords, recipient’s name, and date received or sent.
• Electronic signature: Add an electronic signature or annotation to any fax document before sending it. There are two ways to sign your faxes: swipe your finger on your mobile screen or drag and drop a saved signature on a document.

Nextiva vFAX: Best for Remote Faxing

*Save 20% when you pay annually.

Nextiva vFAX is our top recommended online fax service for remote users wanting to send, receive, and manage their faxes from anywhere. Use a tablet or mobile device to transmit faxes via email or the Nextiva vFAX portal. Faxes are delivered securely to your preferred inbox, which triggers SMS alerts when a new fax arrives. Add up to five email addresses or SMS-enabled phone numbers to get notifications for inbound and outbound faxes.

We choose Nextiva vFAX as the best cheap online fax service due to its excellent value for money. At a starting fee of $9.95, you get 500 fax pages each month, including a host of features like multiple fax recipients, cloud storage, and secure transmission.

Nextiva VFAX is not built for high-volume faxing because it only supports up to six recipients at a time. If fax broadcasting is something your company needs, check out SRFax or RingCentral Fax. Both solutions let you transmit faxes to a maximum of 50 fax numbers or more.

Nextiva vFAX Features

• vFAX online portal: Manage all your faxes in a secure portal through any browser-enabled device. Send and receive faxes, check status or account activity, and retrieve backup information.
• Fax bridge: Allows your regular fax machine to work with your Nextiva vFAX account. Purchase the Nextiva Fax Bridge so you can fax to and from your email and fax machine.
• Secure transmission and storage: Nextiva uses 256-bit secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption for every fax sent and received to protect sensitive information. All faxes are stored in maximum-security data centers.

mFax: Best for Programmable Faxing

*Choose annual billing to save up to 17%.

If you’re looking to integrate fax functionality into your existing software, mFax is your best choice. It delivers developer-friendly, programmable application programming interfaces (APIs) built on representational state transfer (REST) architecture that easily integrates into existing workflows and applications. Extensive API documentation is available in Ruby, Python, and NodeJS.

When it comes to high-volume faxing, we also recommend mFax (apart from RingCentral) because higher-tier plans support up to 1,000 to 2,500 pages. However, high-level features like e-signature and custom fax cover pages are unavailable.

Despite mFax’s reliability, its base plan has significantly higher per-page rates than other providers on this list. For example, with Dropbox Fax, you only have to pay $9.99 monthly for five users and 300 pages, making it comparably cheaper than mFax, which charges $12 for a solo user with access to only 250 pages. If you’re looking for a fax solution that brings more bang for your buck, consider affordable options like Dropbox Fax, Nextiva vFAX, and SRFax.

mFax Features

• Email-to-fax: Send and receive faxes from your email provider using an assigned toll-free number. Faxes are sent right to a fax machine, and faxes sent from a fax machine are sent straight to your email inbox.
• Print-to-fax: Install the mFax Print to Fax driver to enable any Windows application with a print function to send a fax. This removes the need to print documents or forms for fax transmission.
• Automatic cloud storage: All sent and received faxes are automatically stored in secure cloud storage. Add tags for easy search and access your faxes from any device.

SRFax: Best for Healthcare Professionals

*Save up to 15% with annual billing. Contact sales for a larger plan.

SRFax is a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-compliant fax service offering subscription plans dedicated to healthcare use. To ensure strict adherence to patient privacy laws, all healthcare plans are designed to meet HIPAA compliance specifications. These include enhanced security features like optical character recognition (OCR), secure downloader, user authentication, and a robust application security model.

Standard packages are available for non-healthcare purposes. All plans include multiple recipients, a printer driver, and unlimited storage. However, its entry-level plan is about the same cost as mFax, which is priced higher than most providers on our list. If you’re looking for the best free fax online service, check out FAX.PLUS or Dropbox Fax.

SRFax Features

• Never Busy Service: SRFax provides a single fax number for online faxing with the ability to send and receive multiple faxes without a busy signal.
• Fax API: SRFax provides easy-to-use and feature-rich APIs to enable developers to add e-fax capability to a project. Downloadable API assets are available.
• Junk fax filter: Block spam faxes by adding the fax number to the list of blocked callers. All blocked faxes are placed into the “junk faxes” folder and stored for seven days.

How We Evaluated the Best Online Fax Services

We examined dozens of online fax services offering capabilities that make sending and receiving faxes online relatively easier than a traditional fax machine. To form our unbiased expert assessment, we rated each provider based on pricing, features, ease of use, and customer support. Learn how we evaluated the best online fax services by clicking on the tabs below:

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

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Bottom Line

An online fax service provides a convenient way to send important documents securely without needing a physical fax machine. It works on multiple devices and platforms, including access to unlimited cloud storage, email-to-fax, integrations, and an online portal. It also adheres to rigorous security standards to ensure a safe and compliant faxing experience.

After testing seven fax providers, we highly recommend FAX.PLUS to any size business due to its excellent range of security features. It offers a free version to accommodate budget-conscious users with basic faxing requirements. Take advantage of its free plan and see for yourself how it can meet your business needs.

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