7 Best Online Fax Services of 2023
This article is part of a larger series on VoIP.
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
Online Fax Services | Monthly Starting Price | Key Features | Free Plan/Trial | FSB Rating |
---|---|---|---|---|
$8.99 for 200 pages |
| Free plan available | 4.21 out of 5 | |
$27.99 for 3,000 pages |
| 14 days | 4.14 out of 5 | |
$9.99 for 300 pages |
|
| 4.12 out of 5 | |
$18.95 for 200 pages |
| 14 days | 4.11 out of 5 | |
$9.95 for 500 pages |
| ✕ | 4.09 out of 5 | |
$12 for 250 pages |
| 14 days | 3.74 out of 5 | |
$11.45 for 200 pages |
| 60 days | 3.54 out of 5 | |
FAX.PLUS: Best Overall Online Fax Services
What We Liked
- Free plan and cheaper monthly plans
- Send faxes to 180+ countries
- Robust security measures and compliance standards
Where It Falls Behind
- E-signature is only available on the mobile app
- Admin portal unlocks at the Business plan
- Poor customer support
FAX.PLUS Monthly Pricing*
- Free plan: 10 free pages
- Basic: $8.99 for 200 pages, one fax number, email-to-fax, unlimited fax storage, receive faxes, mobile app, and 10-cent fee per extra page
- Premium: $17.99 for 500 pages and 7-cent fee per extra page
- Business: $34.99 for up to five members, 1,000 pages, admin dashboard, and 5-cent fee per extra page
- Enterprise: $99.99 for unlimited users, 4,000 pages, and advanced security controls
*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
Review your company’s overall fax consumption via the FAX.PLUS admin dashboard.
(Source: FAX.PLUS)
- 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
What We Liked
- Customizable cover pages
- User-level blocking capabilities
- Up to 50 fax recipients
Where It Falls Behind
- Limited plan options
- Has the highest monthly starting fee in this list
- Lacks international numbers
RingCentral Fax Monthly Pricing (per User)*
- Fax 3000: $27.99 for 3,000 faxes, one local fax number, mobile app, fax scheduling, file sharing, fax broadcasting, fax spam blocking, and fax cover pages templates
- Free trial: 14 days via RingCentral MVP
*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
Maximize productivity by scheduling faxes in advance with the RingCentral app. (Source: RingCentral Fax)
- 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.
New to online faxing? Our step-by-step guide on how to use online fax explains how to use this feature with a business phone service like RingCentral.
Dropbox Fax: Best for Low-volume Faxing
What We Liked
- Free plan with unlimited cloud storage
- Clean, intuitive interface
- Integrates with Google Drive, OneDrive, and Evernote
Where It Falls Behind
- Lacks mobile app
- Free fax pages don’t renew monthly
- No custom fax cover sheets
Dropbox Fax Monthly Pricing*
- Free: Free for five pages, edit and sign faxes, unlimited cloud storage, and app integrations
- Home Office: $9.99 for five users, 300 pages, email-to-fax, receive faxes, and multiple fax recipients
- Professional: $19.99 for 10 users, 500 pages, and fax number porting
- Small Business: $39.99 for 20 users and 1,000 pages
- Free trial: 30 days
*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
Dropbox Fax’s intuitive interface makes it easy to send and transmit fax online. (Source: Dropbox Fax)
- 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
What We Liked
- Send files up to 3GB
- Choose from local, toll-free, and international numbers
- Editable faxes
Where It Falls Behind
- Can only send faxes to five email addresses
- Lacks custom cover page
- Additional $10 setup fee
eFax Monthly Pricing*
- Pro: $18.95 for 200 sent pages and 200 received pages
- Corporate: Contact the sales team for custom quote
- Free trial: 14 days
All plans include one phone number, multiple users/recipients, unlimited storage, email-to-fax, edit and sign faxes, up to 3GB file sharing, and mobile app
*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
eFax lets you electronically sign your faxes from any device.
(Source: eFax)
- 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
What We Liked
- Charges cheaper per additional page (3 cents per page)
- Accepts a variety of file formats
- Fax machine support
Where It Falls Behind
- Can only send up to six faxes at once
- Doesn’t support fax blasting
- No fax number blocking
Nextiva vFAX Monthly Pricing*
- Essential: $9.95 for 500 pages
- Professional: $18.95 for 1,000 pages
- HIPAA Compliant: Contact the sales team for a quote
All plans include fax by email, SMS alerts, online portal, six months’ fax storage, and encrypted transmission
*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
View incoming and outgoing faxes from the Nextiva vFAX dashboard. (Source: Nextiva vFAX)
- 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
What We Liked
- Supports high volume faxing
- No setup fee
- Faxes internationally
Where It Falls Behind
- Limited feature inclusions
- Admin portal not available on the Base plan
- Longer fax transmission are charged as multiple pages
mFax Monthly Pricing*
- Solo: $12 for 250 pages, one fax number, and secure fax storage
- Team: $29 for five users, 500 pages, and admin interface
- Business: $59 for 15 users, 1,000 pages, and API access
- Enterprise: $119 for 50 users, 2,500 pages, and single sign-on (SSO)
- Custom: Contact sales for quote, unlimited users, up to 1,000,000 pages, and 99.9% uptime
- Free trial: 14 days
*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
mFax is built to meet strict security and compliance standards. (Source: mFax)
- 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
What We Liked
- Send faxes up to 50 recipients at once
- Dedicated healthcare plans
- Printer driver for Windows and Mac users
Where It Falls Behind
- Charges $4.95 per extra page—more expensive than its competitors
- Clunky, outdated interface
- Only offers email support
SRFax Monthly Pricing*
Standard Plans
- Basic Plus: $11.45 for 200 pages
- Standard Lite: $14.90 for 500 pages
- Standard: $21.80 for 800 pages
- Standard Plus: $37.90 for 1,500 pages
- Free trial: 60 days
All plans include unlimited outbound users, unlimited storage, and password protection
Healthcare Plans
- Healthcare Lite: $12.60 for 200 pages
- Healthcare Basic: $16.05 for 500 pages
- Healthcare Basic Plus: $22.95 for 800 pages
- Healthcare Standard: $41.35 for 1,500 pages
All plans include multiple numbers per account, enhanced security, API integration, and optional optical character recognition (OCR).
*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
SRFax lets you configure how you wish to receive fax notifications. (Source: SRFax)
- 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:
20% of Overall Score
We reviewed the prices of multiple online fax services, including discounts for annual prepayment and multiple user subscriptions. Plus, we looked for the number of available plans and checked the affordability of each provider’s entry-level tier. We also try to look for free plans to determine the best free fax services online.
25% of Overall Score
We examined each provider’s general features like multiple fax recipients, scheduled faxing, and email-to-fax. We also prioritized solutions with fax number porting and editing capabilities.
20% of Overall Score
For niche features, we considered the types of security features and the number of third-party integrations. Similarly, we awarded additional points for high-level features like e-signature, mobile app, and unlimited cloud storage.
10% of Overall Score
We assessed the user-friendliness of each internet fax service by exploring it ourselves and checking user reviews from reliable websites. We considered if there are learning curves during the setup and configuration phase.
10% of Overall Score
We checked each provider’s customer service channels, including phone, live chat, email, helpdesk, and community forum. Additional points are given if all support channels are available 24/7.
15% of Overall Score
We assessed each provider’s overall quality and performance by looking at its standout qualities and value for money. We also considered their level of popularity and user-friendliness.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Generally, it takes around 30 to 60 seconds to send a single-page document that’s mostly text, and a few seconds longer for documents containing graphics. The answer depends on two factors— the type of content being transmitted and the transmission speed of the receiving fax machine.
Yes. Online fax is more secure than email because of its enhanced security features and compliance standards. Emails can get easily compromised (i.e., hacking attempts) because it passes through several servers before reaching the intended recipient. Online faxing, on the other hand, travels via the public switched telephone network (PSTN), providing direct access to a telephone line.
Online faxing has lesser security risk than traditional faxing because transmitted faxes are stored securely in the cloud instead of leaving them unattended on the fax machine. Hardware and printing are not required because you can send and receive fax documents within the online fax service’s admin portal. Plus, many online faxing solutions come with a mobile app, so you can access all faxes from anywhere.
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.