Guide to Choosing an Internet Based Fax Service

Although most people have moved to e-mail, there are those rare occasions when you will need to send documents signed with the signature and the fax seems to fit the resolution.

You do not have a dedicated fax machine, no more, because there are quite a few good web-based services, both paid and free that allows you to send and receive faxes using your computer, even without additional hardware. You do not have a "fax modem" or even your traditional landline phone to send a fax via the computer.

How Internet Faxing Works?

Online fax services more work in a similar way. You get a dedicated fax number and any fax message sent to this number are sent as attachments. On the other hand, if you want to send a fax from your computer to another fax machine can send the document as an attachment with the fax service online which in turn sends it to the recipient's fax machine.

Choosing an Internet Fax Service

After reviewing the plans and specifications of a service-based Internet fax dozen, I selected the top 5 services that have all the necessary functions and is more profitable. They have plans for everyone from the consumer who needs to send or receive a fax with the occasional business traveler who needs to send several faxes a day.

1. GotFreeFax.com – With Got Free Fax, you can send up to two faxes in a day for free to any number in the U.S. and Canada.

You can either use its online rich text editor to compose a fax or upload a PDF /Word file from your computer, type the recipient’s fax number and hit send. The service won’t add any advertisements or branding to your faxes. If you would like to send a fax to an international number, you can buy credits through PayPal.

2. myFax.com – My Fax allows you to send two faxes, with up to 10 pages each, per day for free. Unlike “Got Free Fax,” which only lets you send free faxes to US and Canada based numbers, My Fax supports a much large set of countries even for their free service.

MyFax offers a dedicated Fax number for an extra fee where you can receive faxes. All faxes sent to your personal fax number will arrive in your email inbox as PDFs.

3. GreenFax.com – With Green Fax you can again send and receive faxes via email. They offer a unique prepaid plan where you are only charged per page for sending faxes to US and Canada numbers without any monthly fees.

If you are sending a fax to an international number, you are billed per-minute of fax transmission time and unsuccessful transmissions are not charged.

4. eFax.com – If you need a fax number outside the USA, eFax is probably the best option for you. They offer your local fax numbers in 45 different countries for your incoming faxes. For a fixed monthly fee, you may receive up to 130 pages by fax per month while you pay a per page fee for sending faxes and this varies based on the destination.

With eFax, you may either send and receive faxes via your email program or they also offer integration with Microsoft Office programs.

5. RingCentral Fax – With RingCentral, you can send faxes worldwide through an email message, via their web interface, or from any Windows application. They charge a fixed monthly fee and their outgoing fee seems to be among the lowest in the industry.

Internet Fax Services – Plan Comparison Chart

The following chart (full version) compares in detail the pricing plans of various online fax services and also the cost of sending faxes to some popular destinations.

These rates often apply to fax pages that take less than 60 seconds to transmit. If the fax transmission is taking longer than 60 seconds, some companies may bill you on a per-minute basis instead of per page. 

[*] FaxPipe and MaxEmail are two other Internet based fax services that let you send and receive faxes and they have an overall lower monthly fee but it has be paid annually.

Which is the best Internet Faxing Service for me?

It depends on your country of residence, the volume of documents that you plan to fax in a month and the location of your client (if you wish to receive incoming faxes).

For most consumers, who have to send a fax occasionally , GotFreeFax looks like a perfect service. They do not charge a monthly fee, the rates for international outgoing faxes are competitive and you can send a fax from the browser without requiring any setup.

If your clients /contacts are based outside the U.S., you can go with eFax as they will give you a local fax number in that country and your clients won’t have to dial an international number in order to send you a fax. RingCentral and myFax also offer attractive pricing plans for volume faxing.

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Xcom Global international MiFi

A few months earlier in the year, we covered the arduous process of staying connected while traveling abroad. One of the ways we mentioned for jetsetters, backpackers and common tourists to stay jacked in while situated far from their homeland was a Xcom Global. The company has only been operating for a matter of months, but we recently took their services for a spin in order to give you a more detailed look at what to expect. The long and short of it? These guys are the guys to contact when you're about to grab your next passport stamp. Read on to find out why.

So, who exactly is Xcom Global? A smaller company solving an obvious problem for US-based travelers how to get unlimited data whilst traveling internationally with as little fuss as possible. It offers a couple of primary options; you can rent a USB WWAN device for a given country for $14.95 per day, or you can rent a MiFi for a given country for $17.95 per day (barring any specials). And if you're coming to America, you can rent a US dongle from these guys too. Being the connected junkies that we are, we honestly didn't think twice about it -- it was MiFi or bust for us, and we'd recommend you do likewise. If you're unclear on how a MiFi works, it's essentially a pebble that's around the size of a credit card, but a bit less than a centimeter thick. Perfect for toting around in your pocket. You slap a SIM card in, toss the rechargeable battery in, and press the Power button -- within a few seconds, it'll be connected to a local mobile network and serving up mobile data via WiFi.

Xcom Global's order process is dead simple. Plug in the nation you'll be traveling to, the date of your departure and the date of your return. If you're traveling to multiple countries (Eurotrip, anyone?), you can enter all of that information as well. You'll get a package in the mail a few days prior to your departure, which will have a swank padded carrying case, charging equipment, a spare battery (nice touch!) and a MiFi designed to operate in the country you're traveling to. Xcom has it nicely arranged; the MiFi ships with a country label on it, and the SIM for that country is already installed and ready to rock. As soon as you land, you can pull it out, power it on, and start enjoying the spoils of low-cost international data. We'd recommend connecting it to a Mac or PC first in order to establish a network security password, but if you feel like broadcasting bandwidth to four others (the MiFi supports five total WiFi connections), we won't be hurrying to stop you.

The best part about having a MiFi versus a USB WWAN card is that the former can broadcast to your mobile while riding around in your pocket or backpack. Having data access on your GPS-enabled phone means that you can tap into Google Maps (or your favorite mapping service) while roaming about in a foreign land. In other words, it's your own fault if you get lost. If you choose the USB WWAN stick, you'll lose this tremendous benefit.
We recently tested Xcom's service by ordering up a trio of MiFi units a week prior to our departure. We were headed to The Netherlands, Germany and France, and we didn't want to be disconnected for a second if we could help it. We'd never ventured far in these lands before, so having our Nexus One on-hand with a live data connection was critical to us finding our way from station to station, eatery to hotel, and so on. Our package arrived safe and sound two days before we left the confines of the USA, and as soon as we touched down in Amsterdam, we mashed the power button of the NL MiFi and crossed our fingers. 30 seconds later it had a pulse, and our Nexus One was connected to the world wide web without fear that we were running up a monumental roaming bill. Our setup consisted of having a huge HyperMac in our backpack, so we simply ran a USB cable from said HyperMac to our MiFi in order to keep the data flowing all day long.
We recall having to reboot the MiFi just a handful of times throughout the trip that's more than acceptable given the general unreliability of 3G networks these days -- and we found it fairly clear that Orange's network in France was the wonkiest of the ones we encountered. For hours on end, the MiFi kept humming, providing our Nexus One with the data it needed to give us a Street View look at where we were headed. It also provided a speedy, reliable connection for our laptop as we covered Photokina from the show floor, and in a few cases, we found the 3G networks in Europe to be faster than our hotel internet. A few weeks prior, we had the same positive experience when renting a few for IFA coverage in Berlin.

The bottom line? Xcom Global solves a problem that's been irking travelers for years now, and the service we received makes it hard to not recommend. You'll be hard pressed to find unlimited data this cheap, and being able to use your own currency to purchase it (not to mention procure one and work out the details in your own language before leaving) is a huge boon. Now, stop procrastinating and plan your next trip!