Recommended Fax to Email service?

[Tal]

Trying to get setup with a Fax to Email service which allows both sending and receiving faxes without having a physical fax machine. Any good/bad experiences and/or deals? Thanks

 

[George P Burdell]

I've tried efax and they're not very reliable. Sometimes the faxes show up quickly, sometimes they take a few days.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

I use Fax1:

http://www.fax1.com/fax1_pro.html

Sending and receiving are instantaneous. The downside is that receiving faxes is a monthly subscription thing, which is not good for people like me who may receive a fax about once every half year. Another weird thing about the service is that they send you faxes in weird TIF files. They are weird because they are multiple pages... lemme explain.

Say you're being sent four pages. The SINGLE TIF file is actually four pages. You open it up with Windows Picture Viewer and can flip through the pages. I've never seen TIF files do this, but it's kinda cool. At first it took me a while to figure out what was going on; I was told I was sent four pages, but was only given one TIF file and could only see one page until I figured out that you could "flip through" the TIF file.

 

[Tal]

Originally posted by: George P Burdell
I've tried efax and they're not very reliable. Sometimes the faxes show up quickly, sometimes they take a few days.

Good to know. They were one of the ones I'd at least heard of in the past.

fuzzybabybunny:

Tif does sound like it might be an odd format to deal with for this. I realize it's pretty common, but I was hoping maybe to simply get a PDF I suppose. TIF might work I guess.

I'm getting contracts and things via fax that I want to preserve as "legal" copies. Any ideas on which format would be best for that? Thanks again!

 

[Kelemvor]

I use eFax's free service for receiving faxes. Works great. Sometimes there's a delay but I've never had a whole day delay,. Usually an hour or two. Don't use them for sending faxes though so not sure how that works. I have a fax machine I just plug in any time I actually need to send a fax.

 

[SoulAssassin]

I use k7.net for receiving faxes for free. You get a unique fax number tied to whatever email address you want...send fax to phone #, shows up as .pdf in your inbox. Doesn't get much simpler.

 

[Tal]

Originally posted by: SoulAssassin
I use k7.net for receiving faxes for free. You get a unique fax number tied to whatever email address you want...send fax to phone #, shows up as .pdf in your inbox. Doesn't get much simpler.

That one looks nice although it looks like you can't send with it. It would be nice while I'm on the road for work to be able to simply attach a doc via a web browser and type in the fax number and go.

Edit: to be clear, and once again I appreciate the responses, but I want to have people with a real (or fax service) fax machine, send faxes to a number that I get only via email. Then I would like to be able to print to a special printer any doc, or on a web interface, click browse and select a doc, xls, etc. and have the service send one of those two (or something similar) options to a fax number.

 

[axelfox]

Still need a scanner to scan hard docs, but I like trustfax and myfax. Can send digital docs (.docs, pdfs) through your email or through website.

 

[SoulAssassin]

Originally posted by: Tal

Originally posted by: SoulAssassin
I use k7.net for receiving faxes for free. You get a unique fax number tied to whatever email address you want...send fax to phone #, shows up as .pdf in your inbox. Doesn't get much simpler.

That one looks nice although it looks like you can't send with it. It would be nice while I'm on the road for work to be able to simply attach a doc via a web browser and type in the fax number and go.

I travel often as well. If I have a hard copy of something I need to get someone I usually fax it (via the hotel or the job site) to myself and then email it to the recipient. Kind of a poor man's scanner. I very rarely have to fax anything so this gets me by for most situations. If they have a fax machine and I can't email it to them I suppose I'm hosed but that hasn't happened yet. I can't justify the cost of a pay service when I might use it a couple times a year. Speaking of which, the only downside to k7 is that if you don't use your number for a while they release it back to the pool but, again, what do you expect for free. Just have to go back in and sign up again, takes 30 seconds.