Gadget Reviews, Product News, Electronic Gadgets

Though you might be tempted to ditch your office fax machine, you probably have to send out at least a few faxes every year. Luckily, a number of services can keep you covered even if you don’t have a fax machine connected to an old telephone line. I took three Web fax services for a quick test drive: Here’s how they fared.

FaxZero is a bare-bones fax service, with no options for receiving faxes or faxing from your mobile devices. Nevertheless, as long as your document is less than three pages long and you don’t need to send more than five faxes a day, FaxZero is free and doesn’t require any type of sign-up process. Just enter your contact information and the fax number you want to send to, and then upload the document you want to send. FaxZero should send your fax in a matter of minutes. When I tested the service with a two-page document, I received a confirmation email after about three minutes informing me that my fax was on its way. The fax arrived at its destination moments later.

If you plan to fax a lot of documents, however, FaxZero isn’t your best option. It charges $2 for each fax that exceeds three pages in length and for each one beyond the company’s five-fax daily limit. If you plan to use the service as a replacement for a regularly used fax machine, the overage fees can add up quickly.

MyFax offers an iOS app for sending and 

 

MyFax is a feature-rich service that’s great for users who need a regular faxing option. The company even makes sending international faxes easy; all you have to do is send an email with the document attached and address your fax to @MyFax.com. When you sign up with MyFax, you’ll receive a fax number in your local area code for receiving incoming faxes. The service automatically converts any faxes to PDF files and stores them on MyFaxCentral, the company’s easy-to-navigate Web dashboard. When I sent a two-page test document from MyFaxCentral to myself, I received the fax along with a confirmation email message almost immediately after pressing Send.

If you don’t want to use MyFax’s site, you can arrange for all incoming faxes to go to your email address as well as to five other email addresses of your choosing. The service even has a mobile app available that lets you send and receive faxes on the go.

MyFax’s base plan, which costs $10 per month, lets you send 100 faxes a month and receive 200 faxes. If you exceed those limits, the company charges 10 cents per page for the surplus faxes; it also offers $20-per-month and $40-per-month plans for higher-volume faxing.

eFax offers many of the same features as MyFax: The two companies have almost identical sign-up procedures that involve picking your free incoming fax number, tying your account to an email address, and providing billing information. eFax’s methodology for faxing by email is nearly identical to MyFax’s, both companies have Web-based dashboards, and both offer Android and iOS mobile apps. And, like MyFax, a test fax with eFax yielded a nearly instantaneous transmission, along with an email message confirming that my fax had been sent.

Despite their similarities, eFax has some powerful features that MyFax doesn’t. For one, eFax supports digital signatures, which can save you time and trouble if you often need to sign forms and return them via fax. The company also lets you digitally encrypt your faxes for an extra layer of SSL/PGP security over traditional faxing. That feature is particularly important if you work with sensitive information and must comply with regulations such as HIPAA, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, or the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. eFax permanently archives all of your sent and received email messages, too, while MyFax deletes older faxes after one month, and offers storage for files as large as 1GB.

On the other hand, to use advanced features such as digital signatures, you must download eFax’s eFax Messaging Software. Though this software is available for Macs, it was originally designed for PowerPC computers and requires Rosetta to run on Intel Macs; as such, if you're using a computer with OS X Lion installed, you won't be able to run the application. eFax is also significantly more expensive than MyFax: The lowest-level eFax Plus account costs $17 per month for 150 incoming and 150 outgoing faxes a month; the higher-volume rate is $20 per month for 200 incoming and 200 outgoing faxes. A 10-cents-per-page overage fee kicks in if you exceed the limit on either plan.

If you’re in a hurry and just want to send occasional short faxes, FaxZero is your best option among these three. It’s easy to use, it sends faxes quickly, and it’s free. If you need to send longer faxes regularly, however, MyFax probably delivers the best bang for your buck. MyFax’s $10-per-month price is significantly lower than eFax’s for many of the same features. If your business requires secure transmissions, eFax may be the way to go, since it allows encrypted faxing and lets you store larger files, but you'll need to be on a Mac running Snow Leopard or have a virtualization system to run the eFax software. 

Via:Macworld