6 Best Free Fax Online Services

Most people think the fax machine is a thing of the past but in reality, there are still plenty of people who use them. If you find yourself suddenly needing to send faxes, we’ve picked six of the best free online fax services for your needs.

How does an online fax service work?

You luckily don’t need to go out and invest in a bulky, outdated fax machine. Instead, these services work online by allowing you to send faxes from your computer and receive faxes through your email account. This saves you the effort of having a dedicated fax number or needing to maintain cumbersome equipment.

Some things to know:

Most of these services only allow you to send faxes, not receive faxes. There will be exceptions but usually it’s for a fee.

Often you’re limited to a small, finite number of faxes per day or week. Some even are only up to five faxes and then your free trial is over. If you just need something quickly faxed to your doctor or real estate agent, this might be enough for you. If you have numerous needs to send faxes, however, you may want to purchase one of the many tiered options these services provide. After all, there are plenty of industries that still require faxes. Here’s a great article about the persistence of fax machines in medicine.

Benefits of an online fax service

• Many provide you with a toll free fax number (more common in paid tiers)
• The web interface is usually fast and easy to learn
• No need to purchase your own separate phone line
• Saves you on toner costs and the upkeep of expensive equipment as well as paper

Top 6 free online fax services

One thing to note, most fax services will cost you at some point. It’s rare to find a completely free service with no strings attached. That said, all of the companies on this list offer some form of free faxing. If your needs are minimal, this is a great way to save money and pay nothing.

GotFreeFax

GotFreeFax is one of the better options on our list. They are able to offer free faxing because advertisers support them. They do have paid tiers, but you can utilize their online faxing with two faxes per day with up to three pages per fax. Free, so long as it’s within the U.S. or Canada.

What we love: No ads on their fax cover pages. Data security practices such as deletion of your data after 5 days. If you do need paid options, they use Paypal, which is generally more secure and respected in terms of your financial privacy.

What we don’t love: International faxing is not free. Can’t receive faxes.

Fax.Plus

This is one of the most professional, respected fax services on our list. For those with substantial needs, the paid tiers are more than worth it. Especially considering paid plans offer the ability to receive incoming faxes as well as sending them. You get a dedicated fax number or you can port an existing fax number if you already own it. Most impressive is the encrypted connection and security controls in place, even to the point where it passes the highest government standards, such as HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act) and PCI DSS requirements (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard). These are both big deals. Here’s a link to the official PCI security standards essentials. It’s what keeps your customer payment data safe. Want to learn more about HIPAA? Here’s the best tools to use for your HIPAA compliance checklist. Also important stuff.

What we love: Security features, faxing across platforms such as through your mobile device, and the ability to handle small businesses to massive corporations.

What we don’t love: The free plan doesn’t allow you to receive faxes. Plus, you only get ten free faxes total before you have to switch to a paid option.

Dropbox Fax

Once known as HelloFax, Dropbox Fax is similar to Fax.Plus in that they offer paid tiers of service that are very attractive for people who send faxes online regularly. In addition to being able to send and receive faxes, they also allow number porting or even allow you to select your own fax number, but only for paid memberships. They do allow a small amount of free faxes, but they are minimal at best. Still, Dropbox Fax is highly respected so if you want to try before you buy, they have several business features that may be tempting enough to purchase a paid tier for.

What we love: It has a free 30 day trial so you can access the paid plan features of the fax app without committing to the fee. Cancellation is simple and there are no setup fees either. If you determine you don’t want to keep the service after the trial period, you can just get the most out of that free month and discontinue your account. We also love that it has integrations with Google Drive, Dropbox and Microsoft Word. Speaking of Dropbox, here’s how to sync your Dropbox on a Chromebook.

What we don’t love: The free account only comes with five free pages. Like, ever. You can’t have multiple fax recipients either so it’s very limited in its use.

FaxZero

This fax app actually has some merit when it calls itself a free service. Unlike many of the other “free fax apps” out there, it doesn’t give you a finite number of outgoing faxes and then drop you like you’re hot. FaxZero actually gives you five faxes per day, at a maximum of three pages per fax, anywhere in the U.S. or Canada.

What we love: Simple faxing service that is easy to use. At five faxes a day you can get some decent flow going, so long as your needs are minimal. It’s a legit way to send a free fax with no hidden fees or gotchas.

What we don’t love: You get what you pay for, or…don’t pay for? The security on this service is minimal, the bare minimum legally required, so don’t use any sensitive documents when you send a fax. Also, the cover page will have FaxZero’s logo and ad on it, that’s how they’re able to afford to offer a free version of their service. That means you won’t be coming across very professional if you’re faxing for business purposes. Another issue is the quality for complex graphics (like images) is low. This is better for simplistic faxes that don’t need to be high quality.

PamFax

This “free fax service” is a bit limited on the free part. Still, it’s worth mentioning as you do get 3 free faxes upon sign up. So if you’re ever in dire need of free faxing for a small document, this could get you where you need to go. That said the biggest draw for PamFax is in the low prices, flexibility in payment tiers, and the wide compatibility with multiple platforms such as Windows, Android, and even iPhone. This effectively makes your mobile device a portable fax machine, handy for anyone on the go, so long as they have an internet connection.

What we love: You can purchase “credit packs,” which work much like prepaid minutes on a burner cell phone. This means you pay a certain fee and then use that towards your fax transmission needs. No monthly costs or contracts, you just buy whatever credit pack fits best and soon you’ll be sending faxes wherever you need, even internationally as PamFax does have a country code list that spans 236 countries. Lastly, depending on your purchase tier, receiving faxes is an option for those who need it.

What we don’t love: This might be the most limited service on this list for those looking to be free users. Three pages is almost nothing and it doesn’t refresh. Still, if you are in a pinch and need to send a couple of online faxes, this will get you there.

ifax

This is perhaps the only option that actually allows you to send free faxes to an international area code. But I digress. First, an introduction. iFax is a free fax online app that allows you to turn your smart phone or tablet into a virtual fax machine. You can also use it for your desktop or laptop but being able to fax straight from your phone is one of its biggest strengths. Most of the advanced features of this service come with paid plans, but you do get to send free fax documents up to five pages per month with the amount refreshing each month.

What we love: The privacy and security features on this free fax app are noteworthy, even being HIPAA compliant, making it useful for more sensitive business documents. One paid feature of note is E-signing, which adds a level of flexibility many companies would appreciate.

What we don’t love: Per usual, the free fax service level is not as useful as paid tiers, including not being able to receive faxes online or using the E-sign abilities. That said, five free faxes a month is nothing to shake your head at. For most of us? That’s all we need.

Want to learn more about sending mobile faxes? Here’s how to send a fax from your iPhone.