Services

Feature

Why it Matters

Can you receive faxes in your email?

Internet fax services integrate fax and email.
Most people work in email all day anyway…why
switch to another application to get a fax?

Beware of services that want you to download
special software. These often propagate
adware and spyware.

Can you preview the fax?

If the first page of the fax is shown in the
email, then you can easily route or process
the fax even without opening it up. Customer
orders get processed quickly, invoices…you
get the idea!

Can you receive faxes online?

Away from the home office? Travelling, or at
your ‘real’ office. Still need to get your fax?
Getting faxes online means that if you can
get to the web, you can get to your faxes

Can you get a toll free fax number?

Toll free numbers are great for home offices.
Nobody can tell where you are, plus people
can fax you for free.

MyFax offers toll free fax numbers at no extra
charge, but check the pricing for others.
Sometimes the free pages don't apply to toll
free numbers, and the usage charges are
higher.

Performance matters!

You want numbers that work all the time – an
advantage of internet fax services is that they
should never be busy.

Stick with a credible service that is big enough
to have a reliable, high performance service.

MyFax and Efax are the biggest services, and
Venali has a good reputation for reliability.

Are faxes delivered as PDF format?

Internet fax services deliver the fax as a file.
PDF is the ‘universal’ format, and you don’t
need new software for it. This means that you
can forward or share your fax with others that
aren’t subscribers to the service.

Some services use TIF, which is OK but not
great.

Avoid services that use proprietary formats.
There’s no benefit and it means you can’t
easily forward faxes to other users.

Can you easily change your inbound email
address?

There should be an online interface to make
changes to your account. You should be able
to change the email address at which you
receive your faxes at a moment's notice.

Can you get a fax ‘alert’?

If you’re on dial-up, you might not want a
large fax delivered to your mail. Some
services let you get an alert, and then
download the fax when you want to.