Internet Fax Reviews & Prices

MyFax Review: Internet FaxGo to Site | Back to Chart

Setup is easy with MyFax. The first thing you do is decide if you want a toll-free or local number. The toll-free number comes at no cost to you, so there's really no reason not to choose it. Whether you pick toll-free or local, MyFax assigns you a number; you won't get to pick from different numbers as you can with some providers.

MyFax's web interface is nice, much better than eFax's. Since it relies on the popular PDF for fax attachments, you can open your faxes on virtually any machine without additional software. The downside is that by default you do not have any markup or signature tools, unless they're included with your PDF viewer. If you're using a PC, you can use MyFax's Print-To-Fax assistant to send your faxes from any program that uses print drivers (which is pretty much of all them). Additionally, faxing is supported on the Palm Treo and the Blackberry.

We also like that MyFax has an easy mechanism for marking faxes as junk. You can then set your junk fax options to filter out faxes in the future that match certain criteria (such as phone number). Anyone who's been on the receiving end of nasty fax spam, will appreciate that. While many other fax services have a way to block junk, it's particularly well implemented here.

MyFax was a bit slow on the transmission side, coming in second-to-last in our speed tests, averaging in at 3 minutes 1 second for delivery. Its average receiving time of 2 minutes 42 seconds puts it pretty much right in the middle in that department. These times shouldn't be deal-breakers for most users.

MyFax allows you to receive 200 pages, and send 100 pages for $10.00 per month, though a year commitment will give you one month free (roughly $8.99 per month). This puts it in the mid-range cost-wise. Additional pages are 10 cents a piece. If you think you'll fax more than this, $20.00 per month will get you 200 in and outbound pages; $40.00 will likewise get you 400 each way. Like most Internet fax services, MyFax assumes one page takes a minute to transmit; a graphically complex page may take longer to send and can therefore count as two or more pages.

The included toll-free number will save you and your callers some cash, so that's something to take into account. A 30-day money back guarantee makes trying out MyFax pretty risk free. We think most users will like MyFax's balance of price, functionality, and plan.

MetroFax Review: Internet FaxGo to Site | Back to Chart

MetroFax's sign-up process was effortless. We were up and running in no time. You don't get to choose your number, but MetroFax supplies you with a local one based on your area code. You can also choose a toll-free number which is $2.00 extra per month.

Everything about MetroFax is easy and well-implemented. MetroFax does not have dedicated faxing software, but it does offer downloads that will add fax drivers to your printer choices. There's also a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook. If you don't require the markup tools offered by RingCentral or eFax, you should get along fine with these options. As with all the services we reviewed, you can send faxes by email.

MetroFax has a slick user interface that we like a lot. In fact it's one of the nicest looking and most intuitive that we used. Faxing performance was rather good too. On average faxes sent from MetroFax arrived in 2:37, not quite GoDaddy's 2:20, but not bad. It also had the fastest reception time, averaging in at 2:37.

Metrofax is the clear choice for those who want to fax a lot. While the monthly cost is a little above average at $12.95 per month and there's a one-time setup fee of $9.95, you get 1000 pages per month that you can use however you want, for sending or receiving. Additionally, your second month of service is free, which more than mitigates that setup fee. Additional faxes are only 3 cents per page, the lowest we've found. A toll-free number is an additional $2.00 per month.

Though a little more expensive than some of its competitors, it's certainly cheaper than eFax, and we had very little to complain about. If you think you'll go through the pages, we recommend this service.

Nextiva Fax Review: Internet FaxGo to Site | Back to Chart

Nextiva, the big name in business VoIP also offers an Internet fax service. It's an inexpensive plan, particularly if you choose the the annual one. It's $9.99 per month for the former, and only $6.99 per month for the latter. This is the cheapest annual plan available.

And Nextiva doesn't skimp on the faxes either. Users will enjoy an allotment of 500 pages per month that they can use for either sending or receiving. As usual, when an Internet fax company says "pages" they mean "minutes." While most faxes generally take one minute per page, a full-page graphic could take fifteen minutes or more to transmit. You can opt for a toll-free number, though you'll then be paying 3.5¢ per page/minute.

Setup with Nextiva is very easy. You start out on an opt-out 30-day-free trial; if you don't want to continue with the service, just cancel it and you won't be charged. After you enter your credit card info you can choose your area code and three-digit prefix. After you sign up, expect a call from your friendly Nextiva fax representative welcoming you to the service.

Faxes can be sent via email, web interface, or any windows program that uses print drivers. Email faxing works fine. The web interface for fax sending is not one of our favorites, however. It's not terrible, but one has to click through four steps to send a fax. We prefer when it's all on one web page. The interface for faxing from Windows documents suffers from the same problem. Mac users will have to use email or the web interface.

Nextiva also sells the Nextiva Fax Adapter which allows you to use your fax machine through Nextiva's Fax service. The adapter is $150, and was back-ordered at the time of this writing so we were unable to test it. This is a novel, if slightly pricey feature that somewhat mediates the biggest disadvantage with Internet faxing: having to use a desktop scanner to fax paper documents.

On the other hand, we love the method for viewing your sent and received faxes. It's visually engaging and rather intuitive. Too bad the fax-send didn't follow the same user interface.

Fax send and receive times were pretty much right in the middle for Nextiva. Its send time of 2 minutes 52 seconds, and receive time of 2 minutes 47 seconds will be just fine for most people.

While we didn't consider customer service particularly important with these services, we did have cause to contact Nextiva's. Our email request was turned around within the hour. We've found them very friendly and responsive to our questions.

Nextiva Fax is best for those who primarily will use email to send their faxes, as the web interface is not great. While it did not bowl us over with any particular features, its price and free included pages make it a real value.

GoDaddy Review: Internet FaxGo to Site | Back to Chart

GoDaddy does faxes? Yes, the popular domain register also has its hands in the Internet fax market with its Fax Thru Email program. It's different from other providers in a few ways, both good and bad. Here's how it shakes out:

Setting up with GoDaddy is not as user-friendly as with the other services. You do not get any choice in your number. In fact, you'll have a Phoenix, Arizona-based fax number (unless you go for the more expensive toll-free option). The web interface for faxing is also lackluster. It's still functional, of course, but it won't win any design contests. It feels rather like an afterthought.

Probably the biggest limitation though is the lack of fax drivers. Most other Internet fax services offer drivers that turn your programs into virtual fax machines, allowing you to fax just as you would print. With Fax Thru Email, you'll have to stick with the web interface or send via email. Email faxes must be sent as attachments, however; anything typed into the email is disregarded. Another caveat is that you can't fax internationally.

Curiously, GoDaddy does not use a simple one page-per-minute calculation as most others do. Our three-page fax was only counted as two minutes against our total allotment. Faxes sent from GoDaddy were the most readable of all the services we tried.

While GoDaddy came out in the middle for our receive test, an average of 2 minutes and 58 seconds, it really cleaned up in the send test at an average of 2 minutes 18 seconds.

With a local number, GoDaddy will cost you $9.99 per month. The real surprise is that you are allowed unlimited incoming faxes, something we haven't found with any other service. The plan comes with 100 minutes of outgoing faxes, which they figure to be equivalent 150 pages. Unfortunately you have to buy any additional faxing time in packs of 100 minutes, which will cost $9.99 (or 10 cents per minute).

You save 10% with a yearly plan. If you want a toll-free number you'll be paying quite a bit more at $14.99 per month (and you have to pay for incoming faxes). GoDaddy does not offer a refund for its monthly plan, but it will give you a prorated refund for the yearly plan.

If you're someone who receives a lot of faxes, and doesn't really send many, GoDaddy's Fax Thru Email may be your best option. It performs rather well, even if the interface is poor. If you want an 800 number or you need faxing integrated into your applications, look elsewhere.

eFax Review: Internet FaxGo to Site | Back to Chart

eFax is the Coca Cola of Internet faxing, the company whose name is used interchangeably with the entire category. It's definitely comprehensive, but it's not cheap. Does eFax earn the cost and name recognition? It depends on what you're after.

Besides email, there are two ways to fax: a downloadable application and a web interface. The interface is fine, though it can be counterintuitive (the send function, for instance, is located in the "account" section, and not near your inbox). The PC application allows you to send faxes, and the Windows version of the software lets you mark them up, adding text, highlights, voice notes, and shapes to your documents. There's even a stamp tool that allows you to "sign" your documents with your signature. The Mac version is more limited, and really just acts as a document viewer.

The other advantage with eFax is that it builds faxing into your printing options, so pretty much any document can be sent from the program that created it, just as if you were printing it. Most popular file formats are covered, including DOC, PDF, JPG, PSD, GIF, and more. It's one of only two services that extends this function to the Mac.

The fax quality was rather good, about what one expects from a fax machine. Faxes come to your computer as email attachments which you then downloaded to the computer for viewing. By default they're sent as EFX files, which are compatible with the eFax Messenger program. The program allows you to sign and mark-up the files. You can change the format to PDF, but you lose that functionality in favor of wider compatibility.

eFax had acceptable transmission times in our test, taking an average of 2 minutes 50 seconds from send to receive (GoDaddy was the fastest in our tests at 2 minutes 18 seconds). Surprisingly, on average eFax took considerably longer to deliver new faxes (3 minutes 16 seconds versus our fastest performer, RapidFax, at 2 minutes 33 seconds). None of these differences is really huge, but could be important for some users.

eFax is a little pricier than most at $16.95 per month for 130 incoming pages and a $3.00 outgoing fax credit that's roughly equivalent to 30 pages. We easily blew through our free faxes while testing. Incoming faxes beyond your limit are 15 cents per page; outgoing faxes are 10 cents per page, which is a little high. A year commitment brings the price down to $14.13, still fairly high. If you'd like a toll-free number, you'll be paying 20 cents per minute for those faxes, sent and received. Like most Internet fax services, eFax assumes one page takes a minute to transmit; a graphically complex page may take longer to send and can therefore count as two or more pages.

eFax's main advantage is its markup tools and Mac compatible printer drivers. Those who need these tools, will find the closest competitor to be RingCentral, which is a cheaper, albeit slightly slower, option.

RingCentral Review: Internet FaxGo to Site | Back to Chart

[Editor's note: RingCentral is offering NextAdvisor visitors 20% off for the first six months when they sign up for an annual plan. No coupon is necessary; just follow any of the links from NextAdvisor to RingCentral]

Setting up an account with RingCentral is rather easy. You are given several options for toll-free numbers to choose from. Once that's done, you can download the RingCentral Call Controller. This is optional. You can also use a web-based interface or your email client to send and receive faxes.

The RingCentral Call Controller seems like a great tool at first, but it's a little unnecessary unless you use other Ring Central services such as their virtual PBX system. It does notify you of new faxes, but then again so does your email. It would be great if there were fax functions built-in, but all the heavy lifting is done by the RingCentral Internet Fax program. This is RingCentral's strong point, and the true differentiator for this service. You can use the program to not only send your faxes, but sign and mark them up. Not everyone will need this, in fact those with the full version of Adobe Acrobat will find it redundant.

The online interface is fine. It lets you send and receive faxes, as well as administer a block list. The inbox is a crowded affair, however, and gives you a bit too much info. And the origin-city information is largely inaccurate when it comes from another Internet fax.

RingCentral does much better with attachments than it does with faxes that are composed directly in emails. In our testing, Ring Central had the slowest transmission times, taking an average of 3 minutes 44 seconds from email-send to receive (the fastest was GoDaddy, with 2 minutes 18 seconds). It was also the second-slowest receiver, taking an average of 3 minutes to notify us of received faxes (compare to champ RapidFax's 2 minutes 33 seconds).

RingCentral is cheap, only $9.99 per month for 300 total inbound and outbound pages. Like most internet fax providers, RingCentral assumes one page takes a minute to fax, so a particularly graphics-heavy page may end up taking more than one minute, and therefore be counted as more than one page. The monthly price goes down to $7.99 if you sign up for a year. Additional faxes are only 5.9 cents, rather low compared to other Internet fax services. Like most Internet fax services, RingCentral assumes one page takes a minute to transmit; a graphically complex page may take longer to send and can therefore count as two or more pages.

If you need the fax tools, particularly the signature and markup capabilities, you'll be choosing RingCentral or eFax. RingCentral is certainly the cheaper option, although if it proved to be somewhat slower sending faxes.

RapidFax Review: Internet FaxGo to Site | Back to Chart

In many ways, RapidFax is not too different from other offerings we reviewed. The pricing is pretty standard, as are the included pages. While it does live up to its name, our experience was marred by little annoyances that prevent us from giving this a strong recommendation.

We had no problems with the sign-up process, though we were disappointed not to get a phone number at our exact area code; we were assigned a number for a nearby city. A toll-free number is optional, and comes at no charge.

RapidFax has an online interface as well as available scripts that enable you to fax from Microsoft Office programs on your PC. The web interface is clunky, though not as bad as GoDaddy's. You can send faxes and view your incoming faxes, although we don't like that RapidFax charges you for faxes left on the system after 30 days. Fortunately, you can set it up to auto-delete old faxes to avoid this rather ridiculous charge.

RapidFax has a serious flaw that will affect those who send email faxes to multiple numbers, something called "fax broadcasting." Since our test involved sending the same fax to the same fax number through multiple providers, RapidFax had a tendency to pick up the numbers from the recipient list as if they were meant for RapidFax, ignoring the provider completely. The result was a lot of duplication, and spent fax pages.

We mentioned in the introduction that RapidFax is aptly named. It truly is one of the fastest performers in our document-send test (2 minutes 35 seconds) and the fastest in our receive test (2 minutes 33 seconds). If speed is a concern for you, go with RapidFax. The faxes did seem particularly dark, however, and our black-and-white graphic came through rather muddy. You can decide on a higher resolution, however. This will no doubt come at the expense of speed.

RapidFax gives you 300 pages per month that you can use for inbound or outbound faxes. We like when providers give you that choice. The monthly rate is $9.95 and there's no yearly discount. Additional pages are 8 cents. Like most Internet fax services, RapidFax assumes one page takes a minute to transmit; a graphically complex page may take longer to send and can therefore count as two or more pages.

Ultimately, it's a mixed bag. For all its annoyances, it's not a bad plan. If you can deal with the shortcomings we've listed, you'll probably be a happy customer. You have 30 days to evaluate the service to see if it will work for you.