Sometimes, you still have to send faxes. And until digital signing becomes more mainstream, that will probably stay the case. So the question is, how do you do that without having a fax machine?
If you have a MacBook and an analog phone line, it’s easy – it’s built right into your print dialog, under the PDF button. Just connect your built-in modem to the phone line, and you can fax from any application.
But analog phone lines are on the way out. More and more people have either Internet phone service, or no home line at all – just a cell. In that case, things are not quite as easy.
The first thing that pops out via a Google search are fax services that want you to pay a monthly service fee. If you fax often or need to receive faxes, that seems like a good solution. My personal favorite so far is eFax. You can send and receive via e-mail, can have a local or a toll-free number, and it’s only $16.95 per month for an account.
That’s not my cup of tea, though. I’m not faxing that often. So where are the services that actually let me pay per use? A bit more searching reveals at least one of them – FaxZero. You get up to two free faxes (3-page limit) a day, or you can pay $1.99 per fax for up to 15 pages and send as many as you want.
As a casual fax user, that’s pretty much all I need. But during my search I found one more interesting thing: If you are (like I am) a customer of Vonage, there’s an even better solution. It’s well hidden, but if you dig, you can find the Vonage fax page. It allows you to send PDFs or OpenDocument files, and it’s part of your Vonage service – no extra fees.
That’s going to tide me over until people finally switch to e-mail…
I have been using faxitnice. They have a bucket you can buy for outgoing faxes. I don’t receive, only send so it works for me. No maintenance fee or monthly subscription.
I also use my Powerbook (still has a built in modem) to fax and my peecee (necessary for some of my customers
) to fax when it’s handy. I have a landline though..for now.
-rocco
Thanks for the tip, Rocco.
For those of you reading this later, FaxItNice is more expensive for one-shot faxes, but it seems a fairly decent choice if you need to fax repeatedly. ($9 for a total of 50 pages)
I’m not sure if there are any strings attached, but from what I gather, Drop.io may allow you to send a fax for free with their service. Receiving a fax is a little more labor intensive.
http://drop.io/fax
Thanks for the hint, Tomas!
It turns out that receiving a fax on drop.io is not too hard, either. The person faxing to you just needs to attach a custom cover sheet. It’s a bit of a hassle, but if you only need to receive a fax once in a blue moon, that’s a good way to do it for free.