Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Great service . . . and still FREE ! |
| Disadvantages: |
Need to use a proprietary viewer program |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
Faxes may be on the way out but they’re not gone yet. If you want to receive the occasional fax but don't want to waste money on a fax machine that will stand idle for months then the solution is fax to email.
How does fax to email work?
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The basic idea is that a service provider (in this case eFax.com) supplies a telephone number for your incoming faxes. These are received by eFax and then forwarded to you as an
email attachment. As well as the obvious advantage of not needing to buy a fax machine this also means that you don’t need to pay for a dedicated fax line and you can receive your faxes anywhere you can collect your emails (almost – see a bit later).
And what does that cost?
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eFax.com offer a number of differently priced
services depending on the telephone number required (for example, you could select a local area code or freephone 0800 number) and the facilities required. For most occasional users as described above the service of choice is eFax Free. Funnily enough this is free but with limited facilities (what do you want for the price?).
The free service allows receipt only, that is, you can’t send faxes via web/email. This may seem like a major restriction but remember that if you have a modem on your PC then you can send a fax directly anyway (let’s not get obsessed with the technology). The free service also does not allow the user to specify a local number, instead a number is allocated at random by eFax. From experience this seems to be an 0870 national rate number although eFax say it could be any number available to them. National rate numbers cost about 10p per minute to call so are not restrictively expensive for the sender. The final restriction is that the attachments are sent in a proprietary format that requires the use of a reader program (downloaded free from eFax.com). This means that faxes cannot be received in an internet café or similar as the reader would not be available. If you upgrade to eFax Plus (a paid service) you have the option to receive faxes as pdf files.
Registration
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If you go to www.eFax.com at the moment, you might be forgiven for thinking that the eFax Free is no longer available. There is no mention of the free service on the front page and the free trial shown requires credit card details and goes straight into the subscription eFax Plus service after 30 days. Do not despair, you can still get the free service described above. Simply click on the ‘Learn more’ link then select ‘Limited Account’ from the bar at the top of the screen. This will take you into the eFax Free registration process.
To register you need only enter your name, email, postcode and country of residence. An email will be sent to the address given quick contains a link back to eFax to complete the registration process. You will be given your eFax number (44870*******) and PIN number. Make a note of these for future reference – without the number nobody will know how to fax you!
You will want to download the viewer (eFax Messenger) next so that you are ready to receive your first fax. This I not a very large download and even on a dialup connection shouldn’t be too painful.
So do you get what you pay for?
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It’s always a concern that free services mean poor services. In this case I have found the service to be of a consistently high quality. Line availability is very good, in four years of use I’ve never had a caller complain that the fax was engaged. There seems to be virtually no time lag between the fax being received and the email being sent, any delays are more likely to be due to the email carrier. The received fax quality is excellent, certainly no worse than the top line office faxes that I have used and you have the advantage of being able to keep electronic copies as well as printing hard copies.
How does eFax make this pay? Three factors are in play here; firstly, they presumably see this as a tempter to the full paid service, secondly, national rate numbers return a (small) usage fee to the holder (eFax) and thirdly, eFax Messenger (the reader program) presents ads to the user (these are not shown to paid subscribers).
It should be noted that the Terms of Service impose a number of additional restrictions of eFax Free users. eFax retain the right to restrict or remove service at will (so don’t base business-critical planning on the continued use of these numbers) and there is also a ‘Fair Use’ limit of 20 pages per 30-day period. I don’t know how strictly they enforce these limits but it may be worth bearing in mind. There is some confusing wording relating to these terms and some exempted codes (including the 0870 numbers currently being issued) concerning which I am awaiting a response from eFax. I shall update when I have any new information.
Do I Recommend…
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I’ve used this service for over four years and recommended it to friends and colleagues without reservation. This is a high quality professional service offered free of charge – this makes it an unbeatable offer. All the basic needs are met and for those wanting more they are available, for a fee.
One word of caution, don't confuse this service with efax.co.uk (unfortunately similar name and address!) who don’t offer any free service.
© Paul Morris 2001, 2005
Information is believed to be accurate at the time of writing. Readers should always check with the supplier of goods or services to confirm current prices and specifications.
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