I work at home for a large company and I receive a lot of faxes, not wanting to have to hook up a second line for a fax, I decided to look into Online Fax Services. A friend recommended Efax.com.

I went and signed up for their free fax number, I was quite skeptical because, well, to be honest how could you get faxes in your e-mail. I went through the sign up process expecting two things, either to not be able to sign up because I don't have a credit card, or not being able to get a fax number because I live in Canada. I was pleasantly surprised, both did not happen!

When you sign up you are given either a US or UK fax number, depending on where you live of course. I would prefer having a Canadian fax number but most of my clients live in the US so it is more convenient for them, and how often am I going to be faxing myself, right? So you are given the fax number and a PIN number to access your account on the web. You then are given the option of downloading the Efax viewer which you will need to view the faxes. Once you have the fax viewer in place you are ready to recieve and view your faxes. When someone sends you a fax it is sent directly to your e-mail account! It's fantastic, the viewer is clear and when you print the faxes they look exactly like any fax coming from a fax machine, actually I found them clearer, but that is probably because the last fax machine I used was one with the rolls of thin paper that smudged really bad.

With the free fax service you are able to receive faxes to your e-mail and it keeps a log on the web of your last three faxes. If you are receiving and extremely big fax, you will get an e-mail with the first couple of pages of the fax and you have the option of accepting the entire fax or cancelling the transfer. When you receive the e-mail with your fax attached it tells you how many pages are in the fax and what number the fax has come from. Each fax has it's own code and can be saved for future use.

Efax.com also has many other services, you can sign up for a toll free fax number for a one time fee of $10 plus a monthly fee. You can also get the option of sending faxes via the web for a monthly fee of approximately $4.95 per month plus per minute charges. You can also get a local fax number when you sign up for additional services. I have signed up for Efax Send for the Web because I have not needed it yet, but once I do need it I just might.

If you need to receive faxes and don't want to put out the money for a fax machine, Efax is for you!



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