A Summary of E-Fax's Service Offerings

E-Fax is an international service that allows faxes to be sent and received via email. As part of one of their packages, voicemails can be sent to your email as well. They offer the most available phone numbers for you to choose from. They provide a simple interface for sending and receiving faxes and voicemails from your email, and you can rely on their service since they have an updated network. They offer the choice of three levels of service. Their basic service is eFaxFree. eFaxPlus includes additional features, and their best package is called eFaxPro.

The free package, eFaxFree, is no cost, but has limitations. You can receive faxes, but you cannot send them from your email. Also, you are limited to 20 faxes received during a 30 day period. They will only store your faxes on their server for up to 30 days before they are automatically deleted. Finally, customer service is limited to email inquiries.

The mid level package is called eFaxPlus, which is $12.95 a month to subscribe, but you have to pay an additional fee of 10 cents per sent page. If a local number is chosen, incoming pages are free, but if you opt for a toll free number, received pages are 20 cents each. On the plus side they do offer a wide variety of both local and 800 toll free numbers. Compared with Send2Fax and MyFax, the service is more expensive, especially when you factor in the per sheet cost of sending or receiving a fax.

With eFaxPlus, up to five emails can be authorized to receive faxes, so you can have multiple people receive faxes and avoid a potential bottleneck. Faxes can be stored on a eFax server for up to a year. Another improvement over the free service, is the 24/7 customer support by email or phone. You can choose from multiple file types for your received faxes including PDF, TIF, or EFX. eFaxPlus does not include voicemail to email service. For this an upgrade to the highest level package called eFaxPro is required. In addition to voicemail, eFaxPro also includes fax management software.

Both of eFax's paid services, Plus and Pro, include a desktop application called eFax Messenger. This allows you to create coversheets and faxes without having to go on a web browser. It also works with both PC's and Mac's. eFax is compatible with many email clients, including Outlook, and will interface with your Outlook contacts, pulling in names, addresses, and fax numbers to your faxes automatically. You can print directly from eFax with the included printer icon. Finally, eFax differs from Send2Fax and MyFax by allowing you to automatically attach an electronic signature so that you can avoid printing your fax, signing it and scanning it.

The eFax web interface is well designed and easy to use, but offers more limited options than the eFax Messenger desktop application. For example, only one type of coversheet is available online, verses the 14 in Messenger. Another advantage of Messenger is the ability to simply right click and choose "Send to Fax Recipient", or by choosing "Fax This" from the taskbar.