Like many of us these days, I don’t have a land-line phone, which means I can’t use a regular fax machine, which means I either have to go to Kinko’s and pay wads of money to send and receive faxes, or find some roundabout free way of doing it. As luck would have it, there is, in fact, a roundabout free way of doing it.

No service I know of will allow you to both send and receive faxes for free, but there are several services that will let you do one or the other, so by using multiple services you can do everything you need to do without having to wheelbarrow your life savings in to Kinko’s.

Receiving Faxes

For receving faxes, I like eFax. Wait, I did say this was free, didn’t I? You may wonder why you don’t see any reference to “free” on their home page. Well, the free options are buried layers deep in their site. Don’t feel like going digging? Click here to sign up for an account that allows you to both send and receive faxes free for 30 days, or click here to sign up for an account which is permanently free but which can only receive and not send faxes (I’ve opted for the latter).

You’ll be assigned a fax number that’s most likely not located anywhere near you - mine is in South Dakota - which is reserved for your use only. When someone faxes you at that number, you’ll receive a file attachment at the email address connected with your eFax account. You’ll need to open that file attachment using the eFax Messenger software. The format of the faxes is proprietary, but eFax Messenger will let you convert to a PDF.

I’ve been using eFax for a couple years now and I’ve never had any problems with it other than the occasional junk fax. I’m almost certain that these faxes come from eFax itself, since very few people have access to my eFax number. I guess that’s the price you pay for free!

Sending Faxes

There are several services that will let you send faxes for free. I like FaxZero. It’s reliable and convenient and will allow you to fax a PDF or DOC file. I find that I’ll occasionally have a need to print out some kind of PDF form, complete it, and fax it in, but it’s easier and cheaper to edit the PDF on the computer and then fax it over using eFax - totally paperless.

I’ve attempted to use other such services before, but I’ve had problems with very limited coverage areas and with faxes simply not being sent. So far, I haven’t experienced those issues with FaxZero.

The catch is that FaxZero adds a page full of ads to whatever you fax, so it’s obviously not appropriate for certain uses. I wouldn’t fax a resume using FaxZero, for instance. Also, there’s a limit of two free faxes per day, although I think you could get around this by using a computer with a different IP address, or you could choose to shell out $1.99 for a fax with no ads.

These two services are very useful if, like me, you don’t have a land line. By using both of them together, I haven’t paid to send or receive a fax for over a year. Yippee!

If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to my RSS feed or subscribing by email!