Free Fax services redux (or near free)

[Mike Sellers]

Here's the situation:

I ditched my ringmaster fax line because I rarely got faxes any more and I could use my main phone line to receive the occasional fax. THEN I picked up a new client who likes to fax stuff to me once in a while. OK, that in itself isn't too much of a problem but since I started using my main line as a fax line, I've started getting junk faxes, about one a week but I know that's going to increase. The junk faxers must send out test calls to pick up on fax lines so I'm guessing if I take the fax machine off my main line, the calls will eventually go away.

Sooooo, I've started looking into the free (or near free) fax services. My client is in another state so my fax number doesn't have to be local. I searched over at the "other place" and found that jfax and efax only allow so many faxes a month so they're out of the question. Some people recommended Maxemail and that's seems promising.

So any others out there I should consider? I don't mind paying a small per-fax fee if necessary. I just don't want a monthly fee since the faxing is sporadic at best.

[Zoidberg]

I did a recent post on this, and several people recommended maxemail.

Completely OT, but I wish someone made a fax machine that had a cellphone as its heart, so to speak. It'd be useable anywhere there was a power supply (and signal strength, of course). The number would follow you everywhere. I've got three dozen clients who have asked me about this in the last six or so years. (Not talking about hooking up to a cell phone, like a bluetooth modem set-up, but the fax has its own internal cell phone, or a PC card type of set-up.)

[cbelt3]

Free service to their faxes in, I think NV. I've been 'free' for five years with them. Faxes come in, are emailed to me. If you sign up with a commerical email account they will try to sell you their business service. They also regularly try to sell you their local fax number service, but they're polite about it and don't spam.
Sure, I get a nightly junk fax, but it's easy to delete the email, and the faxes come in as GIF files so I can read, reuse, OCR, whatever.

Very nice, easy, and friendly.

[wurm]

I guess I'm just incredibly lucky. I think I've received two junk faxes in the four+ years I've had a dedicated fax machine on a distinctive ring line. Although, now that I have to pay for that distinctive ring number, I have to think twice about keeping it, as I don't receive many faxes at all.

[Cary]

There were cell pone fax machines back in the day of analog cellular, as well as adaptors to allow cell phones to hook up to faxes. No one bought them - too expensive, so they stopped making them.

It's easier (and more flexible) to just use a laptop with an email fax service over a high speed (EV-DO) wireless connection.

Cary

[Zoidberg]

Back home I got junk faxes (on my landline fax) overnight almost every night.

Where I am now, my wife and I use our cell phones for all our phoning so the house line is only a fax line. Pretty cheap in terms of what it is.

[graylocks]

i switched to MaxEmail last year. i had been with eFax for years but one month went over the limit and they wanted me to pay the monthly fee.

Maxemail has worked perfectly and i recommend it.