eFax Review: Faxing Made Easy From Mac & PC

With fax machines dying out, online faxing is taking over and eFax is now one of the most popular ways to send faxes from both Mac and PC.

eFax allows you to send faxes from any computer or mobile device including internationally.

In this review we take a look at eFax and how it works to send faxes from your Mac.

eFax has a lot of features but some of the highlights compared to other services include:

• Toll Free Numbers in the USA
• Local Phone Numbers
• Lifetime Fax Storage
• Electronic Signatures
• Connection To Third Party Cloud Storage Solutions

Here we take a closer look at what it offers.

eFax Pricing

eFax offers two tiers of pricing: eFax Plus for $18.99 per month which includes 170 pages sent and 170 pages received.

eFax Pro costs $24.99 per month but includes 275 pages sent and 275 received.

eFax is a bit rigid in this way because while some services pool your total sent/received allocation, eFax has separate limits for both.

For every page beyond this it costs 10 cents per page.

International fax sending costs more ranging up to 40 cents per page for Australia depending on the carrier and fax number. In addition, international faxes count as two sent faxes.

For every eFax number you setup, there’s also a one time $10 setup fee for each account. This is quite common with online fax providers although some don’t charge at all.

Note that although you can try a free trial of eFax, it’s important to remember to cancel your free trial via phone after it ends otherwise you may be charged for a month’s subscription.

How To Setup eFax

When you start eFax, you can choose a fax number in 40 different countries (including the US) or setup a toll-free US number.

Setting up a toll free US number is useful if you want a more professional image, expand your business reach beyond your current area or make it easy for potential clients to contact you at no cost to them.

The interface definitely looks a bit dated but it’s clear and functional. Some elements – such as adding attachments – could be made clearer but once you’ve sent a few faxes you get used to it.

Your inbox gives a very clear overview of the faxes you’ve received:

The mobile app actually feels a lot more modern and intuitive than the browser version (see more on this below) but this is because more and more people are using iPhones and Android devices rather than computers to send faxes on the move.

If you already have fax numbers with another service, you can keep the same numbers with eFax too.

eFax does not support vanity fax numbers though such as “1-800-FAXME” for example.

You can easily manage and edit contacts and view your entire fax list which is stored indefinitely by eFax until you delete the account.

You can manage faxes by tagging them and putting them in specific folders.

You can add up to 50 recipients with a cover letter and up to 20MB of attachments. If you want to send files bigger than this, eFax includes a service called Fusemail which supports online storage of up to 3GB.

You can add signatures to the end of faxes with a signature editor.

eFax automatically uses OCR scanning software to make faxes searchable by keywords. This is generally very accurate and you should have no problems searching for specific faxes or details in a fax.

Sending Faxes via eMail with eFax

All the best fax services now allow users to send faxes from their email account without even having to open the fax client.

eFax does this and also automatically sends copies of faxes to your chosen email address. You can configure up to 5 different email addresses to send from.

You simply add the fax number to the address field and put the “@efaxsend.com” extension at the end.

You can also specify whether you want received faxes to be in PDF, EFX, or TIFF file format. We strongly recommend using PDF or TIFF because EFX is eFax’s own format and can only be opened in eFax.

If you want to take your faxes with you after leaving eFax or share them with others, then PDF makes things much easier.

eFax Desktop Apps

The eFax desktop app is Windows only although the web version works perfectly well on Mac.

However, Mac users aren’t missing much as the desktop app is limited to sending faxes anyway. It doesn’t actually sync with the web version and display all of your incoming faxes.

The mobile apps are slick and the iOS version is very good if you just want to send from iPhone or iPad.

You can sign emails electronically with eFax for either your desktop or mobile device.

Is eFax Secure?

eFax requires you to setup a passcode to use although it’s only 4 digits.

It also offers you the option to access faxes via an email link that requires you to enter the 4 digit code in order to access them. This also enforces you to use a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) in order to access faxes for greater security.

There no two-factor authentication or verification with eFax though.

The Pro and Plus versions of eFax are not HIPAA compliant which is an important consideration for compliant healthcare faxing.

However, the Enterprise version of eFax is HIPAA compliant and secure for HIPAA

How Does eFax Compare To Other Fax Services?

You can see below how eFax compares to other fax providers.