Dr. Hidaia Mahmood Alassouli 
Comparison between Internet Fax Services 

Internet faxing uses the same principles as facsimile transmission, but it uses a Web interface instead of a fax machine. It can be a flexible, inexpensive option for transmitting documents.

Internet fax services usually assign a fax number to each person who signs up for the service. people can send faxes to this number, and customers can send faxes via e-mail without using a fax machine.




To send a fax through an Internet fax service:

• The sender attaches a document to an e-mail message. The document can be a scan of a paper document, or it can be created in a program like Microsoft Word.


• The sender addresses the message to the recipient’s fax number, followed by the name of the faxing service (for example: 18005551234@emailfaxes.com).


• The service translates the attachment so that a fax machine can read it.


• The service sends the data across the phone line.


• The recipient’s fax machine decodes the data and prints the fax.

To receive a document from a traditional fax machine through an Internet fax service:

• The sender dials the fax number that the service has assigned to the recipient.


• The fax machine translates the data and transmits it over the phone line.


• The service receives the data, translates it into an image file and sends the image to the recipient’s e-mail address.


• The recipient opens the em-ail message and the attachment and views the file.

As getting cheap internet fax service is important, I tried to look for cheap internet fax service that can fax to any country worldwide and can also use Pay Pal as it is safe payment than credit card. Unfortunately, I could not find cheap fax service for international destination. All internet fax services offer only cheap services to the free zones countries such as usa and Canada.  I could not find cheap service to international destinations.



Maybe the best of my search for faxing to international destination was FAX.PLUS that allows also paypal. But when I tried to subscribe to basic plane using paypal, paypal asked me to give them permission to access my registered credit card, and I refused that and so I could not subscribe. 




I will divide web sites that I had look to their internet fax services in the following groups




1-Part1: Websites that accepts paypal payments and supports faxing to international countries. Some of these are:

• Gotfreefax


• fax.to


• Faxfresh


• Pam Fax.biz


• Faxzero


• FAX.PLUS

2-Part2: Websites that accepts only credit/debit card payments and supports faxing  to international  countries

• Hellofax


• J2 global services vendors. It includes Metrofax,   myfax, smartfax, efax, trustfax,   rapidfax and fax.com

3-Part3: Websites that supports faxing  to usa and Canada only

• Nextiva


• FAXAGE


• FAXBetter

In this report, I will compare the internet fax services according to the cost for sending fax to United Arab Emirate. I will assume that I have three pages to be sent to any fax number in UAE.