I want to receive faxes on my iPhone. Are there any cool new apps?
I’ve heard there are faxing apps for smart phones. I’d particularly like to find a free fax app for iPhone, where receiving and sending faxes, as well as the app itself, are free.
You’re right, there are a lot of faxing apps for the iPhone! Which one is best for your particular needs depends on what precisely you plan to do with it, as well as how much you’re willing to pay, but let’s focus on your particular case.
One free app I’ve found that works great for receiving faxes is Fax Burner, which can be used for sending faxes as well. I emphasize that it’s great for receiving faxes because there is a lifetime cap of five sent pages on their free accounts. Of course, you can always upgrade to one of their paid options if you need to send more. It works well for receiving, though, because you can get 25 faxes every month.
Sending faxes with Fax Burner works the same way most of these apps work: you compose an optional cover page, then you take a picture of the document you want to fax. The fax you send can be pretty grainy and might even be hard to read, so you’ll want to stick to black and white documents (in part because the received fax will be in black and white).
Receiving faxes is pretty straightforward as well. You receive a fax number that is yours (and yours alone) for 24 hours. During that time, you can direct people to fax you at that number. Faxes will arrive in your email and on the app itself. The attachment in your email will be a PDF, so you can do with it what you will.
One important thing to note about this fax service is that the number you send from is not the same as your receiving number. You need to make sure anyone you send a fax to doesn’t just reply to the number in the “from” field on the cover sheet.
On a totally frivolous note, it also makes really dorky fax noises, which I count as a plus.
As faxing from the iPhone becomes more popular, even more apps like Fax Burner will be developed. Current popular options include iFax, PC-Fax.com, and FaxOrama. Online fax websites, like eFax and MetroFax, also have their own apps that may better suit your needs. Since many of the apps themselves are free, you can try out different ones and choose the one you like best. Or, since you’re already using a phone with email, you could always just use any fax-to-email service directly.
Do you have a question about faxing? Send me your fax question.
