Have you ever needed to send a fax but you were away from your fax machine? It used to be a common problem, after all, these machines were invented to be hooked to a phone line at all times. Things are much different today though, thanks to online fax technology and mobile apps, you can send and receive faxes digitally using nothing more than your computer or phone.
Fax apps have dramatically changed the way we send and receive faxes, letting us enjoy more freedom and flexibility in our communications. Mobile technology is ubiquitous today, so it makes sense fax companies have started offering this useful feature.
In this article we will take a look at this mobile fax technology, the best apps out there, and how you can send fax from your cell phone in just a few minutes.
How to Send Fax From Cell Phone
Let’s get started with what many of you are looking for: an easy guide to send fax from your mobile phone.
It begins by choosing the best fax service for you or your business. Nowadays you can find different fax companies that offer free apps for their customers. These services charge a monthly fee for a determined number of documents per month, but they also let you create a free account for a month.
We can also find fax apps that charge per document, but according to GoogleOnlineFax.com they are not recommended if you plan to fax regularly, as it will cost you more in the long run, and also because apps that are not backed by a service don’t give you a free fax number, which is essential if you want to receive faxes on the go.
NOTE: This guide is to fax from a cell phone using fax service’s apps. If you want to follow this guide but don’t have an account with one of them, you can sign up with a fax service of your choice using a free trial account.
Once you have your login and username, we are ready to go! Follow these steps to send your first fax using your cell phone.
- Download your fax service’s app to fax from your phone. In this example we will be working with eFax, but the process is similar with other providers. For iPhone users this means going to the App Store, Android users will need to go to Google Play.
- Open the app by clicking on its icon. Once open, it may ask you for login details. As I said before for the purposes of this tutorial you could be using a free trial account, which lasts for a month.
- Click on the “Send a fax” button.
- Fill all the necessary fields, including the recipient’s numbers, the subject of the fax and any additional message you want to send with the document.
- Choose the method you attach the document (this depends on the app you are using, but these days the top services let’s you choose between pulling the document from the cloud on a service such as Google Drive or Dropbox, attach the file from your phone, and taking a picture of a document with your phone’s camera)
- Once everything is in place, click SEND. Your first mobile fax is on the way!
Receiving Faxes
Receiving faxes is even easier than sending them, as it is a fully automated process.
By using a service, it automatically “grabs” the faxes that are arriving to your virtual number, and then forwards the incoming document to both your email account and your fax app in just fractions of a second. To access faxes on email, just login to your account and check new emails in your Primary folder, or other folder you might have created for this purpose.
To read new faxes on your phone though, you just need to follow 3 easy steps:
- Download the fax app of your choice.
- Open the app and login using your credentials, or create a new free account if you still need an email fax number.
- Tap on “View Faxes”. You will see a list of all received documents, and from there you can manage them, move them or delete them as you see fit. Each fax comes with the exact date information, in case you missed the notification.
How Mobile Fax Apps Work
Apps work in cell phones as software works in our desktop computers, you can say that they are software for mobile phones. What this means is that they are in charge of completing specific tasks by taking advantage of our mobile device’s hardware.
Since the arrival of smartphones, we have seen the development of apps for all kinds of tasks, but the ability to fax from cell phones is somewhat new because app developers had to comply with encryption and security measures.
Luckily, those problems have been solved and we can practically have a secure and weightless fax machine in the palm of our hands. If you don’t believe me check out some of the things you can do:
- Send faxes. You can do this by either attaching a file (from your phone’s storage or a cloud based service such as DropBox or Google Drive), or by taking a snap of the document you want to fax. The app will help you adjust contrast and sharpness to make your document easily readable even in traditional fax machines.
- Receive faxes. Anywhere at any time.
- Sign faxes electronically. When you create your account you can add an electronic signature, which will remain saved for later use if needed. You can create your signature on your account’s page or using the phone app.
- Integrate faxes with cloud services. Do you have your documents stored in Drive or Dropbox? Don’t worry the best fax apps allow you to pull documents directly from your virtual drive so you don’t have to download anything to your SD card.
Not bad for a cool little app that installs in your cell phone in just a few seconds huh?
If mobile fax is not working in your cell phone then sell your old mobile phone for cash and get a new one.
Mobile fax is here to stay! If you are new to this technology, I’d recommend you get started with a free trial, so you can taste the waters before you start actually paying for a membership.
