Overview

• Plan Reviewed: eFax Plus
• Free Trial Period: 30 days free trial.
• Monthly Fees: $16.95
• Page Counts: Send 150 pages a month and receive 150 pages a month.
• Users: 5 per fax number.
• Overage Charges: 10¢ per page sent or received over the limit.
• Mobile App: iOS and Android.

Choose eFax if:

• You need a decent fax archive search function.
• You need to send large files securely.
• Having a mobile app is important.
• You need an international fax number.

Don’t choose eFax if:

• You’re overly concerned with the cost: benefit ratio.
• You want to update or change the cover page.
• You expect to be primarily sending OR receiving, instead of both.
• You need to send faxes internationally.

eFax is hard to recommend since the costs are so high with relatively little value. While it has features enough to be competitive with other major online fax services, it’s probably better to pass up.

Check out our roundup of the Best Online Fax Services

eFax pricing

Let’s address the elephant in the room: eFax charges a $10 set up fee.

Why? There’s no discernable reason. It offers the exact same service as every other online fax service and has no distinct advantages. It’s remarkably average in every respect except pricing, where it is abnormally expensive.

It’s not like you make up that $10 over time by using a cheap plan, no, it’s just money-grubbing on the behalf of eFax (which is owned by j2 Global, a mega-conglomerate that also owns about half of the other online fax services).

There is a well-concealed free option for eFax, beyond the 30-day free trial. It allows you to receive up to 20 faxes per month and… that’s it. No sending faxes or using any convenient features. The only upside is that you don’t have to enter payment information.

Somewhat unconventionally, the pricing tiers start with a plan called “eFax Plus”. After you get over sticker shock from the price tag, you may notice that eFax distinguishes between pages sent and received. This is a supremely irritating policy that most online fax services have done away with by introducing shared pools of pages.

Not so with eFax.

Considering that there are several other services that charge less than half and give you twice as many (shared!) pages, it would be silly to choose eFax if fax volume or flexibility were one of your primary motivations.

To add insult to injury, eFax has a 10¢ overage charge. While that’s not overly expensive in and of itself, in combination with your measly 150 pages a month it’s pretty likely that you’ll see that overage charge on occasion.

You can bump up to the eFax Pro plan for an extra few bucks a month ($19.95). With this upgrade you receive an extremely lavish extra 50 pages sent and received each month (+100 pages total). For comparison, you could also just pay a 3¢ overage charge (available on several other services) and get the same value without a subscription increase.

eFax allows you to fax internationally (for a price). Where other international fax options usually just consume extra pages from your page pool, eFax skips that and goes straight to the source: your wallet. Price per page varies by country, but it ranges from 10¢ to more than a dollar.

The final nail in the coffin is their yearly pricing. If you elect to pay the entire cost for the year upfront, you get a generous 2 months of service for free! When factoring in those cost savings, eFax is… still more expensive than practically every other service (even billed monthly).

eFax features

Upon signing up for eFax, you are presented with a few options for fax numbers. You can port your old number, sign up for a local one, choose a toll-free number. All of those are free services.

If you’re willing to fork over a little extra, you can choose an international number. This is a useful feature that not many other online fax services provide.

Additionally, it’s possible to set up a voicemail for your fax number. It’s not a standard offering, but you can request it during account setup. It’s useful in case someone mistakes your fax number for a regular phone number. Voicemails are recorded and sent to you as an email attachment.

eFax has several ways to access your faxes: a standard web portal, a desktop application, and the mobile app.

The app is surprisingly good; maybe the best phone app of any online fax service. It does everything you would expect (including signatures) in an intuitive way. It’s also available for both major mobile operating systems, which is a plus.

The desktop application should be avoided at all costs. It is abysmal. It’s clearly a hold-over from their founding way back in 1993, and it apparently hasn’t been changed since. Want flashbacks to Hotmail? You’ll find them here.