How to receive faxes on your computer and telephone

Many public institutions and businesses still use faxes for receiving and sending important documents. Despite the arrival of the PEC as a valid substitute, nothing can still replace the good old fax, but having one costs a lot, not to mention the need to have a dedicated analog line for this type of service.

If we have to receive urgent faxes, we can also drop the analog line and rely on some services able to provide us with a number on which to receive faxes, which will be forwarded to our inbox in the form of a PDF.

In the following guide we will show you the best sites and the best apps we can use for receive faxes without having an active analog line, so you can always receive this type of document by spending a very low amount or by taking advantage of the free trial periods.

READ ALSO: Best free faxing apps for Android and iPhone

1) Tiscali Fax

The best service we can use to receive faxes quickly is Tiscali Fax, completely disconnected from other Tiscali services and therefore usable even if we do not have a subscription with this operator.

The peculiarity of this service is to offer free sending and receiving faxes forever, it will be enough to register to obtain a personal number to receive and, if necessary, send all the necessary faxes. All received faxes will be forwarded as PDF to the email box indicated during registration, so as not to lose any document.

The service also offers 10 MB of free space to save received and sent faxes, but currently does not offer any type of app to be able to manage it from mobile: from a smartphone or tablet we can only wait to receive the email with the PDF of the fax or use the service from a web browser, such as Google Chrome (available for both Android and iPhone).

2) Messagenet Fax

Another service that we can use to receive faxes on the PC is Messagenet Fax, which offers a telephone number that is also valid abroad to receive and send faxes online. Received faxes can be managed directly from the site or forwarded to an email address, so you can read them immediately wherever we are.

By activating the FreeFax profile we will be able to receive faxes for free for 90 days, then the service will continue to work for free only for sending (maximum 3 faxes per month). If you are interested you can subscribe to the Faxin subscription to continue receiving faxes in your e-mail box.

3) eFax

Among the best online fax services that we can try eFax certainly stands out, which offers its users the ability to send and receive faxes with a dedicated number, which can also be used abroad.

We can try all the services for free for 30 days, so as to test their goodness and evaluate whether to adopt it as the only solution to manage all personal faxes. As for the other solutions, faxes can be read directly by the service or forwarded to an email address in the form of a PDF.

In addition to the site seen above, we can use the service to receive faxes directly on the telephone, while we are out of the home; the official app is in fact available for Android and iPhone.

4) Fax

Among the paid services for receiving faxes on a PC or smartphone, Faxator certainly stands out, offering a series of really convenient plans for both businesses and private citizens. By choosing Faxator we can also receive faxes from abroad using a personal number, forward faxes to an e-mail box and send without limits starting from € 5 per month.

The service also offers a free account, but it is only enabled to send faxes not to receive them (it offers to be precise to send 10 pages per month, but only to Italy). If we have much more advanced needs than a home user, Faxator is the right solution!

To use Faxator by phone we need to get an iPhone and install the dedicated app, using the same credentials as the site. At the moment the service is not available an Android app, but we can use it without problems from a web browser.

5) App to receive faxes

On the stores of Android phones and iPhones we find a large number of apps to receive faxes for free or as a free trial. If we need to try more apps together or in series we can install the apps in the following list:

• Easy Fax (Android and iPhone): excellent app to send and receive faxes directly from your phone, without having to bother your PC. It also integrates a paper document to PDF converter, so you can digitize any document.
• FAX.PLUS (Android and iPhone): another excellent app for receiving and sending faxes, with OCR reader for capturing paper documents.
• Simple Fax Free (Android): app designed to conveniently receive and send faxes on your phone, with pages offered as a free trial.
• FaxReceive (Android and iPhone): excellent app for receiving faxes on a temporary number or on an assigned landline number (for a fee).

We choose the app that’s right for us and get ready to receive faxes directly on the phone, using free services or with free features (often with time or duration limits).

Conclusions

The fax service is slowly retiring in favor of the PEC, but many old school offices and many municipal offices they still use faxes to handle important communications. If we have to receive a fax at all costs, just use one of the services or apps shown above to fix it, without having to buy an expensive and obsolete fax machine (without forgetting the need for an analog telephone line, which has now fallen into disuse).

In another guide we have shown you how to send an Internet fax without paying anything. If we need to digitize paper documents we can use app to scan documents, so you can use your phone’s camera as a scanner and scan documents (to be sent later as a fax) in PDF format.