Can I email to a fax number? Not directly: a fax number is a phone line and email does not travel over it. But every online fax service in the Fax Line Index bridges the two. Address an email to the fax number at the vendor's domain, attach the document, and the vendor sends it as a real fax and emails you the report; inbound faxes to your number arrive as PDFs in your inbox. This page shows how to send an email to a fax number, the reverse direction, and what a plan for it costs.
How to email a fax number through a service
Open an account with a vendor that offers email-to-fax, which is all of them. Compose an email from the address registered on the account. Put the destination fax number, with country code where the vendor requires it, in the local part of the address followed by the vendor's fax domain, in the form the vendor's instructions show. Attach the PDF or document; the subject and body become the cover page on most services. Send. The vendor converts the attachment, dials the number, and replies by email with the result. That is how to send fax through email, and the sender never leaves their mail client. Sending from an unregistered address is refused, which is the vendor's guard against abuse.
Can you fax to an email address: the inbound direction
A fax cannot be sent to an email address, because the sending machine needs a number to dial. What can be done is to give the sender a fax number that delivers to your email: the number on your online fax account. The vendor answers the call, receives the pages, and emails you a PDF or a secure link. So can you send a fax to an email is answered by getting a number: Fax.Plus prints one fax number included on Basic at $6.99 a month with 200 pages, MetroFax prints 550 pages at $11.95, WestFax 500 pages at $14.99. How to fax to an email address, from the sender's side, is simply to fax that number.
How to send a fax from email safely
The attachment leaves your mail system and is stored by the vendor, so for anything confidential the same rules apply as for any online fax: a vendor whose plan states a business associate agreement if the pages carry health information, a cover page that discloses nothing on its face, and a check of the number before the first send to a new recipient. Inbound, choose the vendor's secure-link delivery over a plain PDF attachment where the pages are sensitive, because a PDF in an ordinary inbox is outside the vendor's protection. Keep the emailed report with the document; it is the delivery confirmation.
Questions people ask about can i email to a fax number
What format is the email-to-fax address?
The fax number followed by the vendor's fax domain, in the exact form the vendor documents. Most require the number with country code and no punctuation.
Does email to fax cost extra?
It is part of every plan in the index. Pages sent count against the plan's allowance, and overage applies beyond it.
Can I email a fax from any address?
Only from addresses registered on the account. Register the ones that will send, so the vendor can refuse everyone else.