HelloFax is a decent online fax service. It offers an easy-to-use interface, converts your existing fax numbers, and lets you manage a team of users. Against the competition, it stacks up relatively well, especially as it can integrate with major cloud storage services. That said, we found the paid plans to be expensive for frequent fax use, and noted that you can’t customize your fax cover sheets.
Compare HelloFax to the Best Online Fax Services
HelloFax is a solid option for those that need robust integration with key cloud storage services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive. However, the service did not make our top picks list due to the price of its plans, its lack of customizable cover sheets, and its absent mobile app.
We picked the nine best online fax services, looking in-depth at the characteristics of each. See all of our top picks to get an idea of how each stacks up.
HelloFax: The Good and The Bad
The Good
User-Friendly Interface: The user interface of HelloFax is straightforward. When logging in, you’ll find a simple menu for displaying your options, and you can quickly see your complete fax history. You can even create a team and invite additional users from the dashboard in a few clicks.
Strong Security: Security is more important than ever, and HelloFax doesn’t disappoint. There’s 256-bit AES encryption available on the platform servers, or in other words, a high level of security. HelloFax also collects negligible data from users and doesn’t store the content of your faxes—you can contact the team at any time to request that stored data gets deleted. Transport layer security secures your faxes while in transit.
Cloud Storage Integration: Rare to see in the online fax service market, HelloFax integrates with key cloud storage services, including DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Evernote. HelloFax’s add-on for Google Docs makes sending a fax from within a document straightforward.
The Bad
No Mobile App: HelloFax doesn’t offer a dedicated mobile app for Android or iOS. Most of the competitors on the market do and allow you to view, edit, sign, and send faxes on the go by using a smartphone or tablet. This functionality is essential today.
Limited Customer Service: HelloFax offers support over email but only during US Pacific hours. The company’s site has a good amount of documentation—including a video library—to guide you through, but this doesn’t make up for the lack of phone support. No live chat service is available either.
Lack of Cover Sheet Customization: The fax cover sheet is the sheet of paper attached with a fax document for sharing confidential information. The fax cover sheet gets used for professional purposes and typically contains your name and fax number as well as other details. HelloFax doesn’t allow you to customize these sheets—it’s something you’d expect to see.
HelloFax: Pricing and Options
HelloFax comes in four main tiers when including the free plan. The free plan lets you send five free fax pages internationally, but only from a single sender. Every page after that initial five costs 99 cents, but only on the starting plan. Key integrations with third-party applications like DropBox, Evernote, and Google Drive are also available on this tier, which is more than welcome.
Users on the free plan can edit and sign faxes, and all of your information gets stored in the cloud. However, keep in mind that you won’t be able to receive faxes on this plan; only send them.
The first paid plan is the Home Office tier coming in at $9.99 per month or $99.99 a year. You get access to 300 fax pages per month, and these can be from five different senders. It includes all the free plan features, and crucially, you can also receive faxes—there’s no limit to how many you can receive either.
The next plan is the Professional tier which comes in at $19.99 per month. You get 500 fax pages per month, access to up to 10 senders, and all existing features from the previous tiers. On top of that is the ability to use fax number porting—this is where you transfer your current fax number over to a new service; it’s a valuable feature to have, if not essential. You can submit a request to HelloFax, and it’ll verify if it can port your number within 24 hours.
The final main plan is the Small Business tier for $39.99 per month. This level gives you 1000 fax pages per month, up to 20 team members, fax number porting, and all of the main features of the other tiers, including multiple fax recipients and the ability to receive faxes.
There is a bonus tier entitled “Enterprise Plan.” No prices are available for this plan, and you’ll have to reach out for a direct quote. HelloFax, from there, will create a custom plan for you based on your specific requirements. Exclusive access to HelloFax’s API is available when you sign up for the Enterprise Plan.
The Home Office, Professional, and Small Business tiers all offer a 30-day free trial, and you can send and receive faxes during them. While free trials are common for online fax services, it’s good to see them set at a generous 30 days here. What’s more, if you decide to end the trial within 30 days, leaving is quick, and you won’t get charged.
In fact, there are no setup or cancellation fees and no contract to sign. If you decide halfway through that you want to leave a plan, you can. The only fee is if you choose to bring an existing fax line to the service; a one-time fee typically gets charged for this porting process.
Overall, the plans here are solid when it comes to features but are expensive compared to the competition. For example, MetroFax offers all of the same features, excluding cloud storage integration, and charges significantly less—sending and receiving 1000 pages per month costs just $12.95 per month. You’d have to sign up for HelloFax’s Small Business tier to give you the same, and it would cost $39.99 per month. That’s quite a step up for cloud storage integration alone.
HelloFax Electronic Signature Support
HelloFax offers electronic signature support (also known as e-signatures). While some others on the market provide this, HelloFax presents it in its easy-to-find “Getting Started” section. Effectively you can add a signature to the HelloFax service by drawing on the screen using your mouse, typing it, or even uploading an image file. If you have access to a touch screen monitor, you can also use your finger to add your signature. An electronic signature is legally binding, so it’s a helpful feature to have.
However, while inputting your signature is easy, using it during the editing of faxes is unnecessarily longwinded. If you click or tap where it says “Sign Documents” within HelloFax, you get sent to the separate “HelloSign” service. From there, you have to sign in again—while this may not take a great deal of time to do, it’s an odd sequence for users that just want to sign their documents.
Aside from that, everything else here is solid. The first three documents you sign are free, and there’s integration with Google Drive. You’ll have to pay for the Essentials plan on the HelloSign service for unlimited documents—this is entirely different from the base plans we discussed earlier and is solely for electronic signatures, as shown below.
You’ll have access to unlimited signature requests from the second plan onwards. Additional features on the later tiers include custom branding, bulk send, team features, and SharePoint integration. A free trial is available on the second and third plans.
HelloFax Mobile Functionality
HelloFax doesn’t offer a mobile app—a fairly standard feature of online fax services that provides convenience. For example, fax users might want to take a picture of a document with their phone rather than find a scanner.
What’s more, HelloFax’s site isn’t optimized or responsive to mobile devices, so if this functionality is high up on your list of needs, it’s best to look elsewhere. It’s worth noting that HelloSign—HelloFax’s e-signature service—has a dedicated mobile app, which only makes the omission more puzzling.
Lastly, if you want to send a fax from a mobile device, you need to use HelloFax’s email integration service—some users might find this tedious and not in line with modern-day expectations.
HelloFax Performance
The process of sending faxes with HelloFax is easy. First, you upload your files by dragging them in or tapping the upload button. Once that’s done, you can then edit and sign the document before sending the fax. Of course, you must enter the fax number or email address to send it. HelloFax is notable for offering a smooth service here, with little to no lag while faxing.
It’s possible to send a fax directly from your inbox by attaching a file to an email and sending it to a 10-digit fax number. You can’t customize the fax cover pages, although HelloFax is working on it—the feature is due sometime in the future.
Inbound faxes get sent to you as a PDF and are viewable in the “Documents” area. You can also decide whether you want to receive a notification when a document reaches you or not.
The service offers a range of different fax numbers, but they’re only available in Canada, the UK, and the USA. Although users can port in their numbers, neither toll-free fax numbers nor vanity fax numbers are supported. Faxes get sent to more than 70 countries globally and multiple recipients simultaneously.
Finally, a range of team management tools are available, designed to make it easier to coordinate work when working in a small team. Each team member can send and receive faxes through their email server or the HelloFax web portal. Users can be added or removed at no extra cost.
HelloFax Interface
HelloFax’s interface is a particular highlight of the service. You get a clean, user-friendly interface without unneeded complications. There’s a central navigation pane with options for signing documents, adjusting the settings, and managing team permissions for all users on your current plan.
You can quickly create a team and invite further users by putting in their email addresses. You control these settings at first but can choose to give other team members access to send faxes themselves. It’s a simple process, and it works well.
Other than that, the “Documents” section shows a list of all the documents you’ve sent—although it only shows the file name, not if the fax was sent or received—a bit more organization here would add to the otherwise user-friendly experience.
How HelloFax Ranks
HelloFax is a good online fax service that gets a lot right. The integration with key cloud storage services is a plus you won’t find everywhere, and the easy-to-use interface stands out. The team management features are also great for small businesses that need them.
That said, HelloFax didn’t make our top picks list due to its expensive plans, absent mobile app, and limited customer service. All of these areas need improvement.
We created a complete list of the best online fax services today—to see our reviews, check out our guide.
- Nextiva vFax – Best for most
- Ooma – Best for unlimited monthly faxing
- MetroFax – Best for mobile faxing
- Fax.Plus – Best for faxing 100 pages or fewer each month
- eFax – Best for advanced fax archiving and storage
- RingCentral Fax – Best for high-volume faxing
- MyFax – Best for home office use
- SRFax – Best for healthcare providers
- mFax – Best for businesses with up to 50 users
Summary
There are better online fax services than HelloFax. Overall, it gets the fundamentals right and offers some solid features, but it falls short in other areas, stopping it from reaching the very top. We only recommend the service to those needing integration with cloud storage platforms—otherwise, you’re paying higher prices for identical features you can find elsewhere.
