Pricing

eFax offers three different plans for online fax. Compared with competitors, it offers fewer included pages per month. In fact, eFax is the only provider we reviewed that offered no included outgoing pages in one of its plans (Pro 1). If you're interested in eFax's Plus plan, make sure to note that the overage charge for incoming faxes ($0.15) is higher than it is in the other plans.

Pricing and Packages

Ease of Use

eFax allows users to accomplish quite a bit through their "Member Center" page. You have the ability, not only to send a fax, but to see part of your account profile, your fax activity and some of your preferences. On the down side, having this many options makes the page seem a bit cluttered and makes it a bit less intuitive. For example: if you want to review an incoming fax, you have to click on a small link at the bottom of the "Your Fax Activity" section of the page or click on the "eFax Message Center" link on the right hand side of the page that is not displayed in a position of prominence. In other words, all of the functionality necessary for an online fax service is there but it may be a bit less comfortable than some of the other providers.

Customer Support

eFax offers phone support 24 hours a day and seven days a week. However, unlike the other fax providers, their number is not toll free, so be aware of the charges that may apply if you're long distance plan doesn't offer good rates. Also, for technical support, you'll have to wait about a minute and a half before you join the cue waiting for a rep. During that time, eFax will tell you about options to upgrade your plan, and encourage you to check their website for help.

Their email support answered our questions in a reasonable amount of time, though once they sent us a link to a page that had either moved or did not exist. Additionally, we never received a response to one of the three emails we sent. In addition to phone and email support, eFax also has online help in the form of over 30 FAQs and answers.

We called and emailed eFax 3 times to gauge their responsiveness, and the accuracy of those responses. Note the results in the table below.

Phone Support

Email Support

Part of eFax's customer support is documentation. The "Mini Guide" below explains how eFax users send and receive faxes.

eFax Mini Guide

Fax Transmission Speed

We sent five faxes using eFax's online service at random times of the day to find out how long it would take for each fax to reach its destination. We found that eFax's faxes were transmitted in an average of 2 minutes and 14 seconds. The average fax time for all of the providers we tested was 2 minutes and 36 seconds, or 6% slower than eFax.

Transferring Existing Fax Numbers

eFax doesn't have any step-by-step instructions on transferring a number to their online service on its user interface or in the signup process. We were however able to get step-by-step instructions by requesting information via email. eFax also charges $49.95 to transfer a number, which is as expensive as any other provider we reviewed.

Summary

Positive Features

• eFax offers service in over 40 countries around the world. Some of the other competitors only offer service in the US and Canada.
• eFax has a very simple 'mini guide' which explains how to send and receive faxes.
• eFax's system automatically saves faxes for 2 years, unlike most other services that save them from 1 month to 1 year.

Negative Features

• While customer support is available 24 hours a day, the support number is not toll free â€" unlike many other providers.
• When you sign up for eFax, you are assigned a number in the area code that you choose. Most other providers give you a list of numbers from which to choose.
• You won't be able to transfer an existing number to eFax unless you sign up for eFax Plus.