• Freeware Fax Software

Even though many offices still use fax machines, you don't have to invest in one just to send a fax or even receive faxes. Instead, use one of these free services to send faxes from your computer to a fax machine over the or receive faxes to your email.

For fax sending, the services below allow you to enter in text to be faxed or upload a document (like a from MS Word or a ) that's already stored on your computer. You could also use a portable or desktop scanner to convert your paper files to digital documents for faxing. The free fax receiving services give you a fax number to hand out to others and will convert faxes sent to that number to a digital document delivered to your email address.

Note: Some of these services offer only limited free faxing. Read carefully before choosing one. If you'd rather not have an ad on the cover page, consider GotFreeFax, which uses no-ad free fax cover pages and also doesn't add any GotFreeFax branding to your fax. You can send faxes online to anywhere in the U.S. You can send up to 3 pages per fax with 2 free faxes allowed per day.

If you need to send more than 3 pages, GotFreeFax allows you to fax up to 10 pages for $0.98, 20 pages for $1.98, and 30 pages for $2.98. The premium pay-per-fax service also uses an encrypted connection and provides priority delivery. FaxBetter Free offers you a dedicated toll free fax number for receiving up to 50 pages per month, plus email notifications every time you receive a fax. The catch is that you'll need to receive at least one fax every 7 days to keep the free fax number, and the fax-to-email service as well as the OCR/searchable fax feature is only a 30-day trial.

FaxBetter Free stores up to 1,000 pages on its site for you to access your faxes online. If you don't expect to receive faxes as regularly and/or would like the fax-to-email, searchable faxes, and up to 500 pages per month options, the FaxBetter account starts at $5.95 per month.

The eFax Free plan gives you a free fax number for incoming faxes which are delivered to you by email. You'll need the eFax document viewing software and will be limited to 10 incoming faxes a month, but if you have light fax receiving needs, eFax Free is a helpful service. To change the area code for your fax number, receive more than 10 incoming faxes, or send as well as receive faxes, you'll need to upgrade to the eFax Plus plan, which is a bit more costly than average, at $16.95 per month. However, if you pay annually you can get two months free which brings the monthly average cost down to $14.13/mo. Pamfax is free to join, and new users get three free fax pages. Support for Dropbox, Box.net and Google Documents is built in to the service. If you decide to upgrade, PamFax will provide you with your own personal fax number.

PamFax is available for the internet, Mac OS X, iPhone/iPad, and Blackberry 10. Once you're beyond your three free fax pages, you'll need to go with a Professional or Basic Plans.

Freeware Fax Software

Both include a personal fax number and allow you to send multiple documents in a single fax. What's nice about this fax service is that you can even use PamFax with Skype. One of the most overlooked features in man Microsoft Office programs is the ability to send a fax. The Microsoft Office suite includes a feature that allows you to send internet faxes via Outlook, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. This feature relies on having the installed on the computer you want to send faxes from. If your edition of Windows includes the driver or service, you must install it before you can send Internet faxes.

If it doesn't, you'll need that download above. Specific directions depend on you are using, but if you need to send a fax to someone and you would rather not sign up for one of the above-mentioned free online services, this could be a viable option.