Receiving a fax through email

[Clodfobble]

A ton of options pop up through a basic Google search, but most appear to be for money, or worse, claiming to be free but clearly skeezy enough to be siphoning money in an unethical manner at some point.

Does anyone here have a program/website that does this in a reliable and free manner? I don't need to send faxes, only receive them from my luddite father.

[classicman]

IIRC ... been a long time. There was something through efax or maybe goDaddy.
They were free and easy. Perhaps that's not the case anymore??

[Undertoad]

I'm angry I don't know a good answer to this question, because I am literally in the business of operating a phone company for faxes, fixing people's fax servers, and explaining to them how they can route faxes to individual email addresses. That is what I do all day.

And if you wanted to receive a fax once, I could set it all up pretty fast. Possibly even on the virtual server where the Cellar lives! But when you want to receive one every month or so, it would cost money, cos the phone number has to be reserved, and the account to run all this has to be managed, and there is still a fraction of a cent charge per minute for telephony...

[Pamela]

Is your computer equipped with a fax/modem? If it is, it should have a fax utility.

If not, you can add one for cheep and it will come with one, or Tucows.com, my favorite source for software, should have what you need.

[Clodfobble]

Thanks, everyone. I looked into it further, and to get roughly 2-3 faxes per month my choices were:

1.) hook up the little fax receiver in my printer to my own phone number, which would mean futzing with physical cables (say what?!) and my dad would have to call and warn me every time one was about to come, or

2.) pay about $8 per month after an initial free trial.

Oh well, I'll pay it. I can write it off as a business expense, at least. For the record, my assessment for best value (i.e. good price but without malware or skeeziness) ended up being ringcentral.com. Just in case anyone else has to deal with a weirdo who straight up refuses to have an internet connection in his house.

[tw]

HP 3in1 printers had an option to scan a document as a fax that would automatically arrive in other's email accounts. It was free. I do not know if the service still exists. It might require the HP printer connected to internet access.

[Gravdigr]

I've went to the truck stop to receive/send faxes a couple times. Costs a couple bucks.

[elSicomoro]

I've used myfax on several occasions.

[lumberjim]

if he's going to be obdurate and refuse to use modern tech, make him mail it through the post.

[BigV]

Does casa de Fobble have a landline?

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by lumberjim

if he's going to be obdurate and refuse to use modern tech, make him mail it through the post.

I've tried, but so far he keeps finding ways to bring it in person instead, even though it takes him an hour to get to my house. He gets excited when he has something for me and thinks the post office is too slow.

Originally Posted by BigV

Does casa de Fobble have a landline?

Yes, but the phone jacks in the walls of the house are not hooked up. The landline is over the cable TV, and the cable box sits very far away from the current location of the printer. To hardwire it would mean moving the printer permanently (not going to happen, there's no space for it anywhere near there,) moving the printer temporarily each time he wants to send a fax (also not going to happen, the fucker's heavy,) bringing a phone tech out to rewire the house properly (the wires are known to be damaged, it would be new wires from scratch,) or running one very long cable from the box to the printer (which would cross not one but two heavy-traffic hallways.)

It would be easier to just pay for an internet connection in his house. But the concept of that literally makes him angry. He wants to fax it over a traditional phone line, and he wants me to figure out how to receive it. Sometimes parents are just how they are, you know?

[Undertoad]

If you really wanted that printer to be a dedicated fax machine, you could buy an Analog Telephone Adapter such as the Grandstream HandyTone 701, and plug one side into the fax port of the printer and another into the Internets. Then you could buy a phone number from t38fax.com, generally via a Free Trial, and configure the HandyTone to use it, and then you would actually receive faxes over the Internets on your own dedicated number.

The ATA "converts" traditional phone into the Internet-style SIP phone that all providers are using under the hood.

At t38fax.com it's $9/month for the phone number and channel, and 2.5 cents per minute for the faxing. But one gets a $25 credit with the Free Trial so that covers a lot of minutes.

[footfootfoot]

I use pamfax to send. They charge ten cents a page or something. You have to buy a few dollars credit but it lasts forever.

There is also an outfit that gives you an actual # that people can send faxes to you, and it is converted to an email that is sent your inbox.

I will have to find the name.

[Clodfobble]

Ringcentral does it. That's who I've got a free trial with right now. They're about a dollar a month cheaper than the place UT found, and also they deal with all the hardware. I chose my number from a list of about 50 choices (including local-to-me numbers, if I wanted,) my dad sends to that number like normal, and I get a PDF emailed to me within minutes.

[Undertoad]

cheaper than the place UT found works at

ftfy