Google Fax Lets You Send and Receive Faxes In Gmail

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This post was last updated on May 18th, 2021 at 07:38 pm

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Matt Gerchow

by Matt Gerchow

Hi I’m Matt Gerchow, a small business owner and Internet Marketer.

I remember when I would have those last minute faxes that just had to get there, but I didn’t own a fax machine.

I was always bugging the ladies in my apartment office.  I hated being dependent on others for the occasional fax.

That all changed when I discovered how to send faxes from my gmail account.

Now when I have to send that occasional fax, I just do it directly inside of Gmail…

Here is quick tutorial I made for you so you can do it too…

First, you’ll need a few things.  A Gmail Account and an Online Fax Number.

Step 1 – Grab yourself a gmail account. (you probably already have one)

Step 2 – Choose a Web-Based Fax Company for your account. This company will handle your outgoing and incoming faxes for you online.
RingCentral lets you fax free for 30 days in their current promotion. gmail fax

Step 3 – Compose Email.  Log into your Gmail just as you normally would and click on the Compose Email tab.

Step 4 – Enter the Fax Number.  Where you would normally enter an email address, instead type the destination fax number.  No spaces or dashes, just numbers, and behind that, the fax company extension, like this…

2024336755@rcfax.com

Step 5 – Add Your Message.  Your subject line functions as the message for the cover sheet of your fax.  Type whatever cover page message you want in there.

Then in the body of the email, type your fax and then attach any document(s) (scan, photo, pdf, word doc and more) that you want to fax.

step by step guide to send a fax from gmail

Step 6 – Click Send. Yes, that’s really it.

You just sent your first Gmail fax!

You might have heard there are free fax services out there.  But you really do get what you pay for.

Don’t let people put ads on your faxes.

Don’t risk your reputation or your data by permitting anything less than the very best in your business.

When a truly free service appears, you will hear about it here.

What is Google Fax Number?

google fax number

Google Fax number is an online fax number that will forward all your incoming faxes to your mailing service of choice (much like anyone else out there, we recommend you using Gmail).

Allowing you to send and receive faxes using your PC or mobile device like we said before.

Now that we know what it is, let’s get to what really matters.

What are the requirements?

Simple, all you need is a Gmail Account and an Online Fax Service.

How To Get a Gmail Fax Number

get google fax numberBack in the day, in order to send a fax, you had to own a fax machine, installations, and a dedicated line service.

That translates into investing money and time just to get your document across your clients or your offices.

Luckily for us nowaday, getting a fax number will take you about 3 minutes.

Digital fax technology has advanced a lot, allowing us to use our Gmail accounts to send a receive faxes online within minutes and on the go!

The best part is, you won’t be spending money on a dedicated land line since you will be using Google Fax number.

As you are reading this, there is one and only one method to get a Google fax number. Wich is using an online fax service provider.

There are several websites that allow you to send a fax for free, but there are limitations.

You won’t be able to send as many as you want.

They will most likely let you send just one fax each day, and per IP

Plus, you won’t be able to receive any incoming faxes, since you won’t have your own number.

And this is clearly not what we want you to achieve.

Services, on the other hand, might charge you something around $5 per month, wich is really accessible for any business owner, and they will include your number for free.

When it comes to Online Fax Services, there are quite a bunch of them around, the one we recommend is RingCentral.

Why?, simple…they will provide you a Google Fax number totally free when you sing up for the 30 days trial with no limitations, that means you will have the same service as a premium user would for a 30 days period of time.

How to get a Virtual Fax Number step by step

  • Step 1: Pick one of many Online Fax Services, find the one that fits your needs. (we
    will make a couple recommendations bellow)
  • Step 2: Sing up, fill up the form and choose either local or toll-free fax number (that could change depending on your location)
  • Step 3: Link the number you just acquired to your Gmail account.
  • Step 4: (Optional) Log into your account and add as many addresses as you want, for where are you going to be receiving your faxes.

Best Google Fax Services

RingCentral: Is the leading, if not the best service out there.GOOGLE FAX RING CENTRAL

Among the many features they have, we can highlight a couple

    • Dedicated fax numbers or Toll-free local number.
    • Integration with any mobile device, android, windows or iPhones.
    • PC/iOS applications.
    • Detailed reports.
    • Massive fax broadcasting with scheduling feature.
  • 24/7 Support

Besides offering a 30 days trial, RingCentral offers flexible plans for you to choose wich one fits your needs, depending on how many faxes you will be sending.

That means you will be paying accordingly to your faxing needs.

google fax efaxeFax: This is one of the older players on the Digital Fax service field.

They only offer one single plan, which is a great opportunity for both, small and medium businesses.

eFax  offers a full month test drive, no limits storage and local numbers in many countries around the world

Best Features

  • The Capability of being able to receive faxes into multiple accounts at the same time.
  • Share large files (most services limit is 10Mb)
  • 24/7 customer support if you have any problem.

google fax myfaxMyFax: Despite being one of the “younger” companies, they have managed to put themselves on the top tier fax service providers.

They did so by allowing you to send documents in more than 170 different documents formats.

What is their best feature?

They have a fixed rate for international faxing to more than 40 countries.

What is their downside?

Limited fax storage, if you are planning to receive a massive amount of faxes, you should know that MyFax only allows you to storage 200 of them in your inbox.

google fax rapid faxRapidFax: This virtual fax service, allows you to send and receive 300 documents on fax each month for about $10 a month.

Every fax you receive will be sent straight to your emailing account in no time, so you can take care of business. You will also be able to see them on your RapidFax.com account.

In addition, RapidFax does not charge you for setting up your account, and if you surpass the 300 documents limit, it will only cost you $0.08 for each page!

RapidFax doesn’t charge you a cent for setting up your account, and if you want to send additional pages, it will cost you $0.08 per page.

What is Fax To Email?

The term virtual fax or fax to emailgmail fax on a mac applies to a service that consists of sending and receiving your own faxes using different means, such as email, a website, or from some Microsoft Office tools such as OutLook.

The main difference with traditional faxing lies in the way you send and receive faces.

Now you do not need a physical connection line or a physical fax machine to send or receive your faxes.

The result is so that you can send faxes from anywhere, simply by having an internet connection and a device capable of opening documents such as pdf, word, etc.

How Do I Receive a Fax To My Email?

The process is pretty much the same as sending a fax from email.

fax to email

Once someone sends you a fax to your email account, your internet fax provider receives it, digitalizing it by transforming the content of the fax into a PDF and forwards it to your email account, just like any other email you ever received.

Simple enough right!?

How to send an email to a fax machine?

email to fax machine

Nowadays most people prefer sending emails than faxes, you might even feel like connecting a fax machine to send an occasional fax document it’s too much work.

Regardless, technology allows people to send and receive fax documents without the need of a faxing machine.

The best way to do so is by getting one of many online fax services. Those can convert your emails into fax documents, so they can be sent from your computer directly to someone’s fax machine.

There are many options out there when it comes to online fax services, our recommended choice is RingCentral, you should give it a try and get your FREE TRIAL to get an account with them.

Once you have your account up and running, you can just start composing emails as if they were fax documents.

Upon finishing your email, you won’t be sending it to an email account like you usually do. Instead, you will be sending it to a fax number.

Input the receiver’s fax number followed by @special-address from his service.

And it’s done! You just successfully sent an email to a fax machine.

Gmail Fax Number Advantages

This are some of many more advantages that having a Gmail Fax Number provide.gmail fax number features

  • Allows you to send and receive fax from Gmail.
  • Faster communications
  • Makes communications much more secure
  • Fax from smartphones and any mobile device (iOS, Windows, Android)
  • Works with Google Drive, Dropbox, and iCloud
  • Can hold signatures, making documents legally binding.
  • Keep track of your documents with easy storage access.
  • Save money, does not rely on a physical line or installations.
  • Free to use, with one of many fax services for a limited period of time.

Gmail Fax Additional Features.

When you fax via Gmail, you make use of all of the features to make online faxing easier and faster.

That’s the main reason Gmail Fax sets apart from other fax delivery methods, making digital the fastest and cheaper faxing method.

  • Mobile Faxing: Allows you to send or receive fax on the go! It is compatible with iOS devices (iPad, iPhone), Windows Phones / Tablets and of course, Android devices.
  • Cloud Storage: This is one of the game-changing Google Fax services features, enabling you to send a fax using cloud-based services such as Dropbox and Google Drive.
  • Electronic Signatures: You can add your digital signature to any document you want on any platform (PC/iOS/Mobile devices) to send, making it legally binding, this is especially good for big companies.
  • Multiple Recipients: Make big fax broadcasts instead of doing them one by one, you are able to send the same fax to multiple recipients at the same time.
  • Fax Scheduling: Set up a time and a date so you can automatically have your fax delivered.Once is received, you will receive a confirmation message, and if that’s not the case, you will receive an error message, with the detailed information (Very rare occasions).
  • Detailed Reports: Access your log fax from your Gmail account or Google Fax service provider dashboard and browse trough any fax you ever sent or received in no time.

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by Matt Gerchow

RingCentral Services Provided by RingCentral, Inc.
1400 Fashion Island Blvd, 7th Floor
San Mateo, CA 94404 – USA

Can You Send a Fax From Your Phone?

Can you send a fax from your phone? Yes! Online fax services are a convenient and cost-effective way to send and receive faxes via the internet. These services typically require you to create an account and purchase a subscription or pay a per-fax fee. Once you have an account, you can send and receive faxes through the online fax service’s website, your email, or an app on your smartphone.

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Can You Send a Fax From Your Phone? 

An online fax service sends a fax by converting the document you want to fax into a digital format and sending it o the recipient’s fax machine. This process is similar to sending an email, except that the fax is received by a fax machine rather than an email account. The whole process conforms to international faxing protocol standards.

How It Works

  1. You upload the document you want to fax to the online fax service’s website or app.
  2. The online fax service converts the document into a digital format, such as a PDF or TIFF file.
  3. The online fax service sends the digital version of the document over the internet to the recipient’s fax machine.
  4. The recipient’s fax machine receives the digital document and prints it out.

The Benefits of an Online Service

Convenience

With an online fax service, you can send and receive faxes from any device with internet access, eliminating the need for a physical fax machine. You can start faxing from your smartphone, just as you can send emails. All your faxes are also conveniently stored in one place, with no worries about physical copies hanging around that someone might see.

Cost-Effectiveness

Online fax services can be more cost-effective than traditional faxing methods, as you do not need to purchase a fax machine or pay phone line rental fees. You also don’t have to go stand in line at the library or an office supply store so someone else can send a fax for you, paying several dollars a page in most cases.

Ease of Use

Online fax services are easy to use, with a simple interface for sending and receiving faxes. You can use the interface directly, use the app on your phone, or simply use your own email account.

Security

Good online fax services use encryption to protect the confidentiality of your faxes and personal information. Be sure to choose a good service, though: cheap services come with no guarantees and may be skimping on security or even selling your information to make their profit.

Multiple Users

Some online fax services allow you to add multiple users to your account, which can be convenient for businesses or organizations that need to send and receive faxes from multiple locations or devices. You can also send faxes to multiple recipients at a time.

How Do I Send a Fax By Email?

Scan the document you want to fax (if you do not have a digital copy). Then, open your email app on your smartphone and compose a new email. Enter the recipient’s fax number in the “To” field, followed by the fax service provider’s domain. For example, if the recipient’s fax number is 555-555-3434 and your fax service provider is RingCentral, you would enter “5555553434@rcfax.com” in the “To” field.

Attach the scanned document to the email as an attachment. Add a cover letter, if you want, into the subject line. Review the attachments to ensure that everything is correct, and then send! That’s all there is to it.

If you’re ready to try it for yourself and see how easy faxing from a phone can be, now is the time. Test Drive Our #1 Recommended Choice and Fax Free for 30 Days!

How to Send a Fax From Your iPhone in 5 Easy Steps

Growing up, and even well into your adulthood, you were probably led to believe the only way to send a fax is via a fax machine. These operate using landlines, you need physical papers to send your documents, and you must have a fax machine to receive faxes in return. Well, this isn’t totally true anymore. You can send a fax from any Internet-connected device now. Let’s look at how to send a fax from iPhone apps.

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How to Send a Fax From iPhone Apps in 5 Easy Steps

1. Get the Right App

If you search for ways to send a fax from your iPhone, then you’ll find countless recommendations for apps on the App Store. You should avoid these like the plague. Many of them have expensive premium subscriptions that aren’t worth the price. Plus, the recipient of your faxes usually has to have the same app to receive anything from you, and some of these apps are a security risk.

The only app you need if you want to send faxes from your phone is Gmail. Most people today use Gmail as their regular email platform. You don’t have to download anything extra.

2. Get a Fax Number

You’ll need to have a fax number, domain, and extension if you want to send faxes from Gmail. Technically you won’t use your own fax number when sending a fax, but you’ll be provided with a fax number anyway when you use an online fax service. This service is what will enable you to fax documents from your phone. You may be able to send some pages every month for free, but if you send faxes regularly, then you’ll want a subscription.

3. Get Your Cover Letter Ready

Faxes need cover letters, and you’ll send yours in the subject line of the regular email composition box. You should compose your cover letter ahead of time so you can easily fix typos and other mistakes. Typing it directly into the subject line will make all the text show up in one single vertical line that you have to scroll through, which makes editing a nightmare.

You can compose your cover letter in the email body if you want, but make sure it doesn’t appear in the email body when you actually send this digital fax.

4. Get Your Files Prepared

It’s best if you send a PDF document when sending a fax through Gmail. However, you won’t run into any trouble if you send some kind of Word document file, either. Image files are the hardest to manage, so if you want to send pictures, please compile them in a PDF or Word document instead. Add your chosen file to the body of your email.

5. Get the Recipient’s Information Ready

You’ll need to enter the recipient’s information like it’s an email address. However, instead of “johndoe@gmail.com,” you’ll add their fax number before the domain and extension of your fax service. So, your recipient will look something like “1113334444@rcfax.com.” This will ensure the files you send will send as a fax that can be received via their fax machine or their email inbox. You don’t need to add anything else to the recipient bar for it to send correctly.

If you follow the steps above, then you’re sure to have an easy time learning how to send a fax from the ease and comfort of your iPhone. It’ll become second nature in no time. Consider it an alternative form of emailing. Test Drive Our #1 Recommended Choice and Fax Free for 30 Days! 

Choose a Trusted Service When Sending a Secure Fax Over the Internet

When it’s got to go by fax, it’s got to be secure. That’s the whole point of requiring fax instead of sending a document by email. Lawyers, hospitals, government entities, and similar official groups require faxes occasionally because of their security. If you’re using an online service to fax over the internet, you want to make sure it’s a trusted service that will do it securely.

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Choose a Trusted Service When Sending a Secure Fax Over the Internet

Why Faxes Are More Secure

Foxing was invented in 1924: it’s hard to believe that that long ago, people were able to transmit documents in such a way. The first faxes, and faxes still today, were transmitted over telephone networks. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the Xerox corporation introduced fax machines to the general public, though, and faxing became common for businesses.

Today, of course, email is the preferred method of communication for most people in business, but there are some times when faxes must be sent. In most cases, it boils down to security. Because faxes are sent over telephone lines, they are nearly impossible to hack. Of course, this begs the question: is it safe to use online fax services? It is when you go with a trusted service.

Is My Fax Safe With an Online Service?

When you use a third-party faxing service, the service will take the documents and transmit them over telephone lines according to international faxing protocols. If you were sending a document to your lawyer, for example, there’s always a chance that bad actors are specifically looking for those documents along the way, usually on your lawyer’s email server or stored on your lawyer’s computer. But the document will never be in those places.

Instead, your documents will go through special encryption and be sent to your fax service, which isn’t where someone looking to steal information from a law office will be looking for it. There, it will be transmitted securely over phone lines so that the physical copy arrives at your lawyer’s office and never sits on your lawyer’s servers or computers.

Why a Trusted Service Matters

When you start looking at Internet fax service providers, you’ll notice many choices. There are plenty of online services that offer free faxing options, but these are not trusted services, and you should be wary of them. Nothing in life is free, right? Those online services that say they’re offering you a free service are actually making money somewhere: by selling your information, by sticking ads on top of your fax, or in some other shady way (which usually also involves taking security pretty lightly).

That’s why it’s so important to go with a trusted service. You want a service that takes security very seriously and not only ensures everything they receive by email is encrypted but also treat all your documents sensitively after faxing them. Any service that is providing good encryption and good security is going to cost a little bit, but the good news is, it’s less than you might think.

Saving Money With Online Faxing

Really good services will offer a free trial, so you will be able to send a couple of faxes for free to test things out. Even if you need to send lots of faxes regularly, you’ll be able to do so for just pennies a page with a trusted service. If you fax at your local office supply or shipping center, you’ll be paying dollars a page, instead.

When security matters, go with a trusted service. Test Drive Our #1 Recommended Choice and Fax Free for 30 Days!

How Long Does It Take to Deliver a Fax From Gmail?

Sending a fax by a regular fax machine can be pretty time-consuming. The good news is, once you know how to send a fax from Gmail, sending a fax becomes as quick and easy as sending an email. We’ll explain exactly how it works.

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How to Send a Fax from Gmail: Get It There Fast

The first thing to know is that Gmail does not have its own fax service. You cannot actually send a fax using Gmail without having signed up for a third-party fax service like RingCentral. That’s because faxes must be sent over phone lines according to international faxing protocols, and Gmail, naturally, is sent over the Internet. So how does it work?

Sign Up With a Service

You sign up with your third-party service, and then you send your fax to them using Gmail. They will give you a fax number that belongs to you, and you’ll just address each fax with your recipient’s fax number and the RingCentral suffix. That means your faxes will have something like this in the To field:

8883435656@rcfax.com

Your fax will go to RingCentral, and they will deliver it as a PDF directly to your recipient’s fax machine. There won’t be anything odd about it: it won’t look any different than if you had sent it using a traditional fax machine. Also, unlike some of those suspicious “faxing apps” that advertise themselves on the Google Play and Apple App stores, your recipient doesn’t need to have the same app loaded on their device to receive your “fax.”

Using Gmail

Once you have signed up with your third-party service, it just takes a moment to link your email. While you can use the third-party’s website portal to send your faxes, or you can download their app to do it, the fastest and simplest way is to use your own Gmail. You just compose an email as normal, address it as illustrated above, put your cover letter into the subject field, and attach whatever documents you want to fax.

You can send almost any type of document, even images, but RingCentral will put them into a PDF to send them on to your recipient’s fax machine. If you have images, the fastest way to send them is to simply incorporate them into your own PDF or word document where you want them to be.

How Quick Is This?

With a traditional fax machine, you have to dial the recipient’s number, wait for the signal indicating that the line is not busy and the machine is ready to receive, and then fax your pages slowly, one at a time. The whole time, you are hoping that you have the pages facing in the right direction (if you don’t send faxes regularly, it’s just so hard to remember). You’re also trying to feed them in at just the right rate so that there’s no jam, but they also go through as one document and you don’t have to send the second half as a second fax.

Once you send the fax, you stand around, waiting for confirmation that it went through. When you use Gmail, you eliminate all of that trouble for yourself. You’ll get a notification from your third-party service as soon as your fax has arrived, and you can just go about your business as usual as soon as you hit the send button. It usually takes no more than five minutes for RingCentral to send your fax for you.

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Can I Send Multiple Documents When Faxing From Gmail?

Sending a fax with your email account is a common task for many remote workers. When you send a fax from Gmail, you can save a lot of time and money since you won’t need to invest in a fax machine or spend money on sending individual pages. This can be particularly important if you need to send multiple documents frequently.

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Can I Send Multiple Documents When Faxing From Gmail?

When you send a fax from Gmail, the biggest advantage is being able to send multiple documents at one time. Many online fax services allow you to send up to 200 pages converted as PDF files simultaneously. The upper limit for the date you can send is about 20 MB, which means you can send several dozen pages in an instant.

Sending multiple documents over digital fax is similar to sending multiple documents over email as an attachment. To send multiple documents, you simply have to upload these documents to the digital fax form and hit send.

Can Email Fax Send Documents to Multiple Recipients?

Using digital fax can also help you send documents to multiple recipients. This is another way virtual fax can save you time. Instead of sending documents to multiple recipients one by one, you can simply add the fax number for multiple contacts to your online fax form and send documents to all eligible numbers.

How to Send a Fax From Gmail

To send a fax using your email account, you must have an active email account that is compatible with your third-party online fax provider. Whether you are using an email plug-in or a VoIP provider for your online fax needs, you must have an email account that you regularly use and can access easily.

This is important because your online fax service will attach a digital fax number to your email, which is what will be used to create the secure channel used to send your online fax. The email account you use can be a personal email, a work-assigned email, or a new email account you intend to use only for online fax needs. Other steps include:

Compose New Email

Sending a digital fax is similar to sending an email. To send your virtual fax, you first compose a new email on your laptop, tablet, or another smart device. When you compose a new email, you can input a subject line or add text as a cover page.

Input Fax Number

Next, you will need to input the fax number you want to send your digital fax. You will put the fax number in the same field as an email address. You can input multiple fax numbers to send to multiple recipients during this step.

Attach Documents

Next, you will need to attach the documents you want to send over virtual fax. Digital fax works best with text documents, such as PDF files, Google Docs, or Microsoft Word documents. Some online fax services will automatically convert your documents into PDF format.

Await Confirmation

After attaching your documents, you will send your fax by hitting “send.” From there, your fax will be sent using end-to-end encryption that is secured by your digital fax number. Some services will provide a confirmation when your digital fax has been received.

Although sending a fax may not be something you need to do every day, it’s still much more convenient to send a fax with your email account. When you send a digital fax, you can send multiple documents to multiple people at once.

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How Can I Send a Fax From My Smartphone?

Today, sending a fax may be a rare task. With the power of email, even remote workers may not need to send faxes very often. However, if you suddenly need to send a fax and you don’t have a fax machine, you can easily send a fax from a phone or another smart device.

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How Can I Send a Fax From My Smartphone?

Sending a fax from your smartphone is a fast, convenient process that can be completed in under ten minutes. You can send a digital fax from your phone from anywhere in the world. To send a fax from your smart device, you will need an online fax account, appropriate documents, and an email account.

Get an Online Fax Account

First, you will need to get an online fax account. This fax account can work from a web portal or can act as a plug-in for your Gmail account so you can turn your smartphone into a digital fax machine. With an online fax account, you will be assigned a unique digital fax number that can send all of your online faxes through an encrypted channel.

Have Appropriate Documents

Next, you will need to have appropriate documents that can be easily sent via digital fax. Specifically, online fax documents are text documents that may be automatically converted into PDF documents by your online fax service. You can attach documents to your online fax form by using documents stored locally on your smartphone, downloading files from a cloud, or uploading other types of text documents.

Fax From Phone

Finally, once your documents are attached to the online fax form or new email, all you need to do is hit “send” to send a fax from your smartphone. You can do this from anywhere in the world as long as you have a reliable internet connection, such as a Wi-Fi connection, 5G connection, or a hot spot. Once your digital fax has been sent, you will only need to wait a few minutes for a confirmation email.

Does It Matter What Smart Phone You Use?

You can use your smartphone to send a fax regardless of your phone model. Both Android and Apple devices will have compatible applications or email plug-ins that will allow you to turn your smartphone into a fax machine. You will be able to download the correct mobile app from the Google Play Store or Apple Store.

Why Is Fax Still Used?

In the age of email, when almost anything can be sent via your email account, sending a fax feels like an obsolete task. But many industries still prefer to use fax over email specifically because sending a fax is much more secure than sending an email. While your email account may be vulnerable to hacking and viruses, a fax number is virtually risk-free since a fax number is an encrypted channel.

Fax may also be preferred when documents being sent must be legally binding. Business contracts, legal documents, and other materials may need to follow a secure paper trail, so sending a fax is a quick way to conduct important business.

Although sending a fax may not be an everyday task, there are still times when sending a fax is necessary. Fortunately, even if you don’t have a fax machine at home, you can use your smartphone to send a fax anytime. Test Drive Our #1 Recommended Choice and Fax Free for 30 Days!

Can I Send an Email Fax to Multiple Numbers at the Same Time?

By now, you are probably aware that it’s easy and intuitive to send a fax by email, particularly if you send a fax from Gmail. Of course, everyone’s going to have some questions about the process, and a common one is whether you can send a fax to multiple numbers simultaneously. The fast answer is yes, and if you keep reading, we’ll tell you how to do it.

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Send a Fax from Gmail to Multiple Numbers

If you are used to the way a traditional fax machine works, you may be worried that sending a fax from Gmail means you have to send a separate email for each. After all, that’s how it works with a traditional fax machine. You stand there, hoping that you have the pages turned the right way, and you punch in the number you want to reach.

You wait for the right tone, and then you carefully feed the pages through one at a time, hoping you have the rhythm just right so that the entire fax will send as one document. Then, you do it all over again for your next number. Great news: with email fax, all you have to do is put all the numbers you want to fax into your address bar. Here are the details:

Sign Up for a Third-Party Fax Service

Your email account does not have a faxing service, so you must sign up for a third-party service like RingCentral. That’s because faxes must be sent according to international faxing protocol, meaning they have to be sent over regular telephone lines and not the Internet. Once you sign up with your service, you can fax directly from their app online, fax from your email once you link it, or use the RingCentral app on any of your devices.

Open an Email

If you are choosing to use your email rather than the service’s desktop or mobile app, which most people do simply because it’s so simple and intuitive, all you have to do is open or compose a new email. You will put your recipient’s fax number into the address bar, followed by the suffix @rcfax.com. Your result will look something like this:

5552325647@rcfax.com

Notice that there are no spaces or special characters in that telephone number. Just put in the numbers themselves.

Multiple Recipients

If you want to send to several people at once, all you have to do is add all the numbers into the address bar, each followed by a comma, just as you would add multiple email addresses if you were sending an email. Note that you can fax to a max of 50 people at a time.

If you need to fax to more than 50 people regularly, that can be accommodated, too, however. RingCentral offers something called Fax Broadcasting, which allows you to send batch faxes in huge numbers. It’s worth looking into if you have a business that uses fax regularly.

Add Documents and Send

Your final step is simply to attach the documents you want to send, just like you would attach documents to any email. You can put your cover letter in the subject line, if you want a cover letter, but be sure to keep the email body section empty. Nothing in that section will get sent. Then you simply hit send, and your email is on its way to RingCentral, where it will be faxed to all your recipients.

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4 Reasons Why Knowing How to Fax From Email Is Better Than Using a Machine

Have you ever had to send a fax by one of those terrible old fax machines? These days, it pays to know how to fax from email. It’s so much more intuitive and simple, and it can be done in mere seconds with a great, third-party fax service. Keep reading to get started.

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4 Reasons Why Knowing How to Fax From Email Is Better Than Using a Machine

1. It’s So Much Faster

Sending from a fax machine is just time-consuming. If you have a machine at your office, you have to stand there and remember how it works, input each number correctly, make sure you’ve put your document in facing the right way, wait while the fax machine sends each page slowly, one at a time (and hope you get the next page into the machine at just the right moment to make it send as one continuous document), and then, wait, praying, for confirmation that it came through clearly.

Why do all that when you could just send an email instead? Ordinarily, you can’t if the other party demands a fax, but with a third-party faxing service, you transform your email into a fax machine. All you have to do is get back to work: your fax service will text you when the fax is sent. It just takes a couple of minutes.

Even if you don’t use a fax machine yourself, email is so much faster. You don’t have to get in your car or hop on a bus to get down to the local office supply store, where you stand in line and wait your turn for someone with minimal training to send your fax through the same laborious process as was just described above.

2. It’s So Much Cheaper

If you have to send faxes regularly, you not only have to pay to maintain a landline dedicated just to that fax machine, but you also have to keep up the machine itself. And that’s not counting the big expense, which is the loss in time as you go through the whole process we just described above.

If you don’t send faxes all that often and tend to go down to an office supply store or shipping center to send a fax, you’re going to be paying a couple of dollars a page. When you sign up with a third-party fax service, you’ll be given a free trial and minimal cost if you’re just sending a couple of pages occasionally. Even if your faxing thousands of pages a month, you’ll be paying just pennies a page.

3. It’s So Much Easier

Take all that description under heading number one and now think of it not in terms of the time that’s wasted but the effort it requires. When you send a fax by email, it works just as quickly and intuitively as sending an email.

If you need to send to multiple recipients, you just have to put other addresses in the address field. You don’t have to laboriously send the same fax four times to four different numbers, with four different opportunities for something to go wrong.

4. It’s So Much More Reliable

When you send with a fax machine, particularly if you are using a budget machine to save money and space, you know how unreliable that fax can be. It’s not uncommon for one of the pages to not go through or for pages to smudge on the other side.

When you use a third-party fax service, this will never be an issue. All they do all day long is send faxes in bulk, and they have the machines and the experience to do it right every time.

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Now You Can Use Your GMail as a Fax Machine, Too

If you have to send a fax, you are probably looking for an easy way to get that done. Using a traditional fax machine is far from easy, but now you can email to fax with Gmail simply and intuitively. With a third-party fax service like RingCentral, you can use your Gmail account as a fax machine and truly get everything done in one place.

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Email to Fax With Gmail

Back in the day, the only way to send a fax was to have your own machine or to visit someplace with a machine that would send your fax for you (for several dollars a page). Fax machines are clunky and can be difficult to use right if you’re not used to using them regularly, and maintaining a landline solely to send the occasional fax is not exactly cost-effective for the average person (or even the average business).

Yet there are some situations where we must still send faxes. If you are working with a lawyer or sending documents to a doctor’s office or hospital, for example, you may have discovered that these entities require faxes. Sometimes the government also requires faxes, and many foreign companies still prefer to receive important documents, like contracts, by fax.

Can I Really Use Email?

So, if all these agencies and entities require faxes, how can you use email? That’s what your third-party fax service is for. Gmail does not have a faxing service because faxes must go out across landlines, and email uses the Internet. A third-party service, however, can take your documents and fax them to your recipients in less than five minutes.

You simply send the documents to your fax service by email from wherever you are and whatever device you use for email. It’s simple and intuitive, and it doesn’t require you to stand in line at the office supply store or library, or even at your own fax machine, hoping it’s going through and that you have the pages turned in the right direction!

How To Send an Email Fax

The first step is just to sign up with your third-party fax service and link it to your email. You can actually use the third-party fax service app or website, if you prefer, but linking it to your email allows you to send faxes as easily and quickly as you would send an email. Once your account is linked, you just sign into your email from any device and choose Compose to start a new email.

In the To field, you’ll put the phone number of your fax recipient and the suffix of your third-party fax service. Your phone number should have no spaces or special characters in it, so instead of (123) 456-7891, your address will look like this: 1234567891@rcfax.com. Once you have the address in, you attach your documents as you normally would to an email. You can send to multiple recipients by simply separating each one with a comma, just as you would with email addresses.

If you want to include a cover letter, type that into the subject line of your email. Don’t put anything in the body of the email, as nothing in this area will be sent. Now you’re done! Just hit send, and your email fax is on its way to RingCentral, who will send it by international faxing protocols to your recipient within minutes.

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How to Send a Fax Online in Under 5 Minutes

If you need to send a fax, you may be worried that this is going to be a long process. Don’t worry: you don’t have to hunt for a fax service near you, drive over there, and stand in line. You can send a fax in less than five minutes right from your computer or mobile device. That five minutes includes the time it will take you to read this quick guide on how to send a fax online.

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How to Send a Fax Online in Under 5 Minutes

Step One: Choose a Third-Party Fax Service

You first need to find someone who can send your fax for you, and you want a reliable company that will offer good security and who won’t spam your fax with lots of ads. That won’t look terribly professional when your recipient gets it! We recommend RingCentral, and you can have a 30-day trial with them for free, too.

Once you have signed up for a service, you can either send your fax directly through their mobile app or on their website, or you can link your Gmail account and simply send it that way. If you’re going to be sending more than one fax, it’s a good idea to link your email account because it’s so intuitive and simple to send faxes through email.

Step Two: Compose an Email

If you have decided to link your email, your next step would be to hit the Compose button and start a new one. You will then put in your recipient’s address in the To field, just as you would put in an email address in that line.

The number you put in this field will be your recipient’s fax number, followed by the suffix provided to you by your fax service, which directs the email to them so they can send the documents by international faxing protocol. So, for example, if your recipient’s number is (805) 564-3422, you would put this in the To field:

8055643422@rcfax.com

If you decide to use the mobile app or website of your fax service, you’ll use this same method to direct your fax to the right address. In this case, you will go to the fax composition window of your fax service website and enter your recipient’s fax number as above. If you’re faxing directly from your fax service, of course, you don’t need the suffix. You just need the number.

Step Three: Attach Documents and Cover Letter

The third step is to attach the documents that you want to send. If you are using email, you will attach your documents in the same way as you would to send an email. If you are on your fax provider’s website, you can attach documents from your computer, your Google Drive, your Dropbox account, and more.

If you are on the fax service site, there will be a field to add a cover letter if you wish. If you are using email, you want to put your cover letter in the Subject line of your email. Don’t put your cover letter in the email body. Nothing in the email body will be sent. If you’re not sure if you need a cover letter or if you’re not sure how to compose it, there are templates available.

That’s all there is to it! You have sent a fax online, and the whole thing should take much less than five minutes. If you’re ready to get started, RingCentral is the perfect place. Test Drive Our #1 Recommended Choice and Fax Free for 30 Days!