Can I Send a Free Fax from My Computer? -

This post was last updated on November 4th, 2021 at 04:07 pm

Yes, you can send a free fax from your computer. In fact, it’s so easy you’ll be tempted to describe it as mind-blowing. Assuming you have an internet connection, you could start from scratch and have your fax set up and delivered in about 15 minutes. The best part? You’re going to learn how to send a fax from email. It couldn’t be more simple!

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How to Send a Fax From Email

We admit this is a weird concept. Faxes typically go over phone lines, so why should you care how to send a fax from email? The answer: simplicity.

First, you can send and receive faxes from anywhere you access your email. This includes your computer and your smartphone: no software or apps to install. Second, it means you can manage your faxes just like they were emails.

Free Fax in Three, Five-Minute Steps

Email faxing requires an email faxing service. When you send an email fax through the service, it coverts your email’s attachment into a fax and transmits it to the recipient’s fax machine.

There are a number of services that do this, but we have a favorite (RingCentral) because it’s secure and so easy to use.

First Five Minutes: Email Address

Technically, RingCentral will work with any email address. You just have to use that email address when you sign up for your RingCentral account. This makes sure the system connects the faxes you send with your account.

However, if you have a Gmail or Outlook email address, you can access some of RingCentral’s more advanced features. We are big fans of Gmail because it has the most advanced features, including spam filtering and powerful search and sort features that make managing email so much easier. (And it’s free.)

Second Five Minutes: Free RingCentral Trial

RingCentral offers a free, no-strings-attached 30-day free trial of their fax system. This allows you to send up to 1,500 pages of faxes at no cost. If you’re desperate to send just that one fax, then consider this a “how to send a fax from email for free” guide.

Maybe you need to send faxes occasionally on an on-going basis, though. A lot of users like all the “virtual office” features (including a personal local fax number for sending and receiving) and decide to subscribe. That’s what free trials are for. Hop over to RingCentral and sign up.

Third Five Minutes: Addressing and Sending

Now comes the real mind-bender: with the RingCentral fax service, the recipient’s fax number literally becomes an email address, and you send/receive faxes by emailing to it.

For example, if you’re faxing Jenny’s fax machine at 1-555-867-5309, you email your fax to 15558675309@rcfax.com. The @rcfax.com suffix sends your email to RingCentral’s system.

Special Note: Scanning Your Document

If your document is in paper form, you need to scan it so that you can attach it to your fax email. You can do this in the old-school way with a desktop scanner. However, a number of free apps can turn your smartphone into a pocket scanner, and iCloud and Dropbox have this function built right in.

Did We Make Computer Faxing Easy?

We were amazed the first time, too. Not only does this fax system make “emailing” a fax simple, but it also makes finding and archiving your sent and received faxes exactly like managing the rest of your email. Nobody even has to know you don’t have a fax machine. Best of all, your fax is entirely free if you use that 30-day free trial!