Fax.Plus - Send Fax from Phone

Review by eFreeware

The most distinctive thing about Fax.Plus is that it removes the machine. You don't need a fax machine, a landline or any dedicated equipment to send a fax from an Android phone or tablet, and you can receive faxes back into the same app. That single idea is what the whole product is built around, and it is the reason it has attracted more than a million installs and holds a 4.5 average from over 31,000 ratings.

It is a business tool rather than a general-purpose utility, and that shapes who it suits. If you work somewhere that still exchanges signed forms, referrals, invoices or records by fax, this is the kind of app that lets you handle that from the phone already in your pocket. The developer, Alohi, has been running it since November 2016, and the most recent update refreshed the look of the app and added a switch for turning fax reception on or off.

I'd expect the appeal to be strongest for people who deal with faxes occasionally rather than all day: a clinic administrator sending a referral, a contractor returning a signed change order, a landlord passing paperwork to a property manager. What follows is a closer look at what the app does, what it asks of you, and where the trade-offs sit.

Turning a phone into a fax line

The core of the app is straightforward. You prepare a document, enter a fax number, and the app sends it; incoming faxes arrive in an inbox, and a push notification tells you when something new has landed. The developer pitches this as faxing from anywhere, at any time, from any device, which is the promise the rest of the feature set is arranged around.

Sending is flexible about where the document comes from. A page can be captured with the phone camera, or a file can be brought in from the device or from services such as Dropbox and Google Drive. The scanner is not a bare camera capture: the developer lists automatic document detection, border cropping and perspective correction among its features, which is the difference between a readable fax and a skewed photo of a page on a desk.

The formats it accepts cover the usual office paperwork: Office documents, PDF, JPG, PNG and TIFF. That range matters more than it might seem, because the documents people still fax tend to come from a mix of sources, some scanned, some exported from a word processor, some photographed on the spot. There is also an Add Text feature for putting a cover page in front of the document.

Coverage is broad in one direction and narrower in the other. You can send faxes to more than 180 countries, while receiving requires a dedicated number, and those are available in over 40 countries, including the United States, Canada, South Africa, Portugal and Germany. The full list of locations sits on the developer's website.

The archive, the signature tool and the smaller conveniences

Everything you send and receive is kept in an encrypted archive, which the developer describes as fully encrypted and intended for future reference. For anyone whose fax traffic consists of records that may need to be produced later, that archive is arguably as valuable as the sending itself. You can also add notes to sent and received items, which is a small feature that makes a long archive easier to search through when you are trying to remember which version of a form went out.

The electronic signature feature is the other piece I'd single out. It lets you sign a document and fax it back without printing a single page, which closes the loop on the most annoying part of dealing with faxed paperwork: receiving a form, printing it, signing it, and finding a way to send it back. Being able to reply, forward or resend a fax to any fax machine means an incoming document can become an outgoing one without starting over.

Around the edges there are conveniences that suggest the developer has watched how faxes actually get used. You can schedule a fax to go out at a set date and time, which helps if the recipient's office only checks the machine during business hours. Failed faxes can be retried automatically. Email notifications can go to as many as five addresses, so a colleague or an assistant can be copied on what arrives and what goes out. The app also supports sending a fax from email, and there is a programmable fax API for teams that want to wire faxing into their own systems.

One detail worth knowing about is how the app handles faxes sent to a human-operated telefax. In that case the person on the other end hears a recorded message explaining that a fax call is coming and asking them to press start. It is a niche touch, but it is the sort of thing that decides whether a fax to an old-fashioned office actually lands.

What it expects from you, and the costs attached

The app is a free download and it offers in-app purchases. Pricing is not laid out, so check the current plans before committing to regular use, especially if you need an inbound number, since receiving faxes depends on having one.

The HIPAA side deserves a careful read rather than a glance. HIPAA compliance is conditional: Fax.Plus requires both a business associate agreement and activated advanced security controls. Those advanced controls sit on the Enterprise plan tier. So compliance is a configuration and a contract, not something the app does by default, and anyone in healthcare should plan for that rather than assume it.

The other trade-off is simply that faxing is what this app does. There is no broader document suite hiding inside it, no attempt to be a general office tool. That focus is a strength if faxing is the job in front of you, and it means the app is unlikely to become the place you keep everything else.

The recent update is modest but useful: a refreshed look across the app and a control for enabling or disabling fax reception whenever you need to. If you keep a number but only want faxes during certain periods, that switch is a sensible addition.

Who this fits

The clearest fit is someone whose work occasionally requires a fax and who has no fax machine, no landline and no desire to acquire either. That covers a lot of small offices, independent professionals and people handling paperwork on behalf of a family member. The combination of camera scanning, cloud imports and an encrypted archive means the whole job can happen on one device.

A second fit is a small team that wants faxing to be shared rather than personal. The email notifications to multiple addresses, the API, the cross-platform nature of the service and the ability to schedule and retry sends all point toward that kind of use. It is the difference between one person sending a fax and a business treating fax as a channel it manages.

A third, narrower fit is anyone in a regulated setting who needs faxed records handled under HIPAA. That path exists, but it runs through the Enterprise tier and a signed agreement, so it is a decision to make deliberately rather than a feature to switch on.

If your fax traffic is heavy and constant, the value of the app will depend heavily on the plan you choose.

A fax line that lives in your pocket

Fax.Plus is a focused tool that does one job thoroughly: it takes faxing off a desk and puts it on a phone. Sending to more than 180 countries, receiving through numbers in over 40, camera scanning with document detection, an encrypted archive, e-signature and scheduled sends add up to a set of features that covers the whole fax workflow rather than just the sending half of it.

Receiving needs a dedicated number, and HIPAA compliance needs advanced controls and a business associate agreement on the Enterprise tier. The app also carries in-app purchases whose details you should check against your own usage. None of those is a flaw in the design; they are the terms of the service.

I'd suggest it to anyone who still has to send or receive the occasional fax and would rather not own equipment for it, and to small teams that want faxing handled in one place with notifications going to the right people. It is a practical answer to a stubbornly persistent piece of office life.

What's new in version 26.0.1

- Fresh new look, more control. This update brings a refreshed experience across the app. You can also now enable or disable fax reception whenever you need to.