FAX - Send Fax from Phone

Review by eFreeware

FAX is an Android app from Dingtone Phone, listed in the Business category, that turns a phone into a fax machine. You send documents to a fax number without owning any hardware, and the app also handles incoming faxes. It has been downloaded more than 500,000 times and holds a 4.4 average from 4,505 ratings.

The appeal is straightforward. Faxing still turns up in paperwork: signed forms for an office, a document for a clinic, a page a landlord or agency insists on receiving by fax. If you only need to send something now and then, buying and maintaining a fax machine makes little sense, and a phone that can scan, sign and send a page is the easier route.

The app is free to download and shows no ads, but it sells subscription plans for sending and for receiving. That mix is worth understanding before you install, because the parts you actually pay for are the parts that move a document in or out.

Who the phone-as-fax-machine approach suits

I'd expect this to fit people who deal with faxes as an occasional chore rather than a daily routine. If a form has to reach a number that only accepts fax, and you have the page on your phone or in the cloud, the app covers the whole job: scan or import, adjust, send, then watch for confirmation that it arrived.

It also suits anyone who works away from a fixed desk. A contractor photographing a signed estimate on site, a tenant sending a lease page from home, a small business owner handling a supplier form between appointments: these are the situations where a phone is already the device in hand, and a separate machine would be one more thing to own.

The receiving side widens that audience. The developer added incoming faxes, and getting a fax number requires a subscription to the corresponding plan. Someone who needs a number that can accept documents, rather than only send them, is looking at the receive plans specifically.

What the app is built around is faxing, not general document management. It handles the sending and receiving of pages, with the editing and signing tools needed to get a document ready. Readers who want a broad office suite should judge it on that narrower job.

Getting a document into the app

There are several ways to create a fax. The camera can scan a page and turn it into a PDF, which is the route for paper you have in front of you. You can also pull documents from the phone's storage or from cloud storage, with Google Drive and Dropbox named as sources, and import files from other apps.

Photos from the library work as fax content too, so a picture of a receipt or a handwritten note can go out without being retyped. The app accepts office documents, PDF, JPG and PNG files, which covers most of what people actually need to send.

Once the material is in, the app lets you combine several files into a single fax, add a cover page and preview the result before it goes. Editing tools are there to improve how the pages look. A contact can be chosen from the address book so a number does not have to be typed in each time.

Signing is handled inside the app as well. You can sign a document and send it back without printing it first, which removes the print-sign-scan loop that usually makes a fax feel like a chore. For anyone who receives a form, signs it and returns it, that is the part that saves the most effort.

Sending, receiving and knowing what happened

Faxes go out from the phone to any mobile or landline number, according to the developer, and the service is pitched as working anytime and anywhere, with no fax machine involved. The same service handles incoming faxes once you have a number for them.

Delivery is not left to guesswork. The app tracks the status of each fax and notifies you when it has been sent and when it has been delivered. For anything time-sensitive, such as a form with a deadline, that notification is the difference between assuming it went through and knowing it did.

The recent update added the receiving function and fixed several crashes, so incoming faxes are a newer part of the app than outgoing ones. Anyone whose main need is to receive should weigh that in their decision.

The workflow the app describes is self-contained: create or import, edit and preview, send, then track. Nothing in that chain requires a printer, a scanner or a landline, which is the point of the whole approach.

What the plans cost

The download is free, the app carries no ads, and purchases are made inside it. The developer lists four subscription plans, and sending costs US$ 19.99 per month or US$ 89.99 per year.

Those are separate plans for separate jobs, so the yearly sending option works out cheaper than paying monthly across a year, and the same is true on the receiving side. If your faxing is steady rather than occasional, the annual rate is the one to compare against whatever a local fax service or a shop charges per page.

Someone who needs both to send and to receive is looking at two subscriptions rather than one, which is the main cost consideration here. The app is free to install.

The developer also points to a privacy policy and terms of use, and gives a support email address for questions. Those are the usual housekeeping details for a service that handles documents you may not want shared.

How it compares with the alternatives

The obvious comparison is a physical fax machine. That route means buying hardware, keeping a phone line for it and dealing with paper, toner and a device that sits unused most of the year. A phone app removes all of that, at the cost of a subscription rather than a one-time purchase.

The other comparison is a general online fax service, the sort you use from a computer. Those often suit a desk-based workflow with a scanner nearby and a monthly allowance of pages. This app is built around the phone, which is an advantage when the document starts as a photo or already lives in cloud storage you can reach from the handset.

There is also the option of a nearby shop or office that faxes for you. That works for a one-off, but it means traveling with the document and handing it to someone else, and it does not help at all when a fax arrives for you.

Against those options, the app's case rests on convenience and on the phone being the device you already carry. The trade-off is the recurring cost, and the fact that receiving needs its own plan.

A workable fax line for people who fax rarely

FAX does one job and does it without hardware: it sends documents from an Android phone, receives them when you hold a receiving plan, and tells you when each one lands. The scanning, importing, merging, signing and tracking tools cover the steps that normally make faxing awkward, and the free download with no ads keeps the entry point low.

The cost is the deciding factor. Sending and receiving are sold separately, at US$ 19.99 or US$ 89.99 a year for sending and US$ 24.99 or US$ 99.99 a year for receiving, so the app is aimed at people who fax regularly enough that a yearly plan works out cheaper than paying per page. For a single form once a year, the math is harder to justify.

I'd point it at freelancers, small business owners, tenants and anyone handling paperwork away from a desk, especially those who already keep documents in cloud storage or photograph them as they go. If your faxing is routine and both directions matter, the plans are worth pricing against your current arrangement before you commit.

What's new in version 1.4.7

To provide a better fax experience, we've made the following updates: * Added the function of receiving faxes. From now on, you can get a fax number by subscribing to the corresponding plan to receive faxes. * Fixed several crash bugs.