SmartFax Review

Pros:

• 30-day free trial period

Cons:

• Only two email addresses can receive faxes.

Conclusion:

SmartFax is a good value service and has low overage rates. SmartFax has local fax numbers in 25 states as well as (866), (877), and (888) toll-free numbers for no extra fee. Faxes sent or recieved with SmartFax have adequate text quality but poor picture quality. SmartFax's customer support is fairly knowledgeable. SmartFax offers a 30-day free trial to test their online fax service.

Fax Number Options

SmartFax offers local numbers in 25 states. When choosing your local number, you can select by both area code and city. They also offer (866), (877), and (888) toll-free numbers are available at no extra charge. SmartFax does not port numbers.

Sending and Receiving Faxes

During testing, SmartFax displayed adequate text quality but poor picture quality on sent/received faxes. SmartFax allows you to attach five documents per fax. You can send each fax to one recipient at a time. You may neither preview a fax before it is sent nor schedule a fax to be sent at a later time than when it was created. Faxes are stored for free for 30 days. Any faxes not deleted after 30 days will be charged five cents per fax per month, which is costly since most online fax services offer free storage. SmartFax offers a blocked/allowed phone call list so that your account isn’t charged for blocked faxes. The service is also Mac-compatible. You may send a fax from an unlimited number of email addresses but receive a fax on only two email addresses.

Pricing

SmartFax charges $6.95 per month to send and receive up to 250 combined pages. This equates to three cents per page, which is typical for many online fax services. The provider charges eight cents per page for any faxes sent or received above your limit of 250. This is a slightly cheaper than the typical overage rates of 10 cents per page over your allotment. SmartFax offers a 30-day free trial period to try out their services.

Customer Support

SmartFax provides email, FAQs, and phone customer support. Phone support is available Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. PST. During testing, we experienced no wait time being connected to a representative and once connected we found the representatives to be fairly knowledgable as they answered all of our test questions correctly.