What Is Sfax?
Sfax is an online fax service that lets you send, receive, organize and annotate faxes on desktop and mobile. The service is HIPAA compliant, with high-level encryption and audit trails that ensure your business remains within legal guidelines when handling sensitive documents.
Within the application’s fax inbox, organize faxes into folders and subfolders that you can search and sort by sender or date. You can annotate and edit documents directly within the app with text boxes and virtual signatures. Each account has a contact list where you can upload and share contacts. The Sfax API, available on high-tier plans, integrates faxing into your custom applications and workflows.
Featured Partners
1
eFax
No
$5 for the first month
$5 for the first month (then $18.99 per month)
2
Fax.Plus
$6.99 per month (on an annual basis)
Yes
Yes
3
Documo
Sandbox Environment Testing
10% Off First Month or Annual Plan -- "F1NCP"
Yes
Sfax Key Features
The Sfax desktop and mobile apps center around a fax inbox. Compose new faxes, add contacts, customize your cover page and edit faxes—all directly within the app.
Here’s a closer look at Sfax’s features:
Send and Receive Virtual Faxes
Use Sfax to quickly and easily send and receive faxes from the desktop or mobile app. Click “Compose Fax” from the fax inbox to send a fax. You can upload files and documents directly into Sfax or choose from the ones you’ve already uploaded. Select a contact from the list or enter their number, then choose or create a cover page. Finally, organize the order of pages in the document and send it.
Receiving faxes is even easier. Inbound faxes appear in your fax inbox, where they remain archived.
The Sfax inbox offers these one-click tools to handle inbound faxes:
- Reply
- Forward
- Delete
- Move
- Export
- Filter
The Sfax inbox makes it easy to manage and view inbound faxes
Cover Page Customization
You can use Sfax to create, share and reuse cover pages for any faxes. Choose from several cover page templates to streamline the creation process. Teammates can share cover pages with each other and build a bank of cover pages to reuse.
Creating fax cover pages can be tedious and time-consuming, so having templates and a bank of reusable cover pages directly within your vFax app can save your company a lot of time.
Organize Faxes
Inbound faxes are organized by date in the fax inbox, similar to an email interface. You also have the following tabs: Drafts, Outbox for faxes in the process of sending, Sent, Failed and Trash.
Users can organize faxes into custom folders and subfolders. For example, a healthcare company may separate faxes into folders such as Health Records, Medical Records, Insurance Information and Billing Information. Use drag-and-drop controls to move faxes and folders, and empty folders into the trash with one click. Folders make it easier to sort documents into relevant categories and retrieve faxes later.
Create folders and subfolders to organize faxes you’ve received
Annotations and Virtual Signatures
You can edit inbound, outbound and saved faxes directly within the Sfax app on desktop or mobile. Change the order of pages within a document, delete particular pages, rotate documents, virtually sign faxes or draw directly on a fax.
Having these editing tools directly within the application makes it easy to move documents quickly through the pipeline. For example, when you receive a fax, you can sign and forward it to another almost instantly. You can upload documents, edit them in-app and send them as faxes.
Edit faxes with the following drawing tools.
- Rotate: Rotate a document or page by any angle.
- Change the order: Drag, drop or delete pages to adjust their order in the document.
- Text box: Add a rectangular or circular text box anywhere in the faxed document. Customize the font, size and color of your text. Add borders or fill in the text box to block out select parts of the document.
- Signature: Save a bank of signatures to drag and drop anywhere on a document.
- Objects: Add checkmarks, circles, Xs, signature blocks, arrows and stamps anywhere with drag-and-drop formatting.
Annotate faxes with signatures, text boxes and stamps
HIPAA Compliance and Security
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a set of guidelines that ensures companies appropriately handle sensitive information. All faxing through Sfax is HIPAA compliant, so your company doesn’t have to worry about legal requirements and regulations—you can simply send and receive documents like emails.
Sfax uses AES 256-bit encryption, the strongest available, for all faxes. The service uses the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol to transmit data over the internet, providing another layer of security. Even further, each user has an individual sign-on and identification.
Sfax archives your company’s fax history, with transmission tracking and patient identifiers for each document sent and received. This keeps your records organized for audit purposes and formal reviews, regardless of industry.
Contact Management
Each Sfax account includes a contact book that organizes shared and individual contacts such as clients, customers or patients. When creating a new contact, Sfax prompts you to enter relevant details: the party’s fax number, name, organization, position, email, phone number and description.
Build a contact list to easily add recipients for outbound faxes
Admin Features and Reports
Administrators can access historical records of all faxes sent, monitoring usage over time. You can search through faxes by sender, date or keyword. You can also generate and print reports for any time period, including months and years, directly from the report.
Administrators also have the following controls.
- Account controls: Update cover page information including your company name, phone number and address. This information syncs with the cover pages that attach to your faxes.
- Numbers: Assign staff members to your phone numbers, including strictly inbound and outbound faxing privileges. Sfax offers toll-free and local numbers. Each account sign-up includes a toll-free number, and administrators can request additional numbers for a fee.
Administrators can manage the account’s phone numbers, user permissions and notifications
What Sets Sfax Apart?
Sfax offers a strong balance of the features and privacy we’d want from a virtual faxing platform: HIPAA compliance, desktop and mobile apps, organization options, native annotation tools and an API for integrations. While some vFax alternatives restrict the number of staff sharing an account, Sfax supports unlimited users with a simple and intuitive interface. It takes just a few minutes to get the hang of the functionality.
This virtual faxing software works best for teams of any size seeking HIPAA-compliant faxing with document annotation and virtual signatures.
Sfax Pricing
| Standard | Plus | Contender | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price (per account) | $37 per month | $62 per month | $125 per month | Custom pricing |
| Pages (per month) | 350 | 700 | 1,500 | 2,500-plus |
| Number of Users | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Annotation Tools | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Toll-Free Number | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| API Available | No | No | Yes | Yes |
With a rate of roughly 10 cents per faxed page, Sfax’s pricing is average for HIPAA-compliant virtual faxing software. Some alternative providers offer cheaper monthly rates, but these systems generally aren’t HIPAA compliant and omit useful features that Sfax has—particularly annotation tools, a mobile app or API functionality.
Companies that don’t need HIPAA compliance or just plan to store and fax documents—without annotation and virtual signatures—can find better value with a cheaper competitor, such as Nextiva or MyFax. However, teams that need HIPAA compliance, or those who want to annotate faxed documents, will find solid value with Sfax.
Sfax vs. Top Alternatives
| Sfax | eFax | MyFax | Nextiva vFax | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating |    | | | |
| Price (per month) | $37.00 for 350 pages to $125.00 for 1,500 pages | $18.99 for 170 pages to $149.99 for 2,000 pages | $12.00 for 100 pages to $45.00 for 600 pages | $9.95 for 500 pages to $18.95 for 1,000 pages |
| Phone Number Offerings | Local and toll-free | Local, toll-free, international | Local and toll-free | Local and toll-free |
| HIPAA Compliance | Yes | Yes | No | $99 monthly for 3,000 HIPAA-compliant faxes |
| API Available | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Fax Annotation | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Fax From Email | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Learn More | - | - | - | |
| Read Reviews | - | - |
Sfax vs. eFax
Sfax and eFax both offer HIPAA compliance across all plans, and their pricing is comparable at roughly 10 cents per fax page. However, eFax has a few notable advantages over Sfax. It offers not only local and toll-free fax numbers but also international numbers. While they require an add-on cost, international numbers enable your business to establish a local presence for clients or partners in other countries. It also syncs faxing with your email inbox, enabling eFax users to conveniently manage faxes and emails in one familiar place.
Sfax’s only advantage over eFax is that Sfax plans support unlimited users, while each eFax plan has a five-user limit. While eFax provides more convenient faxing software and works better for teams that do business internationally, Sfax is better for large teams that want more than five users to have access to faxing.
Sfax vs. MyFax
Sfax and MyFax have similar pricing rates and similar organizational tools, and both platforms offer mobile apps. However, MyFax is not HIPAA compliant and doesn’t include annotation tools—two key features that give Sfax an advantage. MyFax’s only advantage is that it syncs email and fax, enabling you to send faxes directly from your email inbox. However, eFax includes this same email feature, HIPAA compliance and annotations.
Companies requiring HIPAA-compliant faxing and those wanting document annotations should opt for Sfax over MyFax.
Sfax vs. Nextiva vFax
While Nextiva is best known as a VoIP phone system, the provider also offers virtual faxing services as an add-on to the VoIP package or on its own. Nextiva’s vFax offerings start at $9.95 monthly for 500 faxed pages, making it much cheaper than Sfax. Even more, adding vFax to the Nextiva phone system costs an additional $14.95, but this setup enables unlimited faxing for a total cost of $44.95 per month. For teams seeking unlimited faxing or faxing several thousand faxes per month without HIPAA compliance, Nextiva’s unlimited option is very cost-effective.
However, most of Nextiva’s faxing plans are not HIPAA compliant. The provider only offers HIPAA compliance for plans with over 3,000 faxes per month. Still, these plans begin at $99 monthly per account, making them a better value than Sfax’s Contender plan, which is $125 monthly for 1,500 faxed pages.
Featured Partners
1
eFax
No
$5 for the first month
$5 for the first month (then $18.99 per month)
2
Fax.Plus
$6.99 per month (on an annual basis)
Yes
Yes
3
Documo
Sandbox Environment Testing
10% Off First Month or Annual Plan -- "F1NCP"
Yes
Our Expert Opinion
Sfax is an intuitive and simple vFax solution with good value for its HIPAA compliance and annotation tools. However, the provider’s reputation has suffered due to limited customer service availability.
Ease of Use
Sfax is simple and user-friendly on desktop and mobile. The interface centers around the fax inbox, which feels similar to an email inbox. Similarly, folders and subfolders feel intuitive—just like organizational tools on your laptop. The drag-and-drop annotation tools are simple to use as they consist of basic text boxes and stamps.
Sending outbound faxes also feels intuitive because the Sfax software walks you through each step to ensure you include everything.
Value
For companies that need HIPAA-compliant faxing and document annotation in one place, Sfax’s prices are as reasonable as you will find with any alternative. Some other providers, such as Nextiva, offer cheaper rates per page but often omit key features that Sfax has, such as HIPAA compliance or annotation.
Customer Service and Support
You can contact Sfax for customer support by phone or contact form. It provides live service over the phone during normal working hours from Monday to Friday. Its website has a Contact Us page where you can submit a form with your email address and phone number to receive a callback.
Further, the Sfax website has a knowledge base with articles and guides providing self-service on multiple topics: basics, onboarding, organization, developer support and billing help.
Reputation
On review sites such as Trustpilot and TrustRadius, Sfax users have mixed impressions that seem to skew negative. Reviewers find the software’s interface lackluster and outdated and are frustrated with Sfax’s limited customer service hours. On the other hand, some users appreciate the fact that Sfax provides thorough tracking records to monitor where each fax ends up. Compared to other providers, Sfax doesn’t have many reviews on these sites.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How does Sfax work?
Sfax lets you send and receive virtual faxes over the internet using a desktop or mobile app. You can upload documents, organize them into folders, annotate and send them—all within the Sfax platform.
Is Sfax HIPAA compliant?
Yes, all Sfax plans are HIPAA compliant.
What does Sfax charge?
Sfax charges $37 for 350 faxed pages per month, with overage costs of roughly 10 cents per page. These rates are about average for HIPAA-compliant virtual faxing.
How do I get a secure fax line?
You can get a secure fax line by signing up with a virtual fax provider, such as Sfax. All faxes are encrypted and protected by verified sign-in.
Which is better: eFax or Sfax?
Sfax and eFax offer similar pricing, HIPAA compliance and virtual faxing features such as annotation. Sfax is better for companies that want to share access among over five users, while eFax is better for companies that want to integrate fax with an email account.
