HelloFax Replaces Your Fax Machine And Has Google Drive, Dropbox, And Box Integration

Faxing should be phased out. Until then, HelloFax modernizes and simplifies the technology. We all know what faxing is and how it works and for those of us without a fax machine we wish businesses would embrace email for receiving documents. Even if they did that you would need a way to fill out the form, possibly sign it, and then scan it to be able to email it. Both of these issues are addressed.

HelloFax allows you to upload a digital file and fill out the form and sign it directly from the website. They support the files in the follow formats; doc, docx, pdf, tif, tiff, ppsx, ppt, pptx, tif, tiff, jpg, jpeg, png, xls, xlsx, txt, and gif.

The interface is simple. After uploading you can add text in any location. This allows you to fill out any form and even add additional notes as you see fit. For the signature you can create it with your mouse or touchpad. If you have trouble doing that, as I do, you can sign a piece of paper to take a picture and upload the photo. You can adjust the contrast and the signature gets added in a way that it looks like you signed directly on the paper; it does not look like a picture is pasted on a form. The signature can be saved for future use.

A cover page is there if you want to use one and it automatically determines how many pages you are faxing. A big plus is my book is that they do not modify the document being faxed or send additional pages to advertise their service. The cover page does say "powered by hellofax.com" which is fine, especially since you do not need to use the cover page option.

Instead of faxing you can email your document. I love this as a cloud computing solution to completing and signing forms and not needing a scanner. They allow you to send 20 pages free with no limit on email; no credit card required on signup. I need to use a fax machine once or twice a year so this limit is not an issue. If you need to use it more and require an incoming fax number you can purchase one of their plans.

I heard about the service before, but first used it a couple days ago and was very impressed with how easy it was to use. You can check your account for the status of the fax you sent to make sure it went through and a copy, inclusive of the cover page, is emailed to you for your records. Give virtual faxing a try by going to HelloFax.com.

Update August 3, 2011 - HelloFax has integrated with Dropbox so that all your faxes, documents, and signed emails are automatically saved.

Update February 2, 2012 - Integration has been expanded for Dropbox, and added for Box, to allow you to fax any document directly from your cloud storage account. In addition, you can now import your contacts from Yahoo! and Gmail.

Update April 24, 2012 - HelloFax can now send faxes directly from Google Drive. Simply set up your account and install the Google Chrome extension. The tight integration will store your incoming, as well as outgoing, faxes in a folder for safe keeping. They are offering great perks in celebration of the new functionality! Once you integrate you will get 50 faxes per month in 2012 and unlimited digital signatures until the end of the year as well as a chance to win a MacBook and 1 TB of Google Drive space.