Frequently asked questions: sending a fax

Nothing simpler — two clicks and it is done. Go to the home page, enter your details, those of the recipient and the file you want to send, then click the send button.

Faxes sent from the platform use the fine, high-resolution mode. That resolution is 204 × 196 dots per inch, the highest standard of the Group 3 fax protocol.

EnvoiFaxGratuit accepts PDF files up to 10 MB. PDF guarantees that the layout your recipient receives is exactly the one in your original document, whatever machine receives it.

Allow about five minutes between confirming your send and the document reaching your recipient. That time varies with the number of connected users and the availability of the recipient's line. A notification is emailed to you.

The service accepts a PDF file of up to 10 MB. Beyond that, the document is refused before any dialling takes place. A text PDF rarely crosses that limit; it is colour scans that exceed it, and converting them to black and white almost always suffices.

A sixty-second countdown separates the form submission from the actual transmission. That delay leaves time to spot a wrong number or a wrong attachment, and it smooths the load on the lines. It is inherited from how the service has always worked.

The file is accepted, but colour does not survive transmission: a fax carries only black or white, with nothing in between. Light fills and grey text vanish in the conversion. Prepare the document in hard black on white before sending.

The form has a single recipient number: each transmission targets one machine. To reach several correspondents, repeat the operation, within the limit of two faxes a day. No broadcast feature is offered.

As long as the sixty-second countdown has not elapsed, leaving the page interrupts the procedure. After that, the call is under way and the transmission can no longer be stopped: the document goes to the receiving machine.

Ten-digit French fax numbers starting with 01, 02, 03, 04, 05 or 09 are accepted. Premium-rate and short numbers are excluded. See the list of available countries for the international destinations covered.

The ten digits are enough. Spaces, dots and dashes are accepted and stripped automatically before dialling. Only the digit sequence counts: a number written 01 23 45 67 89 or 0123456789 is handled in exactly the same way.

No. Numbers starting with 06, 07 and 08 are refused by the form. A mobile phone has no equipment able to answer the fax protocol: the call would connect without a single page being received.

Four causes dominate: a malformed number, a remote machine that is no longer a fax, a document refused before the call, or a recipient line converted to voice over IP. The first three are fixed on the sending side; the last is beyond the sender.

From a browser, yes: no analogue device is involved on the sending side. It is the receiving end that can cause trouble, if a fax machine is wired to a router there: voice compression then distorts the modem tones and breaks the negotiation.

The transmission report establishes that an identified machine answered, accepted and acknowledged a number of pages at a given time. It proves neither the content of those pages nor their being read. It is a starting point of proof, weighed by the court with the rest of the file.

The document leaves the browser over an encrypted link. Transmission then uses the switched telephone network, a closed channel: the file rests on no intermediate mail server, unlike with an email-to-fax gateway.

EnvoiFaxGratuit guarantees that all its services are entirely free. Every service is 100% free and secure. No card details, no subscription and no sign-up are required to send a fax from the site.

Following a flood of requests on our servers and abuse by some users, we had to introduce a quota on 07/02/2012. Sending is now limited to two faxes a day. This is what lets us keep the quality of service high.

If the two-a-day quota is not enough for you, do get in touch — we will look at your request as quickly as we can.

A word about us: most of us are computer science students. We like taking our passion as far as it goes, and that means putting our best tools at your disposal, free of charge.

No, the service only sends. Receiving requires an allocated number kept reachable at all times, hence an account and billing, which would contradict being free and registration-free. That calls for a virtual number from a carrier or a machine on an analogue line.

The telephone lines and the hosting are funded by users' donations. No advertising network, no subscription and no data resale enter the model. The limit of two faxes a day exists precisely so that this funding is enough.

An account would mean storing credentials and tying every transmission to a person. The service does without: only an email address is asked for, to return the delivery receipt. The less data collected, the less data to protect.