Digital fax isn't new and it isn't complicated. You get a fax number, you send and receive documents over the internet instead of a copper line, and the machine in the corner goes away. The reason people overbuy is providers turn it into a sales pitch instead of a list of what you actually get. Here's the honest version.
We're VoIP International, an operator headquartered in Ocoee, Florida. We run vFAX for medical practices, law firms, lenders, and any business that still has to fax. Here's what we sell, what it costs, and when it's the right fit.
What you actually get
- A fax number. Keep your existing one (port for $15) or get a new one in any area code.
- Send and receive from email. PDFs in and out, attachment-based, no plug-in needed.
- Web portal. Drag-and-drop sending, searchable inbox, archived history.
- Multi-user accounts. Separate logins for front desk, billing, clinical, with access controls.
- Delivery confirmations. Retry on busy. Notification on completion.
- Encryption in transit and at rest. BAA available for HIPAA.
- Cover sheet templates so your branding goes out on every outbound.
- Optional adapter if you want to keep your existing fax machine on the new service.
What it costs
- vFAX Basic — $25/mo. One number, basic page bucket, email and portal access.
- vFAX Standard — $35/mo. Higher pages, multi-user.
- vFAX Pro — $49/mo. Highest page allotment, API access for EHR or practice management integration.
Compared to a copper fax line ($40 to $60 per month) plus a machine, toner, paper, and staff time, the math favors digital in the first month. Full numbers on pricing.
How to pick the right tier
Most providers want you on the highest plan. We want you on the right one. The page allowance differences are the part to focus on. Approximate guidance:
- Under 200 pages a month, mostly outbound: Basic.
- 200 to 600 pages, mixed inbound and outbound, multi-user office: Standard.
- 600 pages or more, or you need an API to push faxes into an EHR or PMS: Pro.
If you don't know your volume, pull a month of records from your existing fax service or print log from your copier. That's the number to size on. We'll help you read it.
Overage rates matter as much as the base price
The trap with low-tier plans isn't the monthly price — it's the per-page rate over the allotment. A $25 plan with a 150-page bucket and a $0.10 overage rate gets ugly fast if you actually send 400 pages. A $35 plan with a 600-page bucket usually ends up cheaper at moderate volume. Look at the worked example before you sign.
HIPAA and security, in plain terms
For a healthcare or dental practice, the fax system processes PHI. That requires a Business Associate Agreement and infrastructure with encryption, access controls, and an audit log. We sign the BAA. Documents are encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest. Every send, receive, and view is logged with timestamp and user.
What an auditor actually looks at:
- Is the BAA signed and on file?
- Is encryption documented end-to-end?
- Is access role-based, with named users?
- Is the audit log retained and retrievable?
- Are old documents purged on a documented schedule?
We can produce evidence for each. If your provider can't, that's a problem worth fixing before your next audit.
If phone and fax both need to be HIPAA-clean, look at our healthcare phone system or dental phone system — HIPAA bundle is $49/mo on top of user seats. Wellness clinics: see wellness clinic phone system.
Legal and financial considerations
Outside healthcare, audit trail and chain-of-custody are the headline features. Legal firms use the timestamped delivery confirmation in discovery and to prove service of process. Lenders use it to document signed disclosure delivery for compliance with TILA and RESPA. Insurance offices use it for claims correspondence with regulators. The security model is the same; the regulatory framework is different. Same product, different reasons to want it.
When digital fax is the right call
- You receive faxes (referrals, insurance, court filings, lender packages) and can't stop.
- The machine is breaking or eating budget in supplies and a dedicated line.
- Staff is wasting time walking paper to a desk or scanning it back in.
- You need an audit trail you can actually pull up.
- You're consolidating multiple offices onto one fax workflow.
- Your EHR or PMS supports cloud fax integration and you can stop manually attaching documents.
- You're moving the practice to remote or hybrid and the machine doesn't move with you.
When to skip it
If your fax volume is one or two pages a month, a free internet fax service might cover you. We don't try to sell you something you don't need. If you're sending hundreds of pages a month, especially with PHI or signed legal documents, the paid service pays for itself in reliability and audit alone.
What we'd recommend if you're at the low end
If you're truly at one or two pages a month and you don't need a BAA, you could probably use a free or near-free service for years. The conversion point is when you start needing the audit trail, the multi-user access, or the EHR integration. Those are the features that change the math.
Three setups we run most
Solo practice or small firm
Basic plan, port the existing number, two logins (provider and admin), email-to-fax for sending. Total cost: $25 plus a one-time $15 port. Cancellation of the prior copper line is on you.
Mid-size practice
Standard plan, role-based access for 5 to 12 users, separate inbound queues for billing vs clinical, BAA signed, often paired with our phone service. Setup takes a week including the port. We handle the configuration; you handle telling staff which inbox is theirs.
EHR-integrated practice or document-heavy firm
Pro plan, API integration so inbound faxes are auto-routed to the right chart or matter, outbound faxes triggered from inside the EHR or DMS. Requires coordination with your EHR vendor. We've done this with most of the major systems.
Pairing with phone service
Most customers run vFAX alongside our phone service. One account, one bill, same support team. If you have a PBX you want to keep, our SIP trunking can carry voice at $15 per channel while vFAX handles fax separately.
The bundling math
A 10-person medical practice on phone service Pro at $32 (HIPAA add-on at $49) and vFAX Power Plus at $49: $32 * 10 + $49 + $49 = $418/month. Compared to a hosted PBX from a national reseller plus a separate fax-to-email service plus a still-attached copper fax line, customers we move from that setup typically save $200 to $600/month. Larger practices save more.
Common mistakes buyers make
- Buying on price alone. Cheapest tier with low page bucket costs more after overages. Check the per-page rate.
- Skipping the BAA conversation. Get it signed before going live.
- Putting one person in charge of the inbox. They go on vacation, faxes pile up. Use shared access.
- Not setting up retention policies. Decide how long faxes are kept, then document it.
- Canceling the old fax line too early. Wait until you've confirmed two consecutive days of clean inbound on the new service.
- Forgetting cover sheets. Every outbound should identify the practice or firm.
- Whitelisting the wrong sender. Make sure your spam filter recognizes the vFAX sender address, not just the domain.
- Not testing the EHR integration end-to-end before cutover. Send a test fax to yourself and verify it routes correctly.
What to ask a fax provider
- Are you the operator running the platform?
- What's your published page allowance, and per-page rate over it?
- Do you sign a BAA at no charge?
- What's the porting fee and timeline?
- Can I run a parallel temporary number during the port?
- Who answers when something breaks?
- What's your retention default, and can I customize?
- Do you have an API or webhook for my EHR or document system?
- What's your stance on cancellation — can I leave and take my numbers?
What we don't do
We don't offer a free tier that becomes paid in three months without warning. We don't bundle fax with junk add-ons to inflate the bill. We don't make you sign a multi-year contract to lock in a per-month rate. The pricing on this page is the pricing. We don't sell fax broadcasting for marketing — that's a different product with different rules under TCPA.
Switching: what the timeline actually looks like
Customers want to know how long it takes from "sign up" to "old machine in the closet." A realistic timeline:
- Day 1: You sign up, send us your current fax bill, sign the LOA.
- Day 2: We provision a temporary fax number for testing and send you portal credentials.
- Day 2 to 5: Train staff on email and portal workflow using the temp number. Test sending and receiving.
- Day 7 to 14: Port window with the losing carrier. We coordinate.
- Port date: Existing number swings over. Inbound starts hitting vFAX automatically.
- Day after port: Cancel the copper line with the legacy carrier. Pull the old machine if you're not using the adapter option.
Total elapsed time: 7 to 14 business days for a typical port, occasionally longer if the losing carrier drags. No missed faxes during the transition because the existing number stays on the legacy service until the port confirms.
Cancellation policy, in plain terms
You can cancel any time. No contract minimums on standard plans. If you want to keep the fax number, you port it out to your next provider — we'll release it the same way any compliant operator does. If you don't want the number anymore, we'll deactivate it. No cancellation fees as a revenue stream. The published price is the price; if you leave, the bill stops.
What "operator-not-reseller" actually means for fax
The cloud fax space has three layers: operators who own the underlying infrastructure (we're one), resellers who white-label one of those operators, and integrators who build dashboards on top of either. Customers usually can't tell which they're buying from until something goes wrong.
It matters most in three situations: a port that's stuck (we escalate to the losing carrier directly, resellers escalate through their upstream), a delivery failure (we have the logs in-house, resellers ask their upstream for them), and a compliance question during an audit (we can sign the BAA covering the whole stack because we operate it).
If you're comparing vFAX vendors, ask whether they own the platform. Some honest vendors will tell you no — and that's fine for some use cases. For regulated industries with audit exposure, it's worth knowing the difference.
Switching from another cloud fax provider
Some customers come to us not from a physical fax machine, but from another cloud fax service that disappointed them. The reasons are usually one of:
- Support disappeared after the initial sale. Calls go to voicemail; tickets sit for days.
- Surprise rate hikes mid-contract.
- The provider got acquired and the service quality dropped.
- BAA renewal got harder than it should have been.
- The integration they promised never got built.
Switching from one cloud fax provider to another is mechanically the same as switching from copper: you port the number, you cut over the workflow. The only difference is the old provider probably won't fight the port as hard as a legacy carrier sometimes does, because cloud fax providers tend to handle ports more cleanly. The whole transition usually takes a week.
One more piece: cover sheets and branding
Every outbound fax should identify the sender. We provide cover sheet templates you can customize with your practice or firm's branding, contact info, and confidentiality language. For HIPAA, the confidentiality footer is standard. For legal, the retention and privilege language is configurable. Set it once during onboarding; every outbound fax uses it.
A real-world cost breakdown
A 6-person law firm in central Florida. Before us: copper fax line at $54/month, multi-function copier under maintenance contract (fax was one of its functions), no audit trail beyond what the copier's internal log showed. Staff scanning inbound faxes into the case management system: about 3 hours/week, $3,000/year. Total annual cost: about $4,000.
After: vFAX Standard at $35/month = $420/year. API integration with the case management system handles inbound routing. Cover sheets standardized. Audit trail meets discovery requirements for the kind of documents the firm sends. Annual savings: about $3,500, plus the qualitative win of never missing a court filing because the machine jammed at 4:50 p.m.
Where to start
Send us your current fax number, your page volume, and whether you need HIPAA. We'll quote and port — usually live within a week. Look at pricing, our FAQ, or get started. Or contact us and a person from our Ocoee office will follow up. Background on us: about.