vFax is Nextiva’s online faxing service. It uses the same platform as their existing voice and call products and combines a straightforward, no-frills user interface with a variety of features. vFax is a reliable, yet surprisingly simple platform that supports a wide range of faxing requirements, all at an affordable price point.
Nextiva vFax is perfect for small businesses that are looking to transition from physical fax machines to a web-based virtual portal. One thing that’s unique to vFax is the ability to integrate existing physical machines with the company’s online service. The time required to learn the platform is minimal thanks to in-depth training resources, and several plans are available, all of which have been designed to fit a variety of different budgets.
What Types of Features Does Nextiva vFax Offer?
While the vFax interface is flexible, it lacks design quality and has a tendency to stutter. Although there are large, clearly labeled icons for searching faxes, sending faxes, adjusting settings and checking billing, the rest of the platform is text-heavy and difficult to use. Sending a fax with Nextiva, however, is a straightforward process. It’s simply a matter of sending an email with the supporting document attached to the Nextiva portal’s outbound fax number.
Users can also send faxes directly from the portal itself by uploading files, provided they don’t exceed limits of 10 documents and 5 MB in total. A variety of file types are supported, including:
- Text files (RTF, TXT, and PDF)
- Image files (TIFF, GIF, PNG, JPEG)
- Microsoft Office files (DOC, XLS, PPT)
- Printer files (PCL, EPS, PS)
Like most other web-based fax services, vFax gives users the ability to view all faxes sent and received and also provides an option for verifying that faxes were transmitted successfully.
Incoming faxes are announced by notification and delivered as PDF files to the user’s email, but subscribers can opt-out of these notifications and PDF reception if they so desire. What’s more, up to five email addresses can be programmed into the system to receive notifications of incoming faxes, which is perfect for team-based environments, and alerts can be sent as SMS messages as well.
vFax offers a variety of options for manipulating fax messages, including the ability to view, download, print, forward, delete, rotate, and even organize messages into a series of folders. Search options are available so that users can sort faxes by the recipient, status, or date.
Data is protected with SSL encryption, and while a personal fax number is dedicated to each account, there are no toll-free or international numbers provided. In addition to users being able to keep their old fax numbers, if desired, Nextiva also provides an option to link existing physical fax machines to the service, which is a one-time fee of $150.
Unfortunately, mobile apps are not available, fax messages are only stored for up to 6 months, and the site itself isn’t responsive. Fax times are often slow as well and can take anywhere between 5 and 20 minutes per fax.
How Much Does Nextiva vFax Cost?
Nextiva vFax offers three plans, each which comes with a 30-day free trial.
- The Single User Plan is $8.95/month if billed monthly, and includes 500 pages. This plan costs $4.95/month if billed annually.
- The Small Business Plan costs $17.95/month if billed monthly, and includes 1000 pages. The price drops to $12.95/month if billed annually.
- The Business Pro Plan costs $34.95/month if billed monthly, and includes 3000 pages. The price drops to $29.95/month if billed annually.
Page limits with all vFax plans can be used for any combination of ingoing and outgoing fax messages, and the company’s overage fee is 3 cents per page is amongst the lowest in the industry.
Does Nextiva vFax Offer Customer Support?
Nextiva vFax offers phone and email support, as well as a ticket-based service and a highly responsive live chat. The company’s customer service team is available 24/7, and extremely knowledgeable about the platform itself. A knowledge-base is also available, which provides quick-and-easy solutions to the most common problems users face.
