MyFax Gets iPhone Client

The new MyFax iPhone app lets subscribers to the online fax service receive faxes on their smartphones directly rather than as e-mail attachments.MyFax, in business since 1997, is a service that lets subscribers send and receive faxes online, eliminating the need for a dedicated fax machine. For $10/month or $110/year, a user can send 100 and receive 200 pages per month; $40/month pays for sending and receiving 400 pages/month. The system works via e-mail: for sending, the destination phone number is the address, the subject line becomes the fax header, the message body goes on the cover page, and any attachments make up the body of the fax. Upon signup, a subscriber receives their own fax number to give to others. Incoming faxes arrive as e-mails with PDF or TIFF attachments.

That's also the way MyFax works on a smartphone without an app: the subscriber receives an e-mail and opens the attachment. But according to marketing manager Sam Wehbe, "We created the app based on customer requests. The MyFax app is independent of e-mail, so you don't have to search through all your messages for a fax. You just download incoming faxes into a central area."

Users can attach an incoming fax to an e-mail to forward it, but so far the app doesn't have direct sending capabilities. But "this app is the first step in a very long mobile strategy," says Wehbe. "We will ad sending a fax by the end of this year." The company also expects to have an iPad version by the end of the year, and is working on BlackBerry and Android versions as well.

MyFax is available for free from the iTunes Store. (It requires a MyFax account too, of course.)