An eFax alternative: $2.99 a fax, no subscription.
HelpMeFax charges one flat price per fax, $2.99 for 1–5 pages to any US or Canadian number, with no subscription. eFax sells a monthly plan with a page allowance; HelpMeFax bills only the faxes you actually send.
Send and receive faxes from your browser, encrypted, with a delivery receipt on every fax and a dedicated number if you want one. The account is free and asks for no card; you pay only when you send.
Updated October 2026
| What | HelpMeFax | eFax |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $2.99 per fax (1–5 pages) | Monthly plan |
| Monthly fee | None | Required |
| Contract | None; plans are month to month | Monthly or annual |
| HIPAA BAA | Free, signed online | See their site |
If you don't fax every day, you shouldn't pay every month.
eFax is a fine product if you are a high-volume sender. Most people are not: they send a few faxes a month, usually around specific events such as a closing, a court filing, a referral or an insurance form. Paying a monthly subscription with a page allowance for a service you barely use is how subscription fatigue happens. HelpMeFax was built for everyone in between, including frequent senders who simply prefer one flat price per fax.
If you do fax every day, the optional plans are month to month with no contract: Starter ($10 a month, 10% off every fax), Professional ($25 a month, 20% off, one dedicated number included) and Enterprise ($99 a month, 30% off, five numbers included). Every plan pays the same per-fax prices, minus its discount.
Every fax gets its own status page.
After you send, the fax has a page that refreshes itself while it is queued and sending, then reads Delivered, or tells you plainly that it could not deliver. A delivery email follows, and the fax stays in your history with its cost and a transmission log.
- Plain-language status: Queued, Sending, Delivered or Couldn’t deliver.
- A delivery email with the recipient, page count and time, on by default.
- Every fax kept in your history with pages, cost and a per-attempt transmission log.
eFax vs HelpMeFax: what one fax costs
On HelpMeFax a fax costs one flat price by page count, whether it is your first this year or your fortieth this week. eFax prices a monthly subscription that includes a page allowance, so the cost of any single fax depends on the plan you are on and how much of the allowance you have used.
| Fax length | HelpMeFax | eFax |
|---|---|---|
| 1–5 pages | $2.99 per fax | Monthly subscription; see their pricing page |
| 6–10 pages | $4.99 per fax | Drawn from the plan’s monthly page allowance |
| 11–25 pages | $8.99 per fax | Drawn from the plan’s monthly page allowance |
| 26–50 pages | $14.99 per fax | Drawn from the plan’s monthly page allowance |
| 51–100 pages | $24.99 per fax | Drawn from the plan’s monthly page allowance |
| 101+ pages | $0.15 per page; $24.99 minimum | Per-page overage once the allowance is used |
| Monthly fee | None: no subscription | Required; see their pricing page |
HelpMeFax rates are for any US or Canadian number. International faxes to 14 destinations are $5.99 for 1–5 pages, $9.99 for 6–10, $17.99 for 11–25 and $29.99 for 26–50, with a 50-page maximum. Plans take 10–30% off every rate above.
eFax column: on 2026-09-20, efax.com/pricing listed its Personal plan as “200 pages/mo to US & Canada” with “$.10 per page for over plan pages”, but showed no dollar price without interacting with the page, so we do not quote one. Check their page for current rates.
Break-even: when a subscription is cheaper
Divide a plan’s monthly price by $2.99. That is roughly how many short (1–5 page) faxes you would need to send every month before the subscription costs less than paying per fax. Send fewer than that and paying per fax wins; send more, or fax long documents every week, and a plan can be cheaper.
The same arithmetic applies to our own plans. Starter ($10 a month, 10% off every fax) only pays for itself above about 33 short faxes a month. Professional ($25 a month, 20% off, one dedicated number included) breaks even above about 22 short faxes a month if you need the number, or about 42 if you don’t. Below those lines, stay on pay per fax: that is what it is for.
If you only have one document to get out the door, you can pay per fax instead of a monthly plan and be done in a few minutes: $2.99 for 1–5 pages, nothing recurring to cancel afterwards.
HelpMeFax vs eFax: the differences that matter
eFax details are as shown on efax.com/pricing on 2026-09-20 and may have changed since; check their current plans before deciding. Where we could not verify something, the table says so.
| Feature | HelpMeFax | eFax |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Pay per fax: $2.99 for 1–5 pages, no subscription | Monthly subscription; see their pricing page |
| Monthly page allowance | None needed: each fax is priced on its own | 200 pages/mo on Personal; $0.10 per page over (as shown 2026-09-20) |
| Contract | None; plans are month to month, cancelled from your plan page | Monthly or annual billing offered (as shown 2026-09-20) |
| Service area | US and Canada at one flat rate; 14 international destinations | US & Canada on Personal; 51 countries on Business (as shown 2026-09-20) |
| Dedicated inbound number | $11.99 a month per number plus $0.05 per page received; local US or Canadian area codes or toll-free; 1 included on Professional, 5 on Enterprise | 1 fax number included (as shown 2026-09-20) |
| Users per account | One login on a personal account; a business account adds a login for each person, with no per-user fee | 1 user on Personal; 5 user licenses on Business (as shown 2026-09-20) |
| Encryption | TLS 1.2+ in transit, AES-256 at rest | See their security documentation |
| HIPAA BAA | Free, signed online, countersigned by HelpMeFax | See their site |
| Failed faxes | Up to 30 automatic retries over about 24 hours; refund review from the failure email | See their terms |
| Getting started | Free account, no card until you send | No pay-per-fax option shown (2026-09-20) |
HelpMeFax is not affiliated with eFax. eFax is a registered trademark of its respective owner; this comparison is for information, based on each provider’s publicly published plan details.
Three structural differences
Not slogans: the ways the service is actually run differently.
- No contract
- Every paid plan is month to month. Cancel online from your plan page, and you keep the benefits through the rest of the period you paid for: no partial refund, and no early-termination fee.
- Pay when you send
- One flat price per fax, set by the page count, with no subscription. Busy or unreachable lines are retried up to 30 times over about 24 hours (3 attempts for international) at no extra charge.
- Prices in public
- Every rate is on the pricing page, and plan discounts are stated up front: 10% on Starter, 20% on Professional, 30% on Enterprise. No page allowance to track and no overage rate.
How to switch from eFax
Four steps, and you keep sending the whole time. There is no cut-over day: run both services until you are confident, then cancel eFax on your own schedule.
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1
Export your eFax archive first
Download anything you may need from your eFax account before you cancel; HelpMeFax cannot import it. On HelpMeFax, documents are stored encrypted for 365 days on every plan, then deleted automatically, so download anything you need to keep longer.
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2
Create a free HelpMeFax account and send
You can send your first fax right away, $2.99 for 1–5 pages paid by card at checkout, while eFax is still active. International sending unlocks after your first completed card payment: a US or Canadian fax, or an account top-up.
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3
Bring your number, or pick a new one
Bring your eFax number free under Inbox, then Bring your number: we check first whether it can move, and the first month is refunded if it cannot. Or choose a new local US or Canadian area code or a toll-free number. Either way it is $11.99 a month plus $0.05 per page received; cancel anytime. Keep eFax active until the move is done.
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4
Tell your contacts, then cancel eFax when you are ready
Share the number and watch the first few faxes arrive. You get an email the moment one lands, with a secure link; the PDF stays encrypted in your HelpMeFax inbox, not in your mailbox. Then close the old account on your own timeline.
How moving your eFax number works, and what it costs: bring your fax number.
Common questions about switching
Try it before you cancel eFax.
Free account, no card on file until you send, no commitment. Send a test fax for $2.99, see whether it fits your workflow, then decide whether to keep both, switch over, or walk away.