Answers

No. There is nothing to register and no password to remember. You give us the destination, the fax number, your file and your e-mail address, and that is all.

Your e-mail address is used for one thing: we send you a confirmation link, and the tracking page and any receipts reach you there. The whole route is laid out on the home page.

A cover sheet is optional but handy: it shows the recipient who sent the fax, who it concerns and the number of pages to expect. Our free generator produces one as a PDF in a minute.

Remember that it counts as a page. Open the cover sheet generator, download the PDF and merge it in front of your document before uploading.

Your document reaches us over HTTPS and is erased from our servers once the fax has gone out. The final stretch is different: the phone line to the recipient's fax machine is unencrypted, as it is for every fax, regardless of who sends it.

So the service takes care of its side, and the rest depends on precautions on yours. The security page explains them, and the fax over IP article describes what happens on the line.

A single page is free, with no quota and no catch. Two pages or more and the whole send is a flat €3.99, be it 2 pages or 200. Prices include 20% VAT.

There is no subscription and no account to open. You pay by card, through Stripe, only when your document is longer than one page. The full table is on the rates page.

You can send one file per fax, up to 100 MB. PDF is the safest choice, but office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, RTF, OpenDocument), plain text (.txt, .csv) and images (JPG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, WebP, AVIF) are accepted too.

Anything that is not already a PDF is converted to PDF first, then faxed. You can do all of it from a computer or from a phone: see faxing from your phone.

Yes. A one-page fax costs nothing, and there is no daily or monthly quota. You do not enter a card number or open an account.

The price only changes once the document reaches two pages, at a flat €3.99 per send. The rates page shows both cases.

CaptainFax sends to landline fax numbers in seven countries: Canada, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and France. The destination is chosen in the first field of the form.

Each country has its own page with numbering notes: see the destinations list. To look up a dial code for any other country, use the international dial-code directory.

Select the destination country first, then type the number without the country code and without spaces or punctuation if you can. If you start with 00 or a plus sign and the country code, the form understands that too.

Check the number with the fax-number checker before paying. Local conventions for each country are described on the destinations page.

No. A fax can only be delivered to a landline, because a mobile network cannot answer a fax machine's call. Mobile numbers are refused or will fail.

If the person you want to reach only has a mobile, ask them for an e-mail address or a landline fax number. The number checker will flag numbers that look like mobiles.

Your file is used to send the fax and is then deleted from our servers once the sending is done. It reaches us over an HTTPS connection.

We keep only what is needed to run and follow the service. Our privacy page sets out what data is processed and for how long, and the security page explains how the file is handled.

A fax can back up your case: it shows that a document was sent to a specific number at a specific time. Its evidential weight depends on the dispute and the rules that apply, and we cannot give legal advice.

What we can give you is a record: the tracking page and optional PDF receipts. See delivery proof and the security page for what each contains.

For €2.99 you receive two PDFs by e-mail: one for your request and one for the delivery transmission. They are optional, and you pay only if the fax is delivered.

If you need to prove, or simply remember, what was sent and when, they are worth having. The delivery proof page shows what they contain, and the price is on the rates page.

Once you have clicked the confirmation link and the short countdown has ended, the fax goes into sending and you follow it live. A short document to a free line often goes through within minutes, but the real time depends on the recipient's machine.

A busy line, a machine switched off or a long document will take longer. See how the process works and check office hours with the world clock.

Pending means we have not yet got through to the recipient's machine, or we are waiting for it to be free. This is common: the line may be busy, or the machine off or out of paper.

Give it some time and keep the tracking page open. If nothing moves, check the number and the recipient's office hours: see how sending works and fax over IP for what happens in the background.

The commonest causes are a wrong number, a number that is not a fax line (a voice line or a mobile) and a recipient machine that is off, busy or out of paper. The tracking page shows the final status.

Start by checking the number with the number checker, then try again. The process page explains the stages if you want to see where yours stopped.

Fax pages are black and white at a fixed, modest resolution, so clean, high-contrast documents come out best. Small print, light grey text and photos lose detail.

Use a PDF, avoid text smaller than 10 points and check your page before sending. How the line works is covered in fax over IP and how sending works.

No. CaptainFax only sends: the service does not provide a fax number and does not receive faxes.

If you need to receive one, the page on receiving faxes lists the usual options, such as asking the sender for a PDF by e-mail or setting up a line elsewhere.

No. Your fax is delivered as you wrote it: no banner, no footer and no promotional page added to it.

The service is paid for by the sends that cost something, not by advertising. More about who is behind it is on the about page.