Faxtastic Quick-Start Guide
All about sending and receiving
Welcome - This won't take long!
It is a quick start guide after all! Spend a few minutes reading through this page and it may save you a lot of time in the future.
Should you have any questions afterwards, check out the FAQs in our Support section.
The Very Quick Start
- Faxes sent to the provided number will arrive in your email as image attachments
- Faxes can be sent from your email by emailing text, docs or PDFs to phone number@send.faxtastic.co.uk
- Your Control Panel allows you to change settings and purchase sending credits
Receiving Faxes as Email
This is so simple, sometimes people miss it. The phone number we gave you at the end of registration? That's your new fax number. It works just like any other fax machine. However, when a fax is sent to it, we convert the data into an image file, attach it to an email and send it to your nominated address.
There are only a few things to bear in mind:
- 0871 numbers can only receive faxes from within the UK
- Our free 0871 package is subject to minimum usage
- You must receive a fax within 7 days of getting the number
- You must receive a fax every 90 days after that
We're not Spam
Especially important to HTML email users (i.e. Hotmail, Yahoo etc): Please ensure you add fax@faxtastic.co.uk as an approved sender or contact. Failure to do this may result in lost faxes.
Viewing Faxes
Once you have received a fax, you need to be able to view it. Your email client will probably have a good shot at viewing single-page faxes but may 'hide' multiple-page faxes.
Multiple-page faxes are delivered as a single file in the TIFF-F G3 standard. You'll need a suitable viewer to read all the pages. Luckily, most operating systems come with such a viewer. However, it may not be your default viewer for TIFF files.
For example: Many users with Photoshop will find it is the default handler for TIFF files, but it can't read multiple pages.
Recommended Viewers Are:
- Windows XP/2000: Windows Picture and Fax Viewer
- Mac OS X: Preview (included with 10.4 Tiger and above)
Both these applications can handle multiple-page TIFFs.
Sending Faxes
Firstly, you'll need sending credits. You can purchase credits in your Control Panel. 1 Credit = 1 page to a geographic number in UK, USA or Europe. Rates to other number types and countries vary. Have a look at our Sending Rates page for more details.
Credits never expire and you don't have to buy them every month. Once you have some, you can get sending right away.
All types of account can send, even if you only purchased the package to receive faxes. There are not charges bar sending credits.
Step 1: Compose your fax
You send faxes by sending an email. We support the following formats:
- A plain text email (we ignore graphics)
- Portable Document Format (.pdf) attachments
- Microsoft Word (.doc) attachments
- TIFF image attachments
For best results use PDF. As PDF is 'near perfect' representation of the source document, it ensures the conversion process makes as few changes as possible.
Please note if you attach any of the above, any text in the body of the email will be ignored.
Step 2: Send your fax
This is really easy. Just send it to phone number@send.faxtastic.co.uk.
The phone number must be a valid phone number, without spaces. For international numbers, use the standard notation (e.g. 001 for USA) as if you were dialling a phone.
Shortly after sending, you'll receive a confirmation email letting you know the status of the fax send.
Testing, Testing
If you would like to check the conversion process and make sure your fax is going to come out how you expect, send the email to preview@send.faxtastic.co.uk. This will 'echo' the converted fax back to you.
Your Control Panel
When you registered you created a password. Make sure you remember it, as you will use it to access your Control Panel.
The Control Panel allows you to:
- Change where faxes are going (and add multiple destinations)
- View your fax history
- Purchase sending credits
- Update your contact details
- Change your password
The History section is very useful as it allows you to confirm whether we have received a fax for you or not.
Getting Further Help
Your first port of call should always be our Support pages. These contain the answers to many common problems.