Last updated · Written for practice managers and office administrators.
A fax is a phone call
Whatever the sending side looks like — a machine, a browser, an email — the transmission is a telephone call between two modems. Pages are sent one at a time; after each page the receiving machine acknowledges it before the next one starts. The speed of the call is negotiated at the start and is bounded by the slower side and the quality of the line. That is why a fax service cannot make a 140-page fax arrive in a minute: the receiving machine is the bottleneck, and it is the same machine it would be if you were feeding paper.
The practical rate is roughly one page a minute for ordinary scanned documents. In our delivery logs a 119-page fax completed in about 90 minutes and a 141-page fax in about 110 minutes. Clean text pages go faster; dense, dark or high-resolution scans go slower.
What that means for a records package
| Pages | Indicative time | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | Under 15 minutes | Most faxes; typically delivered in a few minutes. |
| 50 | About 45–60 minutes | The recipient’s line is busy for the duration. |
| 119 | About 90 minutes (observed) | From our delivery logs, September 2026. |
| 141 | About 110 minutes (observed) | From our delivery logs, September 2026. |
Two consequences follow. The recipient’s fax line is occupied for the whole call, so nobody else can reach them by fax during that time. And the longer the call, the more exposure to whatever can interrupt it — a dropped line, a machine running out of paper or memory, someone picking up the handset. A transmission that fails part-way is reported as failed; the receiving side keeps whatever pages it confirmed, which is why the receipt matters.
Scheduling
When you send, you can set a time instead of sending immediately — up to 30 days ahead, and at least a minute out. The fax sits in your history as scheduled and can be cancelled or rescheduled until it starts; the Terms describe scheduling, cancelling and rescheduling as part of the service. Three uses for it:
- After hours. A 140-page package sent at 10 p.m. does not block the recipient’s line during clinic hours, and is waiting when they open.
- Sequencing. Send the cover and summary first, and schedule the full record an hour later, so the recipient knows what is coming.
- Batching. Split a very large record into two or three faxes scheduled a few minutes apart. Each gets its own receipt; a failure affects only that part.
Because the transmission runs from our servers, you do not need to keep a browser open or a computer awake. You are told by email when it is delivered or when it has failed, if you keep those notifications on.
Receipts
Every completed fax has a one-page receipt you can download from its detail page. A delivery receipt states the fax ID, the destination number, the number of pages, the completion time in your own time zone (and says which zone), and the sentence that matters for a records request: the receiving fax machine confirmed every page of this transmission. A failure report states that no page was confirmed and that the fax can be resent from the dashboard. The record itself stays in your history for 12 months by default, or up to 72 months if you extend it in Settings → Storage.
When a long fax fails
- Read the failure reason in the notification and on the fax detail page. Busy, no answer and dropped mid-call are different problems.
- Check with the recipient whether they received part of it; the receiving machine keeps confirmed pages.
- Resend the remainder as a new fax, or split the whole document and schedule the parts a few minutes apart.
- Keep both receipts. The failure report and the subsequent delivery receipt together document the attempt and the outcome.
From the number you already have
Outbound faxes carry your ported number as caller ID, so the receiving side sees the number they already have on file for you and replies come back to your inbox. If you have not moved the number yet, start with the keep-your-number guide and the free portability check.