Quick answer: ICTFax lets you send a fax by emailing a PDF to faxnumber@yourfaxdomain.com and receive faxes as PDF, TIFF, or JPG attachments delivered to your inbox. The fax leaves your network as a regular SMTP message, gets picked up by the ICTFax server, and is transmitted over T.38, G.711, or PSTN to the destination. The same flow runs in reverse for inbound faxes. No hardware, no fax machine, no per-page fees.

Most teams that still need to send faxes don’t want to think about fax. They want a document to leave the building, arrive at a hospital or law firm, and show up in their audit log. Email-to-fax is the simplest way to deliver that experience, and fax-to-email is its mirror image for inbound. ICTFax ships both as standard features in every deployment.

This guide walks through how each direction works, how to set it up, the file formats and gateways supported, and the operational details that actually matter when you’re running fax for a real business or as a service for multiple tenants.

Why ICTFax for Email-Based Faxing in 2026?

The case for email fax is straightforward. Your team already lives in email. Your auditors already accept email as a system of record. The fax line is a regulated transport, but it doesn’t need to be a regulated user experience. ICTFax bridges those two worlds.

  • No fax machines. Save the cost of hardware, paper, ink, and dedicated phone lines.
  • No per-page fees. ICTFax is open source. You pay for the SIP trunk and the server, not for each page.
  • Multi-tenant by design. Run fax for many separate customers from one install with full data isolation.
  • Audit-ready. Every fax is logged with sender, recipient, timestamp, status, and the file that was transmitted.
  • Format flexibility. Inbound faxes can be delivered as PDF, TIFF, or JPG depending on what your downstream systems consume.

How Email to Fax Works

Email-to-fax turns your inbox into a fax client. Compose a message, attach a PDF, send it, and ICTFax does the rest.

The Send Flow

  1. Compose a new email.
    • To: faxnumber@FAX_DOMAIN.COM (replace with the destination fax number and your ICTFax domain)
    • Subject: any unique subject line
    • Body: optional, not required for the transmission
    • Attachment: the PDF you want to fax (one file per email)
  2. Send. Your mail server delivers the message to ICTFax over SMTP.
  3. ICTFax processes the message. The server authenticates the sender against the configured user, extracts the attachment, queues the fax, and dispatches it through the fax gateway.
  4. Delivery confirmation. ICTFax returns a delivery receipt to the sender’s email and writes a status row into the audit log.

Important Notes

  • Attach only one file per email. Multiple attachments will be rejected or merged depending on configuration.
  • Compose a new email each time rather than using Reply or Forward. Inline reply quoting can confuse the parser.
  • Use a unique subject so you can find the fax later in the queue and the audit log.
  • If your organization sends sensitive documents, configure TLS on the SMTP path so the email-to-fax leg is encrypted in transit.

How Fax to Email Works

Fax-to-email turns inbound faxes into emails. The DID rings the ICTFax server, the fax is captured, converted to your preferred format, and dropped into the assigned user’s inbox.

Setup Flow

  1. The administrator creates a DID number on the ICTFax server.
  2. The administrator assigns the DID to a user account inside ICTFax.
  3. The administrator routes that DID as fax-to-email and binds it to the user’s email address.
  4. Inbound faxes to that DID are converted to PDF (or TIFF/JPG, depending on configuration) and delivered to the assigned inbox as an attachment.

From the user’s perspective, no fax machine, no client software, no portal login. Faxes just appear in their inbox like any other attachment.

Key Features of ICTFax

Comprehensive Faxing Methods

  • Email to Fax. Send faxes from any email client by attaching a file.
  • Fax to Email. Receive faxes directly into your email inbox.
  • Web to Fax. Send faxes through the ICTFax web portal with a drag-and-drop UI.
  • Fax to Web. Pull received faxes from the web portal for archival, sharing, or download.
  • API to Fax. Send and receive faxes from your own application via the ICTFax REST API.

File Format Support

  • Send in PDF, TIFF, TXT, JPG, GIF, or PNG
  • Receive in PDF, TIFF, or JPG depending on configuration
  • Multi-document upload via the web portal and API

Gateway Support

  • T.38 origination and termination over SIP
  • G.711 passthrough fax
  • PSTN gateway via analog or T1/E1 boards

Multi-Tenant Architecture

  • Many customers on one install with isolated data
  • Per-tenant branding, billing, and quotas
  • Designed for telecom service providers, MSPs, and healthcare networks

Other Operational Features

  • Password reset and account self-service
  • Detailed activity logs and per-fax status
  • Do-Not-Call (DNC) list support
  • Email chaining for multi-recipient delivery
  • Caller ID management and number porting workflows

Benefits at a Glance

  • Cost-efficient. No fax machines, no toner, no dedicated phone lines.
  • Paperless. All sends and receives stay digital end to end.
  • Remote-friendly. Anyone who can access their inbox can send a fax.
  • Easy to learn. If a user can send an email, they can send a fax.
  • Secure and audit-ready. TLS in transit, audit logs, and role-based access on the ICTFax side.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I attach more than one PDF per email?

By default, ICTFax accepts one attachment per email to keep the fax queue and audit log clean. You can change that behavior in configuration if your workflow requires merged sends, but for most deployments one-file-per-email is the right default.

Which file formats can I fax?

You can send PDF, TIFF, TXT, JPG, GIF, and PNG. PDF is the most reliable, since the conversion path is well-tested and the recipient end gets a high-fidelity render. For inbound faxes, the server converts the received TIFF into your chosen output format (PDF, TIFF, or JPG).

Is the email-to-fax transmission secure?

The fax leg from ICTFax to the destination uses TLS-secured SIP and T.38 where supported. The email leg from your client to the ICTFax server can be encrypted with TLS on the SMTP transport, which we recommend for any deployment that handles PHI, PII, or regulated documents.

How are inbound faxes routed to the right user?

Each DID is bound to one or more user accounts on the ICTFax server. When a fax arrives on a DID, the server converts it and emails the result to the addresses tied to that DID. Multi-recipient routing is supported for shared inboxes.

Does ICTFax support HIPAA workflows?

Yes. The platform ships the technical controls a HIPAA audit asks for, including encryption, RBAC, MFA, and full audit logging. Compliance still depends on how you deploy and operate the server, but the fax stack itself is HIPAA-ready.

Can I send a fax from a mobile phone?

Yes, in two ways. You can send from any mobile email client by composing the email-to-fax message exactly as you would from a desktop. You can also use the ICTFax web portal from a mobile browser. Both routes hit the same back-end queue.

What happens if a fax fails to deliver?

ICTFax retries failed sends a configurable number of times, then writes a failure status into the audit log and emails the sender with the failure code. Common causes are busy lines, T.38 negotiation failures, and bad destination numbers, and each is logged distinctly so you can troubleshoot.

Is there a per-page or per-user fee?

No. ICTFax is open source. The cost of running it is the server, the SIP trunk, and the engineering time to operate it. Service providers wrap that into per-tenant pricing for their customers.

The Bottom Line

Email-to-fax and fax-to-email turn fax into a transport detail your users don’t have to think about. ICTFax handles the conversion, the queueing, the gateway, and the audit log. Your team writes emails. Your auditors get clean records. Your finance team stops paying per page.

If you’re standing up fax for a clinical network, an MSP, or a telecom reseller in 2026, this is the simplest way to get there. Pull the source from the ICTFax download page, run it on a small VM, point a SIP trunk at it, and you’re sending faxes by email the same day.

Need help with the deployment? Open a ticket at service.ictinnovations.com and we’ll walk through the topology, trunk setup, and tenant configuration with your team.