Frequently Asked Questions

Setup is instant – you will receive your Crosby Fax® number as soon as you complete signup. You may then begin to receive faxes on your number immediately.

All faxes sent to your number are kept encrypted using 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256) on our servers, stored in the European Union at our data centre facility. None of our staff have access to your faxes, nor can they download any of them.

Company Directors may be required to disclose your faxes by law enforcement agencies. Please refer to our Privacy Policy for more information.

No, there is no software required to use Crosby Fax®. You use it from this website so just need an internet browser that supports 256-bit encryption.

No, an internet fax service such as Crosby Fax® means that we already have the hardware and software required, leaving you only to pay for the service that you have signed up to and nothing else. The only hardware you might need is a printer and/or scanner should you wish to print faxes you receive from us (by email) or send faxes by scanning in documents and uploading them to this site. Remember you can disconnect your existing fax line and move your existing fax number to us – saving you time, line rental and energy costs.

We provide numbers for almost every area in the United Kingdom (including Isles). Just check our Sign Up page for the area you require, or Contact Us if the number you are looking for is not appearing in our numbers stock.

Yes, you can choose any one from a wide range of numbers that we offer.

Yes, all of our fax numbers will accept calls from international locations. However, please be aware that fax numbers starting 08 may be blocked by the sender’s provider due to higher costs for certain international calls. For maximum compatibility, we recommend numbers starting 01, 02 or 03.

No, everything that you might need to change can be done from within your account. By going to “My Settings”, you can change these instantly at any time.

Yes, our service comes with a complete SLA that can be found here.

Each package has a 1 month minimum term. This means you can cancel at any time with 1 month’s notice, and your subscription will not be renewed on its next billing date. You can cancel instantly online from within your account, simply by clicking Cancel. We don’t make you ring up and sit on hold for hours to try and discourage you from cancelling, like some of our competitors.

We accept payment by Visa, MasterCard and American Express for both subscription fees and one-off credit topups.

Customers in the UK can also opt to pay regular subscription fees by Direct Debit.

Invoices for services that you have been billed for are produced by our billing system and are available for download from within your account, complete with a real-time statement of your account for reconciliation purposes. Within your billing settings you can also set an email address that invoices are automatically sent to on the anniversary of your billing date (each month, each year, etc). Our billing process is completely automated and has been designed to give you access to everything you need from within your account – however, you can always call our customer services team should you have any queries. Their details can be found on the Contact Us page.

Don’t worry, you will get an automated reminder informing you of the reasons and to select another payment option or arrange another way to make a payment. Your service will only be affected if you fail to respond to our reminders which are sent as emails and notices that appear when you sign in to your account. If after 14 days we still haven’t received payment, your service will be temporarily suspended until payment is made, and any fax number will be decommissioned and will play an error message when contacted.

Depending on the type of file you choose in your settings (it is defaulted to .TIFF), you can use a viewer to open the file and view the fax on screen like you would any document. Depending on the device you are using, most devices open .TIFF and .PDF files without the need to install new software and are already built into the operating system.

Yes, simply login with your username and password and you will see your account details; you can change your email address there.

You may also add up to 50 additional email addresses to receive a copy of your faxes, too.

We estimate that a single page can take around 60 seconds or less depending on what is on the fax. If the fax is simply text and the person sending it has a modern, up-to-date fax machine that transmits at our maximum speed (33.6 bps), then this can take as little as 30 seconds. If, however, the page is full of pictures and complex graphics, it could take a little longer.

Unlike most of our competitors, if a fax takes longer than 1 minute to receive, we don’t charge you extra or take extra pages out of your allowance.

Yes, our fax file sizes are adjusted automatically based on the sender’s fax machine for the paper size it is sent in. This means that we can receive any paper size sent that conform to the ITU-T recommendations for the following transmission groups:

• Group 3 and 4 (T.30, T.4)
• Group 4 faxes (T.563, T.503, T.521, T.6, T.62, T.70, T.72, T.411 to T.417)

Group 1 and 2 fax machines are obsolete and no longer manufactured, and are therefore not supported by our service as we use digital transmission only.

• Horizontal: 100 scan lines per inch
• Vertical: 100 scan lines per inch (“Basic”)
• Horizontal: 200 or 204 scan lines per inch
• Vertical: 100 or 98 scan lines per inch (“Standard”)
• Vertical: 200 or 196 scan lines per inch (“Fine”)
• Vertical: 400 or 391 (note not 392) scan lines per inch (“Superfine”)
• Horizontal: 300 scan lines per inch
• Vertical: 300 scan lines per inch
• Horizontal: 400 or 408 scan lines per inch
• Vertical: 400 or 391 scan lines per inch (“Ultrafine”)

Yes – as long as you can open attachments on email, or access our website to download the fax file and open either .TIFF or .PDF formats, you should be able to open faxes on many wireless devices.

No. We have thousands of lines available so that you can receive multiple faxes at the same time.

Always the bridesmaid and never the bride, your fax number will never be engaged!

You can send faxes via your email inbox or for better security use our online portal.

See here for instructions!

You are charged a per-page cost, depending on the destination to which you’re sending. This is deducted from your account’s pre-paid credit, which you can topup inside your account.

Unlike most of our competitors, we don’t charge you extra if a page takes longer than a minute to send!

Please see our Fax Sending Rates tool for pricing information.

You can send faxes by email or upload to send from within your account on our website in PDF format. Most scanners allow you to choose to save any scanned documents in PDF so you won’t need to do anything extra at all before sending it as a fax. If you’re writing a document in a word processor such as Microsoft Word, you can simply save as PDF.

If you have sent a fax by email then you will receive a notification back to your email address giving you a copy of what was sent (so you can see the content of the transmission) and the status i.e. sent or failed, number busy etc. If you sent the fax online within your account, you can see the status by looking in your outbox where the details and status of each fax is shown.

No, that would be unfair! You are only charged for the successful transmission of a fax.

Our system automatically re-attempts to send to fax numbers which ring busy or go unanswered three times. If the fax could not be delivered after the fifth attempt, you are not charged for any transmission time because no call connection is made.

Number Porting is the process of moving across your existing number from your provider over to a new network. In the same way that you can do this with your phone number, landline or mobile, so too can you keep your previous fax number.

We are able to bring across the majority of UK-based fax numbers, however this is typically dependent on whether there is a porting agreement with your existing provider.

YES – if it’s on the same line/number. Please see our guide to the Impact of Moving Your Existing Number to Crosby Fax®.

Once the Number Porting process is completed, you may terminate your existing fax line and remove your old fax machine – any faxes to your number will now be sent to your Crosby Fax® account online.

It is possible to continue your existing fax line until we notify you to let you know the number change has taken place. Once this is done, you can contact your old provider to cancel your account. This enables maximum uptime for your business and as little disruption as possible for your customers and suppliers.

Yes – if you have a list of numbers to bring across from one provider, simply list them when asked to enter the numbers you wish to keep during the sign up process. We can provide a temporary number whilst the numbers are changed over. Please let us know if you wish to bring across numbers from several different providers, as these will need to be processed separately.

Yep – not a problem.

As an alternative to porting your number, you may be able to divert your existing fax landline to your Crosby Fax® number using the instructions below:

For landline numbers you can divert your fax line to your new Crosby Fax® number that you’ve been given. To do this, check with your provider (for example BT) that you have Call Divert enabled on the line.

To enable, pickup your existing fax machine handset (or plug a phone into the line) and dial * 21 * then your fax number then#

For example, * 21 * 0871 123 4567 #

To cancel the divert, pickup and dial #21#. Using the above allows you to turn on/off the ability to send your faxes to Crosby Fax® whenever you want, and you remain in control. You can still give out your existing fax number, or begin giving out your new Crosby Fax® number, or both! Either way, faxes received will be sent to your email address and put into your account.

Please note that if you use the call divert option above, you will be charged for the diverted part of the call, the cost of which will depend on the type of number to which you are diverting. This information is provided in the hope that it will be helpful; we do not recommend using call diverts and we cannot support any issues which you may experience with this setup as it is outside of our control.