Is online fax more secure than email?

Yes. A fax is one transmission to one number over the telephone network, with a record of when it arrived. An email is copied across servers you do not control, stored on each of them, and delivered to whatever inbox, forwarded address, and synced phone the recipient's address happens to reach. That is why HIPAA has never prohibited fax, why courts, payers and agencies still ask for it, and why a compliant online fax service is the simplest secure channel a practice can run.

Where email fails

Email is store-and-forward. Your message is written to your provider's server, handed to the recipient's provider, written to their server, then copied to every device that syncs the inbox. Encryption between servers is opportunistic and depends on both sides. The recipient can forward the message in one click, auto-forward it to a personal account, or leave it in an inbox that a colleague shares. For patient information, each copy is a place the record can leak, and none of them produces a transmission receipt.

Making email compliant means an encrypted mail service on your side, a recipient who can open encrypted mail, a Business Associate Agreement with the mail vendor, and a policy that keeps staff from forwarding. Most practices that need to send a record to another office have none of those on the other end.

Where fax holds

A fax call goes from one number to one number. There is no server that keeps a copy along the way, no inbox to forward from, and the receiving side is the machine or service that owns the number. The sender gets a transmission record. HIPAA's Security Rule asks for transmission safeguards and an accounting of where information went; a fax is a channel that produces both by its nature.

The one real risk in faxing is the wrong number: a misdial sends the record to a stranger. That risk is procedural, and a good service designs it out.

What a compliant online fax service adds

Fax Pigeon keeps the point-to-point property of the fax and puts the rest of the Security Rule around it:

• A signed BAA on every plan, including the free first fax, public at faxpigeon.com/baa before you sign up.
• Encryption to us and at rest: encrypted connections from your browser and email to us, AES-256 on stored documents, download links that expire after 15 minutes.
• Your document stays with us. It is never handed to a third-party fax provider as a file; the telecom carrier only connects the call.
• The wrong-number defense: a contact book that keeps the numbers you use, the destination shown before you send, and a delivery certificate with date, time, page count and confirmation ID for every fax.
• Access controls: sign-in with email and password or Google, sessions that end after 90 minutes of inactivity, and team roles that decide who can add people and change settings.
• An append-only audit trail of every send, delivery, failure and retry, written by our own platform, with identifying details redacted from operational logs.
• Your records, for the life of your account, deleted only when you ask, with each deletion verified. Deleting everything at once, or a whole practice, gives you 7 days to undo it.

The comparison a practice actually faces

When the other office only has a fax machine

That is most of them, and it is the point. A referral office, a payer, a court clerk, a pharmacy, or a records department receives a fax on the equipment they already have, with nothing to install and nothing to decrypt. Your side is a browser: upload the PDF, pick the contact, send. The AI summary on every inbound fax tells you what arrived before you open it.

Start with the free first fax

Every Fax Pigeon plan includes the BAA, your own number on paid plans, free porting both ways, e-signatures, contact management, and a delivery certificate for every delivered fax, from $4.99 a month billed annually. The first fax is free and the BAA covers it. See the plans and pricing.

* Facts last verified September 2, 2026. Not legal advice.