How to improve fax send quality

Last Updated: October 27, 2026

When sending faxes there are various factors which may affect fax send quality and what the receiving machine/fax number receives. These may include, but are not limited to:

Design of the fax including font size, colour and images:

Colour: Elements within a fax should always be in pure black on a pure white background.
Fonts: Sans-serif fonts are preferred over Serif fonts when faxing. Fine fonts, such as Arial, may not be as clear. We recommend using a softer, rounded font like Calibri or Verdana in a minimum size of 10.
Images: As fax conversion attempts to render content in black dots, colour items and grey elements often do not convert well. As above, we recommend any text, borders or logos be rendered as pure black.

Document creating format and properties:

Document format and properties such as whether the document was printed, scanned and then faxed, file format and document resolution all affect the final fax quality output that is received to a recipients fax.

Aim to create and save documents in a high resolution.
Scanner settings for optimal faxing should not exceed 300 x 300dpi.
Providing fax pages as TIF files: A TIF file provided with incorrect dimensions for faxing may only reproduce part of the page at the destination end.

A TIF file provided for faxing at GoFax Standard quality should be 1728 pixels wide and 1100 pixels vertically (portrait layout).
A TIF file provided for faxing at GoFax High quality should be 1728 pixels wide and 2200 pixels vertically (portrait layout).

The Receiving Machine:

Please ensure you or your recipient prints the received fax to show true receive quality, as PDF viewers may display the fax document at a lower resolution. Setting a PDF viewer’s zoom to 150% will give a result close to a printed copy.

We recommend avoiding large blocks of black as these can cause a fax document to take additional time for printing and use more of the receiver's toner supply.

GoFax Fax Sending options:

Fax Resolution Setting

Once you have created your document in the highest possible resolution output, to ensure the highest clarity in fax delivery, you may wish to consider activating the optional 'High Quality' Send Setting within your GoFax account. By default, all faxes are sent in Standard Resolution.

GoFax Standard quality is 204 x 98 dpi.
High Quality is 204 x 196 dpi

When activated, sending a fax in High Quality applies a 25% additional cost to the send credit charge, where connected/successful.

Routing

In some scenarios, GoFax may be able to adjust routing settings to assess improvements for file processing.