There are a lot of offerings out there for Virtual Mailbox services. Each service caters to a slightly different audience.
Some virtual mailbox services are good for US Expats that need a US address and mail forwarding, some mailboxes focus on business customers that process a lot of mail, others focus on an individual to just move the pain of receiving mail from their house to an outsourced service to stay on top of paperwork and get more organized.
Each service may be well priced for certain use cases, but become expensive for other uses.
One thing to consider are your end needs and what you are getting a mailbox for, and the services you need. No virtual mailbox service will work for free as there is actual labor involved for each mail receipt and scan so expect to pay something, but with the right outlook you can pay the least for your use!
Virtual Mailbox Services - The Basics
A Virtual Mailbox Service provider will usually provide a baseline amount of services that's included in your subscription. These services usually include handling of mail and packages, junk mail filtering, mail forwarding, mail storage, online mail management, mail shredding, secure cloud storage, free package storage (for a certain amount of days of free storage).
Most of those services above are services offered, things like secure mail shredding mail have a minimal cost, the mail forwarding service usually has a small fee, and physical storage for either inbound mail or packages is limited to a certain amount of time.
Some services you don't always see, but are offered by various services are a physical street address (as opposed to po box address), phone and fax, unlimited cloud storage, a mobile app, bank account deposits for for checks, local pickups (during business hours), third party integrations, and registered agent services. So these are some of the features that you will need to consider how important they are to you as the availability of these varies widely.
Considerations in Virtual Mailboxes
- Do you need a real street address?
- Do you want a building that looks like a business, or is a retail store front / Mailbox store ok?
- Do you need your mail scanned, or just forwarded?
- Do you need to receive packages?
- How much mail do you think you will receive per month?
- How secure do you need your mail partner to be?
Introductory Prices of Mailbox Services
Once you've considered your needs, lets go over the lowest priced offering for the largest mailbox services.
iPostal1 - Starts at $9.99 per month
Anytime Mailbox - Starts at $5.99 per month
Earth Class Mail - Starts at $19 per month
Virtual Post Mail - Starts at $20 per month
Postcan Mail - Starts at $10 per month
Stable - Starts at $49 per month
Thatch - Starts at $39 per month
If you are looking for just the bare bones service, at an entry level price, it seems that Anytime Mailbox is the way to go!
Real Business Address Prices
Most businesses do not want their business to be published as a mailbox store or retail strip mall, this is usually where you will see the majority of these low prices come from. The services partner with local mailbox companies and offer them as locations for scanning. The issue with retail spaces is that they are all independently owned, and the quality of service, and scanning level can change from location to location.
Let's look at prices if we exclude mailbox centers, strip malls, and staples locations. We are using Los Angeles Virtual Mailboxes as an example city because of the large amount of options in the city.
iPostal1 - Starts at $19.99 per month
Anytime - Starts at $19.99 per month
ECM - Starts at $79 per month (in Los Angeles, $19 in Beaverton)
Virtual Post Mail - Starts at $20 per month
Postcan Mail - Starts at $10 per month
Stable - Starts at $49 per month
Thatch - Starts at $39 per month
The prices converge a bit more if you aren't looking for a PO Box or mailbox store retail location. If your business appearance is important to you, this will be essential to conducting business.
Virtual Mailbox with Scanning Included
Finally, we need to look at having your mail scanned. If you want to be completely virtual, this is essential to a virtual mailbox, and usually where the fees diverge wildly. Lets look at two scenarios of scanning.
Lets assume a moderate usage which would be about 25 pieces of mail per month scanned, and a more high volume usage of 75 pieces of mail per month.
Moderate Scanning
iPostal1 - Starts at $76.24 per month (25 scans at $2.25 per scan plus $19.99 per month)
Anytime Mailbox - Starts at $37.49 per month (25 scans at $0.50 over 10 free scans plus $29.99 per month)
Earth Class Mail - Starts at $79 per month (in Los Angeles, $19 in Beaverton)
Virtual Post Mail - Starts at $35 per month (10 free scans, $1 thereafter for 15 scans plus $20 per month)
Postscan Mail - Starts at $30 per month (20 scans, $2 thereafter plus $30 per month)
Stable - Starts at $49 per month
Thatch - Starts at $39 per month
Heavy Use Scanning
iPostal1 - Starts at $188.74 per month (25 scans at $2.25 per scan plus $19.99 per month)
Anytime - Starts at $62.49 per month (25 scans at $0.50 over 10 free scans plus $29.99 per month)
Earth Class Mail - Starts at $154 per month (in Los Angeles, $94 in Beaverton)
Virtual Post Mail - Starts at $60 per month
Postscan Mail - Starts at $140 per month (20 scans, $2 thereafter plus $30 per month)
Stable - Starts at $49 per month
Thatch - Starts at $39 per month
You can see as you scale your business, the pricing is less attractive with the introductory prices for most mailbox companies.
If you are serious about your business, and want a partner that will be able to provide great service and not just the lowest cost, Thatch is the service for you. Grow to a large organization without spending thousands on mail.
Other Considerations in Virtual Mailbox Companies
Now that you are aware of the pricing, and how everything scales over time, you need to consider a few other factors.
First, if you are using a company that uses third party operators you have to judge the quality of operations at the actual location instead of the software on top of it. Places like iPostal1 and Anytime Mailbox that solely use third parties aren't going to be able to help you with mail issues, and one location service can be vastly different than another one.
The second issue is security. What precautions does the operator have in place after they open your mail? How do they ensure that everything is disposed of properly.
Since the facilities at Thatch are all HIPAA compliant, PCI Compliant and SOC-2 Compliant and we do not have retail customers or other businesses like coworking members to deal with we focus solely on mail processing. All of your mail gets a Document ID number, automatically shredded in 30 days, and there are security protocols in all our facilities.
Feature Cost Review: Page Scans
There are two main reasons why people get virtual mailboxes: page scans and parcel forwarding. We will review the costs of mail scanning here to see how the prices add up over the included monthly content scanning. These aren't exhaustive prices because some services use third parties that charge different rates depending on the location you choose.
iPostal1 - $2.25 per scan
Anytime - $0.50 per page
ECM - $3 per scan
Virtual Post Mail - $1 per scan (up to 10 pages)
Stable - Unlimited Mail Scanning Offered (but the fine print is that they have a limit of 100 pages per month)
Thatch - $0.10 per page
Mail scanning of your postal mail is the labor intensive part of the service, and the fixed monthly price doesn't usually include very much. Most companies would like to sell you a cheap mailbox that you never use. But as your business grows, this may hurt you as the costs for page scans can get quite expensive.
Feature Cost Review: Registered Agent Service
One nice benefit of some virtual mailbox providers is that they can be listed as a registered agent. Now a registered agent is not required in many states, but some people like to have that for the increased anonymity. There are many agents like Northwest Registered Agent that are primarily agents, but offer mailboxes as an upsell and there are some virtual mailbox companies that focus more on the mail portion but also will offer a free registered agent service. The price of a registered agent can be foud online for as low as $49 per year, so if you need that service, but dont want to be locked in, compare that service separately.
Feature Cost Review: Mail Forwarding
If you are primarily interested in mail and package forwarding services, you should know that to have your mail forwarded you will usually be charged a slight fee to process the mailing as well as postage. You have to ensure that your virtual mailbox partner will accept package from fedex and dhl. Some will only accept usps ups and nothing else. And other times their forwarding services only accept mail for forwarding and may only allow local pickup for packages. Make sure to read the fine print to see what is included in the monthly fee.
Feature Cost Review: Mail Storage
A Virtual Mailbox Service will hold your mail and packages for a certain amount of time, but no one can commit to storing your items forever. You want a company that will offer unlimited cloud storage and have your mail shredded for free. Typically you will see 30-60 days of physical mail storage, then the terms vary widely.
Thatch offers mail storage for 30 days then automatically shreds your mail if you do not have it forwarded, but we do offer unlimited online storage.
Most companies will keep your mail after the free storage period and just charge you an extra monthly fee until you physically take action on the website to forward or secure shredding. Check the terms!
