It seems like every year or so I end up needing to file a change of address with the USPS – whether it be in the same city or across the country, it’s the only part of my contact info that really ever fluctuates. I’ve kept the same email since middle school, and I’ve even had the same cell phone number since my first phone about 10 years ago. Why not establish a permanent address, too?
I started running with this idea and began daydreaming about the perfect mail system – an email like interface to scan, shred, recycle and forward my physical mail to my real current address. Never file a Change of Address Form again. Genius! After sharing this idea with a few friends over breakfast, I was told “…they already have it, and it’s called Earth Mail”. However I would soon discover that this ‘Earth Mail’ might not be the perfect solution after all…
Earth Class Mail Fail
One google search later brought me to Earth Class Mail, an impressive site that almost immediately won me over. The basic plan is $20 per month, with a $1.50 charge for opening and scanning the contents of a piece of mail. Not bad I guess, but what if I want to actually hold that Christmas card from my Grandma? Shipping costs a minimum of $7 + $1 + $0.95 – mega ouch. Sure you could wait and consolidate a few envelopes into one shipment, but seriously… $10 to ship a letter to me? I decided to hit up Google again to investigate some other people’s experiences.
It wasn’t very hard to gauge the reputation behind this company. They have some major PR work ahead of them if they want to continue to grow. It seems a recent price hike has ticked off a lot of would-be loyal customers, among other things. I’m not here to create yet another Earth Class Mail bashing post (they’ve already threatened legal action against a blogger), but I did find some promising alternatives that look just as good, if not better.
Earth Class Mail Alternatives
I was actually surprised at how many services exist out there that can receive, scan, and shred or forward your mail. I’ve listed some popular ones below, but as a web developer I have to admit that I judge a company pretty quickly based on the quality of their website. If it looks like it hasn’t been touched since the 90′s, I stay away. That said, I’ve crossed off the companies that I immediately eliminated.
MailLinkPlus
MyUSPostbox.com
St. Brendan’s Isle
My RV Mail
VirtualPostMail.com
MailboxForwarding.com
The remaining two companies were tough contenders. I narrowed it down to a few key items:
VirtualPostMail.com
- Beautiful application like interface (with fully functioning demo)
- Smart address tags
- Variety of promotion codes to customize your package options
- Competitive pricing with free trial offer
- Real street address (California)
- Limited number of recipients
MailboxForwarding.com
- No demo, just a small screenshot on homepage
- Better pricing and value overall with free first month
- Includes fax number
- Real street address (Michigan)
- Unlimited recipients
And the winner is…
Searching for company history yielded little results for both contenders. I was able to find a few testimonials in blog comments from respectable sites, which was just enough to put my mind at ease and dive in. In the end I went back and forth between the two for almost an hour, but ended up choosing Virtual Post Mail even though they were not the best value. I decided that their application like interace would be the easiest to use in the long run, and once I determine the volume of mail I receive and how often I need to scan the contents, I can change promotion codes to better suit my needs.
Sign up was a breeze and only cost me $5 to get started. I can start using my new address right away, but they cannot scan or forward the mail until I send in form 1583 with two forms of ID, and fill out a Change of Address form IN PERSON at a local post office. This is a requirement of the USPS, not Virtual Post Mail.
The Experience so far
Since I’m moving across the country very soon, I wasn’t sure whether or not I should fill out a change of address with my new Virtual Post Mail address before sending in form 1583. I filled out their support request and I had a response in a few hours on a Sunday evening!
While this response answered my question quickly and efficiently, I still wasn’t able to find a phone number or actual person listed anywhere on the site. I’m all about email these days, but it would still be nice to see a human somewhere behind the scenes when dealing with my personal mail.
I’m off to the post office to fill out my official Change of Address form, stay tuned for a full fledged review of Virtualpostmail.com in Part 2.
UPDATE: I’ve completed “Getting Rid of Snail Mail Part 2″ after using Virtual Post Mail for several months. Be sure to read the comments below and then check out part 2!
Mike – Nice unbiased information, thanks. I’m leaving ECM (the price increase issue) so your post was very useful.
Any more information, now that you’ve been using VPM for a while?
Steve
Whoops – just found a “deal breaker” (for me) with VirtualPostMail. They only allow ONE “Free Recipient” (Me) and charges an additional $7 a month for my wife. MailboxForwarding allows unlimited recipients.
Will keep you advised on my search, but right now – looks like MailboxForwarding.com is a better fit for me.
Steve
The additional recipient fees will definitely be a deal breaker for some people, thanks for reminding me about that – I’ll update my original post with new bullet points. I will be posting ‘part 2′ shortly, it’s been a very positive (and interesting) experience so far! Would love to hear more about your experience with Mailbox Forwarding – especially the interface, I’m curious as to how you evaluate Earth Class Mail vs. Virtual Post Mail Demo vs. MailboxForwarding, they all seem to have a different approach.
Yes mailboxforwarding.com, virtualdomicile.com or thetravelingmailbox.com are among the best deals for online scanning and mail forwarding. I think. Does anyone know of better ones?
Did you seriously base your selection on their websites? I too was an ECM customer and decided on St. Brendan’s Isle based on the RAVE reviews available on the web. You should take a second look at these guys.
Greg (if that really is your name) – posting fake comments will only hurt your reputation in the long run, I highly recommend you change your marketing strategy. How do I know this is a fake comment? Your ip address is from the same exact place as the company you’re raving about. Coincidence? Nope. While your fake comments may work elsewhere, unfortunately this comment will probably have the opposite effect – everyone who reads this blog will now see that you have resorted to dishonest tactics. I highly suggest you put some effort into the things that really work – social networking, PPC ads, and giving your website (and branding) a basic facelift
Readers, make that two strikes against St Brendan’s Isle.
Thanks for pointing out that less than honest post by “Greg” earlier. For some odd reason, the paperless mail industry has been plagued by fake blog entries and similar impropriety.
Anyway, I just made the decision to switch to virtualpostmail.com after three years with Earth Class Mail. My needs changed, plain and simple. When my freelance work required a mailbox to get checks, ECM was great. They were big and reliable, and they gave me an address in the same city as the client and the bank.
Now that client is gone, and all I need is a stable address in the US. Like ECM, virtualpostmail actually answers the phone when you call them. +1 for them. Pricing is good for a little guy. +1 again. They even said they’d ship stuff using my own FedEx label (meaning I can bill it to my FedEx account and get better rates). +1 again.
How’s Part 2 coming along… there is certainly a dearth of unbiased information on the subject on the web so I’ve been looking forward to your experience so far.
Cost is a big consideration but so is sustainability. That is probably a bigger concern to me.
Tnx.
Part 2 is long overdue, I’ve been swamped with freelance projects lately but will post it soon…experience has been GREAT so far.
looking for part 2
[...] anxious to talk about my experiences. If you haven’t read it yet, my first post called Getting Rid of Snail Mail Part 1 will give some good background info on why I chose VirtualPostMail.com in the first [...]
Hello everyone, Thank you Mr Bridgman for your very useful info. I have been doing sleepless research as well with these companies simply because I need a good reliable US address and have my mail forwarded to me via email. I’m moving to Peru and one of my freelance jobs has not decided to go paperless in their payroll so they are still sending me paper checks. The problem is that there is no Bank of America in Peru so I need a reliable company that can receive them scan me a picture of it and deposit the check for me. ECM would do it with no problem for the expense of shaving me bald out of money in fees of about 20 bucks each deposit!!! Unbelievable. Anyhow, no other company would do my paycheck deposits other than Virtualpostmail.com and a great price too at 5 bucks, now I can live with that. And their monthly fees are not exorbitant as well. So I can say that I definitely concur with your findings. Great job!
Hey Mike, really enjoy your post. Can I ask you to please remove this and my previous comment? unfortunatelly I need to erase some of my tracks online due to privacy… Someone is trying to stalk me so when they search online for my email they find this post and this person is trying to use anything online to cause harm to me. PLEASE delete my posts!
Hi there. Great article. Quick question – you mentioned that you had to fill out forms at a US post office. I am based in Australia and require a US physical address. Would either of the two recommended services work for me? Or would I be required to visit a US post office to hook the thing up? Once again, thanks for your informative article! Cheers, Joe
Joe – When I signed up for Virtual Post Mail, I was told that I need to fill out the “Change of Address” form in-person because I was forwarding residential mail to a commercial address. However, I went back to verify this on the VPM website and it seems another user was able to do it all online with credit card verification. So I say give it a try online! And if you don’t mind, post back on here with your results.
Thanks and Good Luck!
Mike
This blog post is the first I’ve heard of VirtualPostMail. Thanks for the lead. I’m going to compare them to SBI, where I am a happy customer.
>but as a web developer I have to admit that I judge a company pretty quickly based on the quality of their website.
As a consumer and retired developer of web sites mostly for internal company use, I look past the flash to see if there is any substance. When the companies I worked for developed a website for their customers, the prime directives were always make us look as good as possible, exaggerate our strengths and bury our weaknesses.
Bill – Thanks for the comment. Just checked out your four letter nerd blog, glad to see you’re keeping life interesting with your “retirement” plan
I commend you on your decision to keep life adventurous.
I probably should have clarified my statement by expanding on what I mean by quality of their website. I’m realizing most people are taking that as design or “flash”, but what I really meant was what’s under the hood (aka View Source
) If they seem up to date in the technology powering their site and it’s intelligently and efficiently done, to me at least, it says a lot about how they run other aspects of their company. SBI feels “mom and pop” and their new demo doesn’t really help either (why don’t they create a dummy account so we can actually USE it?) – I can’t help but picture their data center with big CRT monitors and Windows 3.1! 
All kidding aside, I think SBI will suffice for some people – but as a fellow nerd I absolutely love VPM and recommend you try their demo.
I see some advantages to Virtual Post Mail, but the California address is a deal breaker for me. Cali is ruthless in collecting state income tax from expats. I lived there for 50+ years, so I do not want any connection to the state.
>but what I really meant was what’s under the hood (aka View Source
Got it. You do know ATMS run on COBOL and CICS?
Forgot the
after the last sentence.
Mike,
It’s a good thing I was able to come across this article when I did a Google search. It seems you’ve done quite a bit of legwork for yourself and have generously shared the results.
My situation is that I am a customer of the USPS in the farthest reaches of the United States. I live on the island of Saipan, in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Apart from some possible notoriety for connection to recent political scandals, practically all of the United States doesn’t know that the CNMI exists. Our nearest neighbor, Guam, inspite of recent US military news, is also still barely known by majority of Americans. Apparently, corporate USA, as in the major retailers, also do not know that the CNMI exists, as their online shopping systems almost always fail to provide an option to select state code MP, which stands for Marianas Pacific and is a part of our USPS. Guam’s GU state code fares only slightly better. Majority of US eBay vendors do not want to ship outside of the continental US. I guess I can’t blame the rest of America for not really hearing about the CNMI, considering the remote location and the small population (around 50,000). Guess what? The USPS does not deliver mail to physical addresses here because, it has only been around 5 years since there have been formal street names, and everyone just rents their post office boxes to get mail!
So you see the predicament I’m in. My location is so far away that using commercial courier service is too expensive, and my USPS location will already eliminate the possibility of ordering online from certain vendors. I’m losing out on possible savings by buying from a limited number of vendors.
I checked out the Virtual Post Mail website, and I’m confused with the information they are providing. They say that they online P.O. boxes, but at the same time they are providing a street / physical address. What is clear is they are asking for 2 requirements to sign up, on of which is the USPS Form 1583 to sign up for a post office box. So which one is it really? And does this mean that they will provide a street address but forward your mail through the USPS P.O. box that you are required to sign up for? This means that I will have my existing, halfway-around-the-world post office box here in Saipan, but I will have a new post office box probablyl in Walnut, California? My preference is not only to have a US continent-based mailing address, but a physical / street mailing address, not a P.O. box as many vendors use commercial courier services that do not ship to P.O. boxes. Would Virtual Post Mail be the service I need?
The guy from Australia who posted earlier, I wonder whether he would be qualified to get a P.O. box using Form 1583 or not, considering his foreign location. I know other foreigners who order a lot of stuff from the U.S. but need to ask favors from US-based friends to do it for them.
[...] anxious to talk about my experiences. If you haven’t read it yet, my first post called Getting Rid of Snail Mail Part 1 will give some good background info on why I chose VirtualPostMail.com in the first [...]
Wow thank you for a great personal review. Also great website. I will stop by time to time.
I am writing to let you know I am in the middle of signing up for VPM, and at this time they have a great promotion extending the number of received and/or scanned mail from the regular amount! This number of mail per price was the last block for me, and I am surly sold now! Thanks Greg.
Now I am learning about the Smart Address Tags! Genius!! If their service really works as described, I will be in… heaven (is this too much exaggeration?) lol Anyway thanks again Mike. This sounds awesome!!
Mike, please clean up my multiple posts, and please forgive me for getting you name mixed up…
The Greg from St. Brendan’s Isle story was too overwhelming… Apologies…
Hey Peter-
No worries about the mixup or multiple posts, I’m just glad you took the time to chime in. Glad to hear you found the service, it really is a miracle! I moved to PA last month and will be going to San Francisco next year for a little while, with no worries about where my mail will end up!
Feel free to chime in with your experience so far, and enjoy!
Hey guys,
Traveling Mailbox by far offers more bang for the buck!
http://www.TravelingMailbox.com
Nice post. Thank you for taking the time to publish this information very useful! I’m still waiting for some interesting thoughts from your side in your next post.
Really thanks!!!
Thank you for your relevant post. I live between two countries and I did not want to continue bothering my US family with checking and scanning my mail for me. My research came down to earth link and mailbox forwarding. I opt for the latter with the default address in Michigan. But I have encountered an issue that I did not foresee. To change my mailing address with my employer I am required to fill out a W4 form for the state of Michigan. This did not make sense to me because my state of residence did not change. They said that the mailing address takes precedence over the residence address. I asked my accountant and they comfirm that there were taxes implications with this change, they said that I would have to file state taxes in Michigan but that I could get the money back provided evidence that I do not reside there. To avoid all this taxes issues I have opt to pay extra so I can have my mail in my home state. I thought of sharing this information for the people out there thinking about this change.
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Hi,
I’m looking for developer who have developed Virtual Office and Virtual Address
• Address for more than just Mail Receiving and Forwarding
• Fax Number
• Phone Number
• Customized Services – More than mail forwarding
I want similar to ww.usa2me.com/ , http://www.mailboxforwarding.com
Please provide me with the estimation and send me your previous work.
Thanks for bidding
Also check out the new kid on the block, Outbox: https://www.outboxmail.com/
1) Travis, why is “Traveling Mailbox by far offers more bang for the buck!”
2) Can anyone compare http://travelingmailbox.com to the others listed above?
3) Which ones of these are likely to be around in 10 years, and which ones likely to go bankrupt and disappear?