As of 2022, eight in 10 U.S. workers work from home at least part of the time. And with the advent of so many business tools specifically designed to make it possible to effectively work remotely, many businesses are shifting to hybrid or remote-only models. With no rent, utilities, or furnishings required, these models help reduce overhead significantly, while digital tools keep remote workers connected and productive.
VirtualPostMail is just one of these digital tools. VPM is a popular business address and compliance service that strives to help remote businesses run more smoothly. While VPM does have some good features, it’s not the only option on the market — and may not be the best option for your business.
Below, we’ll explore the benefits of a virtual mailbox service in detail and break down some of the top VPM alternatives available.
Virtual mailbox services can do a lot more than simply receiving and sorting your mail. Whether your business is fully remote, hybrid, or simply looking to reduce your office clutter, virtual mailboxes can offer a host of benefits, including:
There are only a few options when it comes to receiving mail at a business address. You can either maintain office space with a physical address, or you can create a virtual mailbox for your business. As you might imagine, a virtual mailbox subscription, usually a relatively small monthly fee, is the more cost-effective option than overhead on an office space.
For small businesses, image is important, especially when you’re focusing on attracting new customers or closing deals. A business address helps your brand look more established and professional. Virtual mailboxes give you an actual business address rather than a P.O. Box — which Google and other online registries won’t accept as an address.
Business addresses are a matter of public record, which means they’re easily searchable and anyone can look them up. When you use your home address as your business address, you remove a layer of privacy — and leave yourself more vulnerable to potential security threats. Use a virtual mailbox to keep your home life private and separate from your business.
Whether you don’t have time to get to a post office, or travel a lot, or you’re just tired of mail piling up in your mailbox, virtual mailboxes can help. You can access your virtual mailbox 24/7 from anywhere (as long as you have an internet connection) keeping the clutter off your desk and eliminating the risk of losing important documents.
Virtual mailboxes also handle many time-consuming tasks that your team would otherwise have to do manually, like sorting out junk mail, shredding confidential information, and depositing checks.
Stable is one of the top VirtualPostMail alternatives. Based in San Francisco with a New York office, Stable offers physical addresses in both states as well as Delaware, Texas, and Florida. Through Stable, you get a unique, premium business address that you can use for the IRS, banking, government, and more — and once established, you’ll never need to worry about changing your business address again. With this service, you can receive mail and packages from USPS, UPS, FedEx, and more.
Additionally, Stable offers virtual mailbox software that is easy to use. Whenever you receive mail, Stable automatically scans and digitizes the envelope. From there, you can choose to have a particular envelope opened, and its content scanned for later review. You can also mark mail for shredding to safely dispose of it or have it forwarded to another address.
Stable also offers tools that make sorting and organization easy. Set up automations to perform specific actions when receiving mail from certain senders. Search tools let you quickly find mail in your digital mailbox, and you can organize mail by tags. With Stable’s web dashboard, you can set notifications to alert you whenever mail is received or scanned. You can even collaborate by inviting team members to view mail.
Anytime Mailbox offers services in 1,876 locations around the globe, which makes it a good choice as both a virtual mailbox and a physical business address. While most available addresses are in the United States, you can also get an address in many larger countries like Australia, Canada, and China.
With this service, you can access your mail online 24/7 from anywhere in the world — and on any device. Anytime Mailbox will open and scan your mail, or you can select envelopes and packages for forwarding. This service will also deposit checks for you.
Earth Class Mail is another virtual mailbox service that receives your mail, digitizes it as PDFs, and gives you online access to it. With Earth Class Mail, there are a couple of different options. Businesses can use MailRoom, a virtual mailbox app that handles sorting, opening, scanning, and check deposits. Small businesses and individuals can use MailBox, which gives you a virtual address plus scanning services.
Earth Class Mail doesn’t have quite as many address locations available as some other alternatives, but with more than 80 locations in the United States, it should be easy to find an address in the location you need.
PostScan Mail is a service that offers access to more than 600 mailing addresses for both business and personal use. Once you select an address, PostScan receives mail and packages, then scans the envelope or front of the package to make it available to you online. From there, you can choose what to do with the mail — open and scan it, recycle it, or forward it to another address. You can also stop in to pick up mail in person.
As to addresses, you can choose between virtual business addresses — which are physical street addresses — or a virtual P.O. Box, depending on your needs.
US Global Mail offers some unique features that set it apart from some other options. As far as standard features, this service lets you choose from about 30 U.S. addresses where you can send your incoming mail. US Global Mail scans envelopes, saves them to the cloud, and from there, you can print it, ship it, or choose to have checks deposited.
Among more unique offerings, US Global Mail automatically pre-sorts and recycles junk mail so that you don’t have to sift through it yourself. You can save up to 80% on international shipping through this service provider. US Global Mail also lets you forward mail from multiple home and business addresses to your virtual address, which consolidates all of your mail in one easy to access spot.
iPostal1 offers more than 2,500 physical address locations from all over the world. Use iPostal1 to check mail while traveling or to create an established business address in a particular location. Either way, this online postal mailbox service receives your mail, scans, and uploads it so you can view it online anytime and anywhere, and lets you forward mail or deposit checks.
iPostal1 also offers something unique: a business phone and fax through their Virtual Office Plans. This gets you a local or toll-free phone number complete with a customized greeting, call forwarding, digital voicemail, and a dedicated electronic fax line.
Most of the other options on this list are marketed as business solutions that may also offer some services for personal use. Traveling Mailbox is a bit different in that regard in that it’s geared toward individuals, RVers and van life enthusiasts, travelers, expats, and small businesses.
As such, this service does offer much of the usual functionality — a real physical street address that receives your mail for you. Traveling Mailbox scans the outside of all envelopes, then uploads them and lets you choose what to do with each piece. You can have it opened and scanned, shredded, returned to sender, or stored. Traveling Mailbox will also forward mail and packages to an address of your choosing so that you can pick it up.
There are addresses in 50 mailbox locations to choose from, and this service is available to both US and international customers.
Ready to try the best virtual mailbox service in the business? Stable offers you not just a physical mailbox address, but also the cloud-based features you need to efficiently manage business mail, packages, checks, and more.
The best part? You can get set up in just minutes. Click here to get started.