7 Best Virtual Mailboxes for Expats and Travelers

If you’re searching for a way to manage your mail while abroad, fortunately, you don’t have to look any further.

First off, you’ll learn about the basics of virtual mailbox services and how to purchase the best one. Afterward, I’ll cover nine of the best services available. That way, you have a better idea of the best services around.

How Did I Select This List of Virtual Mailboxes?

To select the virtual mailing services on this list, I first spent hours researching the service’s features, FAQs, and reviews from other users of each provider. Moreover, I dove into forums to see how people reacted to each service without incentives.

I began with 11 services, but after tinkering with their website’s settings, features, and customer service, I started eliminating options because I felt they weren’t good enough to present.

Keep in mind that while I use affiliate links for a couple of providers, it didn’t influence my opinion of their service in any way. While I appreciate making money, I’d rather have a service improve their product. Moreover, I don’t want to mislead any of y’all into making a purchase that you’ll regret.

What Is A Virtual Mailbox?

A virtual mailbox service gives you a physical mailing address to accept letters, documents, and packages. Moreover, these services will forward the mail to wherever you are staying. Whether it’s somewhere within the states or abroad.

Related: What Is Virtual Mailbox Service? A Comprehensive Guide

How Does a Virtual Mailbox Work?

When signing up for a virtual mailbox service, you will receive a street address in countries and provinces/states within the provider’s network. Every location these providers use is registered with the Commercial Mail Receiving Agency (CMRA). That means private businesses can receive mail on behalf of a third party.

Once the provider receives your mail, they will take a picture of it and send it to your inbox. That way, you can read your mail online. From there, you have a couple of options. One, you can have the CMRA business forward your mail with newly paid postage. Or two, you can have them discard or shred your mail.

Typically, virtual mailbox services include:

• A physical mailing address and postal code to receive any incoming mail.
• A virtual mailbox, which is an online address that you can use for any outgoing mail.
• An anonymous phone number lets people and businesses know how to contact you without giving out your personal information.

Related: How Does a Virtual Mailbox Work? Don’t Rent One Until You Know

Ultimate Virtual Mailbox Buyer’s Guide

With so many options for virtual mailbox services on the market, it can be hard to know which one is best for you. That’s why I’ve created criteria to help you pick the best virtual mailing service.

Pay Attention to Obvious and Secret Fees

Virtual mailing services vary in pricing depending on the package you choose. For instance, most plans charge more whenever you receive more mailing items. However, some providers may also charge more for additional features like multi-user login.

If you’re worried about receiving an unpredictable number of mailing items, providers will often charge (x) amount per additional envelope scanned once you reach your plan’s mailing item threshold.

Virtual mailbox services offer a variety of payment methods, such as credit cards and payment processors like Payoneer and PayPal. However, almost all virtual mailbox providers won’t accept cryptocurrency.

If you want to protect your financial privacy when paying, I recommend using a debit card disguising services like Privacy.

Another factor to consider is that some providers will charge additional fees for mail forwarding, receiving packaging, or accessing physical mail collection points. Also, some services may charge a deposit when subscribing to their service.

Access to Remote Mail Management Tools

Tools like these allow employees or people living abroad to access their company’s network files as if they were at the office by logging into a web interface using a remote desktop.

The best providers offer more than just this function, such as calendars, address books, and word processing software preloaded and ready to use.

Scanning service providers offer a means to scan documents and send them as email attachments or faxes (note that some providers will require a monthly fee).

Amount of Mail You Receive Monthly

Some mail services come with a preset quota, which can be an issue if you exceed the limit and incur higher costs. If possible, estimate how much mail that you’ll receive monthly. That way, you can compare plans to see who offers the best rates for the number of mailing items you receive monthly.

I’ve mentioned mailing items a few times so far. These items include envelopes, packages, magazines, postcards, letter packs, and more.

Does junk mail contribute toward a virtual mailbox’s monthly threshold? It depends. Most providers don’t include junk mail and will dispose of it for free from the research I’ve done.

Customer Service Availability: Will They Help?

Excellent customer service should be a top priority when choosing a virtual mailbox service. You’ll want to be able to get in touch with someone if and when something goes wrong—and not spend hours on hold waiting for answers from customer service representatives.

Location of the Address: One of the Most Important Factors

If you require a specific country, state, or city, you should check the service to see that it offers one in an area that you would like. For example, some services are limited to a few states, while others may offer to many different states and countries.

Check Deposit Services: Essential for Receiving Checks

If you’re abroad, this service won’t benefit you that much. However, most, if not all, virtual mail services offer check deposits by mail. This means they can forward checks you receive in the states to your bank for deposit.

However, you will want to ensure the service offers to track. That way, you will know where your check’s going.

7 Best Virtual Mail Services to Use in 2022

Virtual mail services are the future. However, they won’t be a part of your future if you can’t find one you like. Either use the criteria I previously mentioned or create your own to determine whether each virtual service suits your needs.

1. PostScan Mail: Best Customer Service Availability

PostScan Mail offers a fair number of features for the price they charge for their subscriptions. It’s a great plan for someone who doesn’t receive much mail, doesn’t mind a lack of check deposits and access to various CMRA addresses.

They offer iOS and Android mobile applications that have a decent user interface. However, they don’t offer integrations with software like Evernote or Dropbox.

Unlike other services, PostScan Mail has customer service available on the weekends (PST time zone). So, if you have any issues that need immediate customer service intervention on the weekend, you won’t have to worry.

You can choose among three plans. The differences in each plan lie in the free incoming mail you receive, scanning of mail items, and recipients. You’ll need to pay an additional fee per mail item received after surpassing the free threshold.

You’ll also need to pay fees for additional services for features like paper shredding, mail forwarding, and at least eight other items.

They don’t offer the best value for various items. However, if you’re looking for readily available customer service and more addresses than I could comprehend, PostScan Mail is great. Speaking of locations, here are all of the countries you can have an address in:

1. USA (43 states)
2. Austria
3. Canada
4. Ukraine
5. Grenada
6. Czechia
7. Switzerland
8. Singapore
9. England
10. Slovakia
11. Northern Ireland (Newry)

2. Physical Address: Best for Free Secure Shredding

Physical Address has been operational for over eight years and doesn’t outsource their address locations. That means you don’t have to worry about an unknown CMRA handling your mail. Moreover, you get cool features like Evernote integration and mobile apps, making dealing with Physical Address convenient.

Also, with unlimited storage in Physical Address’ cloud storage, you don’t have to worry about running out of storage space for your mail.

With each plan, you have a limited number of free envelopes—the packaging—and content—the stuff inside the envelope—scans. After you meet your plan’s free scan threshold, you’ll have to pay an additional fee per piece of mail and/or its contents. The plan you choose doesn’t lower each additional plan’s price.

Physical Address only offers customer service on weekdays (Pacific time zone) through email or phone. 

Physical Address doesn’t have the widest selection of addresses. Moreover, you’ll need to pay extra depending on which city you use. Anyway, the locations they support include the following:

1. Wall Street, New York (most expensive)
2. Boise, Idaho (cheapest)
3. Las Vegas, Nevada
4. Dallas, Texas
5. Atlanta, Georgia
6. Orlando, Florida
7. Laguna Beach, California

Fortunately, all of their locations come with the same features. So if you’re just looking for a cheap address anywhere in the US, I recommend choosing Physical Address as the provider, Boise, Idaho as the location, and purchasing an annual plan. You’ll save 20% by paying yearly.

Otherwise, regarding fees, they have four plans. Each gives you an additional 50 envelope scans and (x) content scans. If you opt for the two highest-tier plans, you can get a suite number that ends in zero. Also, if you choose any plan that’s not the lowest tier, multiple users can log into your account.

The prices of additional mail scans that exceed your threshold remain the same no matter what plan you choose.

3. iPostal1: Best for Location Availability

iPosal1 is a typical virtual mailbox provider. They receive your mail items and can either forward them or dispose of your mail. A nice feature of this platform is that you can receive email alerts whenever iPostal1 receives a mailing item meant for you.

When signing up for an account, you must remember that not all addresses offer international forwarding. Moreover, each physical address comes with its own supported features and set of fees. Fortunately, from my experience, I didn’t have to pay extra to get features like international forwarding.

While you don’t have to pay for mail disposal, you must pay for secure shredding. If you receive a lot of mail and are privacy-conscious, I don’t recommend this service. However, if you’re a business, have disposable income, and don’t mind the 2 GB of cloud storage, you may like iPostal1. 

As far as remotely managing your mail goes, they will either take a picture of it and send it to the cloud storage attached to your account, or you can pay to have it converted into a PDF. The PDF feature is nice because it’s searchable. But that’s every PDF. So, the amount that you’re paying to get these files is a little too much for my taste.

iPostal1 has four plans. The lowest tier plan allows you to receive 30 mail items per month, while the highest tier, Gold, will enable you to receive 240 items. Fortunately, they don’t consider junk mail as a mailing item and dispose of it for free. However, once you surpass your plan’s maximum mail receiving allowance, you’ll need to pay $0.35 per mailing item.

You can either pay for plans monthly or annually. With iPostal1’s annual plan, they give you a couple of months for free. So if you opt for this service, I’d recommend testing them with a 1-month plan and afterward switching to an annual plan to save the most money.

Another thing that I liked about iPostal1 is that they don’t charge sign-up fees. Moreover, they don’t require you to adhere to a contract.

They’ll give you up to $100 in insurance for free. Then, afterward, they’ll charge a small fee for every additional hundred dollars worth of insurance you want to add.

Speaking of additional fees, you’ll need to pay more money for receiving faxes, shredding and scanning mail, picking up your mail at a physical address, and extended storage.

You can pay a fee to deposit up to five checks, including mail tracking.

If you’re interested in becoming an iPostal1 customer, you can either call them or send them an email and receive a response during a business day (EST time zone). However, if you have an account and are locked out of it during the weekend, you’re out of luck.

iPostal1 has over 2199 commercial and residential street addresses around the world. As mentioned, they have addresses in 49 states (excluding Alaska) and 11 countries outside of the U.S. These supported countries include:

1. England
2. Ukraine
3. Switzerland
4. Singapore
5. Spain
6. Italy
7. Slovakia
8. Czech Republic
9. Canada
10. People’s Republic of China: including Hong Kong addresses
11. Austria

If you need a business address, you can use one of their coworking space or office building addresses. They have these in select states and a couple of countries.

If you want to manage your mail on the go, iPostal1 offers an Android and iOS mobile app. Unfortunately, the app doesn’t have the best user experience. If possible, I recommend saving your phone’s space and sticking to using your desktop if possible.

4. VirtualPostMail: Best for Address Verification

VirtualMailPost offers some great tools for small businesses. They offer unlimited extra mail pieces on most plans, free secure shredding, a Delaware address, and a decent number of free scans. However, each additional scan they perform is a little pricey—as are their plans. But, if you receive a lot of non-junk mail, you’ll find this plan useful.

Also, if you’re not a U.S. resident, you can sign up for VPM. However, you will likely need a notary for Form 1583.

You can use what they label as Smart Address Tags to pre-route your mail by adding letter-based tags to your mailboxes. Then, whenever a mail item arrives at the mailbox with the particular tag, the receiver will process the mail per the tag’s instructions.

On the Starter plan, you receive 25 free mail items per month, and on the other plans, you get unlimited mail. You’ll also get up to 150 free scans per month. If you need more than that, prepare to pay quite a bit per additional scan.

Unfortunately, VPM doesn’t offer 24/7 support. So, you’re screwed if something happens on the weekend. Their support is only available during business days (PDT time zone). As for their contact methods, you can contact them via email, contact form, and phone.

VirtualPostMail has only a few locations, Claymont (Delaware), Henderson (Nevada), and Walnut (California). Great if you need an address in either of these three states. Otherwise, you don’t have much access to locations throughout the globe.

Speaking of Delaware, VPM has a course that will teach you how to form a Delaware LLC—for a fee, of course.

They have an interesting fee structure. First, there are four mailbox plans. They’re pricey. But fortunately, if you pay for any plan that’s not the Starter, you don’t have to pay an additional fee per piece of mail received after exceeding the free mail threshold.

This virtual mailbox service will also charge extra scans and check deposits.

VPM also has TruLease. TruLease costs are significantly more than the mailbox plans. However, you save a significant amount if you need an address that you need to prove you’re staying at. For instance, VPM will give you a lease agreement and phone verification. You could pay for a utility bill add-on for an additional verification form.

On top of the verified address, you benefit from every feature included in the mailbox plans.

5. US Global Mail: Best for Check Deposits

US Global Mailbox doesn’t offer the most address locations, but they’re an amazing and affordable service that offers free check deposits, among other features.

Also, according to US Global Mail, junk mail senders will recognize your address as a virtual address, so they won’t waste time trying to send you junk mail. If you do happen to receive junk mail, you don’t have to worry about incurring charges because of the company’s unlimited exterior mail scans.

Both of their plans also offer same-day shipping, which means they’ll ship the package the same day they receive it.

US Global Mail doesn’t appear to have any mobile applications or notable integrations. So if you’re looking for a convenient way to access this website, your only choice is to use their website.

As with most of the virtual mailing services on this list, US Global Mail doesn’t have customer service available on the weekends (Central time zone). However, they offer an international and U.S. customer service phone number and a contact form to reach their support agents.

Fortunately, you can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel your plans at any time, which reduces the amount of service you’ll need.

Unfortunately, you won’t have many with US Global Mail if you’re looking for a wide selection of addresses. For example, you can only get a single address in Houston, Texas. However, they guarantee that your mail is sent to a secure facility. They have continual monitoring and don’t outsource their addresses.

While each plan offers unlimited free exterior mailing scans, none of their three plans give you free interior mail scanning. First, you’ll need to pay a flat fee for the mail item. Afterward, you have to pay a fee per page scanned.

The differences between each plan lie in the mail scanning time; the time mail US Global Mail stores physical and digital mail, and the ability to add family members.

Regarding additional fees, US Global Mail has four: item pickup from warehouses, bundling items, and letters for shipping and inspecting package contents.

If you’re into helping the environment, US Global Mail also plants a tree in your name when you sign up.

6. Anytime Mailbox: Best Value and Locations

Anytime Mailbox has a relatively complex way of choosing a plan. However, it enables you to fine-tune your choices. For example, some plans charge more and offer additional features, while others don’t cost as much and eliminate features you may never use (e.g., check deposit).

Otherwise, this virtual mailing service is fantastic for anyone who wants an address in a good portion of countries for a reasonable price.

Does Anytime Mailbox have mobile apps? Yep. They’re also pleasant on the eyes too. Their mobile applications have a decent user experience and allow you to manage all of your mail on the move. If you’re a mail center operator, they also have an app for that.

Unlike other virtual address services, Anytime Mailbox offers live chat customer support available seven days a week, 5 AM through midnight (PST time zone). Moreover, you can call them in England or the U.S. 

Anytime Mailbox has CMRA addresses in over 29 countries around the globe. Moreover, you can have access to different cities throughout countries other than the U.S., which many other services don’t offer.

Their plans are a bit complex. First, you have to select the city you want to see whether the mail center has the features you need. Some cities will charge more than others.

From there, you can choose between four plans. Fortunately, they offer a plan to get unlimited mail and scan up to 100 pages. Other than incoming mail and page scans, each plan offers identical features.

7. Earth Class Mail: Best for Web Application Integration

I can’t recommend Earth Class Mail for too many scenarios. However, it made it onto this list because it provides integrations with Dropbox, Google Drive, Xero, Quickbooks, and Bill.com. Moreover, they offer mobile applications for ease of access.

However, despite my bombardment of criticism, Earth Class Mail designs its services to be HIPAA compliant. HIPAA, or Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, is a federal law that protects individuals’ medical information.

Also, they destroy unwanted documents on-site under supervision, which is excellent for privacy.

While Earth Class Mail offers a business address, I don’t think it’s the best because you don’t receive any free mail items. Instead, you must always pay a pretty hefty fee per mailing item.

All non-business plans include 50 free mail items per month, with an additional fee per item after surpassing the threshold. With the business plan, there aren’t any free mailing items. However, while you pay significantly more as a small business, you can rest assured that your mail is more secure with Earth Class Mail.

You can only contact their customer service via email, phone, or through your account’s “help” tab. Moreover, you won’t find any help during their weekends, as their agents are only available Monday–Friday (Central time zone).

Unless you choose the Premium MailBox plan, you can only select Beaverton, Oregon, as your address. If you don’t want an actual address, you could opt for one of their virtual PO boxes. If you’re going to add “premium” street addresses in:

• Texas
• California
• Chicago
• Florida
• New York

If you need a business address, Earth Class Mail’s addresses are CAN-SPAM—Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act—compliant. That means you can legally use them in email footers.

Frequently Asked Questions About Virtual Address Services

The following will answer some of the most commonly asked questions about virtual address services.

Are Virtual Mailboxes Worth It? It Depends

Virtual mailboxes are not for everyone, but they can be a good option for specific needs.

Keep in mind that my opinions and needs will likely differ from yours. Therefore, I recommend using this list as a starting point and the buying guide as criteria for subscribing to your virtual mailing service.

However, if you like any of these providers, check if they offer money-back guarantees. If so, it doesn’t hurt to experiment with their services and see if it’s something that’ll help your business or personal life.

Related Posts