Are you in the market for a virtual mailbox service but are unsure if they are worth the cost or how to choose one? Understandably, you’ll want to scrutinize every business cost to ensure a return on investment. With this in mind, you’ll learn about the several benefits of virtual mailbox services to help you understand their value.
Additionally, many virtual mailbox services offer comparable services, so how do you distinguish between them? We will break down the noteworthy factors you should consider before choosing.
Virtual Mailbox Service Advantages
Now let’s look at the benefits of virtual mailbox services to determine if they are a good choice for your needs. After all, you’ll want to justify the cost of these services before parting with your money.
- Legitimate commercial address: such services provide you with a real address used for receiving business letters without revealing your real identity. Therefore, you can stay anonymous and avoid the public from harassing you. Also, physical addresses are a requirement of CAN-SPAM to send email, so it’s a way of proving you’re not a spammer.
- Eco-friendly: choosing to receive your mail digitally avoids adding paper to the transportation network. One or two pieces of paper might not make a difference, but it adds up if you receive a large amount of mail over several years.
- Saves time: in business time is money, so you need to cut down processes wasting your employee time. Receiving and opening physical mail takes significantly longer than doing the same with digital versions. Hence, hiring a virtual mailbox service frees up employee resources to work on other tasks.
- Lower costs: businesses that receive large amounts of letters need employees to process them. Also, the letter must be stored somewhere on commercial property with adequate security to avoid breaches. This requires space and extra security investments such as secure cabinets and safes. Whereas virtual mailbox services can store your letters in a secure location and at a cheaper cost.
- Multiple recipients: physical mail can only be sent to one recipient at a time. This is not productive if multiple employees in your business need to see a letter as soon as it arrives. However, competitive virtual mailbox services can send that letter to multiple recipients to improve efficiency. For example, Package Three of services supports up to 20 recipients.
Noteworthy Factors When Choosing a Virtual Mailbox Service
Do you love the benefits offered by virtual mailbox services and are ready to start using one? Hold on, before subscribing to the first service you come across, you need to understand how to choose the best one. Here are a bunch of factors that should be considered when looking for a trusted virtual mailbox service.
What features are available?
Not every virtual mailbox service offers the same features, so you must find one that matches your expectations. Here is a list of the features you should look for:
- Ability to eliminate junk email.
- Processing of your mail, which includes opening and digitizing.
- Storage facilities that have enough space for your needs.
- Can store documents for as long as you need.
- Provides access to scanned documents in multiple formats, including popular ones like PDF.
Where can you receive mail?
Do you want to receive your physical mail at your chosen time and in any location worldwide? Then look for a service that can forward the mail to your location. Let’s say you are going on holiday for a few weeks to Iceland but want to keep an eye on an important letter that you’re expecting.
Iceland would be a tricky country to receive physical mail quickly – especially if you’re staying somewhere remote. However, with internet access, you can instantly read the letter as the virtual mailbox service processes it.
What are the security features?
Mail fraud has increased dramatically during the last few years, with around 177,000 complaints through the first 9 months of 2020 alone. Therefore, outsourcing mail security to professional services reduces the burden on your business. Ideally, the facility should have trusted employees and no security loopholes where anyone can walk in and access the mail.
Furthermore, the digital security of digitized mail must have modern encryption protocols to avoid hackers having an easy time accessing the files. Also, your personal account for accessing mail remotely should also be properly protected. This includes features like 2-factor authentication, which is a reliable way of avoiding unwanted logins.
What is the mail access speed?
Firstly, competent and organized virtual mailbox services will process the incoming mail on the same day. Therefore, your business can access the mail quickly and without unnecessary delay. It helps if the service provides a notification system for when mail is received and digitized for your viewing pleasure.
However, if you wish to have the mail forwarded physically, then a fast courier must be utilized to ensure you get mail quickly. Ask about their courier services and the average delivery time to locations worldwide to get a better idea of delivery times.
What is the price?
Compare the prices of several virtual mailbox services to find one that is competitive. Remember that you generally get what you pay for, so it might be worth paying more for extra features that could prove to be priceless for your business.
The average cost of virtual mailbox services for business ranges from $20 to $70, and according to Bankrate the cost for PO boxes go up to $75. However, you’re getting far fewer features for the latter. Therefore, you get a better deal with virtual mailboxes than PO boxes.
Final thoughts
Now that you understand how to choose the best virtual mailbox services for your business, it’s time to start looking for one. We recommend you concentrate on proven companies with a long list of satisfied customers.
The virtual mailbox industry was worth $1.5 billion in 2021 and is expected to rise to $2.2 billion by 2028. Therefore, you can expect these services to continue innovating and providing better service for businesses.
