Virtual Mailbox: How to Get Your Postal Mail when Traveling Abroad

No one has embraced the all-digital lifestyle more than our band of globe-trotting freelancers and entrepreneurs. We run our businesses on laptops and wi-fi from beaches, villas, cruise ships…and airport terminals, parked cars, and rural bus stations.

We do everything via email, Trello, Slack, and other messaging and organizational apps. We hold conferences using Skype, Zoom, or GoToMeeting. Living the nomadic life means we use everything we can to stay flexible, available, and above all, free.

But the rest of the world hasn’t entirely caught up to us.

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Death to Snail Mail

No matter how hard we try, there are still companies and government agencies who insist on recording a real street address and sending snail mail to that home address. Paper messages that have to travel to a fixed, physical location, and that often needs a prompt response.

The need to have a physical address to receive mail is the one remaining thorn in our ever-roaming paws, and for a long time, there wasn’t a good solution.

You can have the local post office hold your mail and accept packages, but when you’re gone for weeks or months at a time the odds are good you’ll miss something important.

You can receive postal mail by having it forwarded to a physical address anywhere in the world, but that type of postal service has a host of problems: expensive international forwarding fees, mail that doesn’t keep up with your frequent travels and multiple destinations, and the need to plan ahead for packages delivered instead of enjoying spontaneous trips.

You can have the package delivered or postal mail sent to the actual street address of a friend or family member, then ask them to look for anything important. However, the privacy and reliability concerns are real especially when you’re not the primary box holder.

I’ve been doing this awhile, and I’ve tried practically all solutions to this mailing address conundrum. That is, I’ve explored how to get a PO box without an address.

The best solution I’ve found, far and away, is a virtual mailbox.

Short of not having any snail mail sent to a permanent address or commercial address to begin with—which is still a dream of mine, but one the world has yet to accommodate—it’s the best thing out there when it comes to staying up to date with all of your important correspondence.

There are a few virtual mailbox services out there that can handle general delivery requirements like receive mails and package receiving services. But, not all virtual address providers are created equal. So, I do have a favorite, and I’ll let you know who it is in a second.

First, I want to explain the concept of a virtual mailbox just so we’re all on the same page.

(Page! Get it!?…OK, moving on…)

How Virtual Mailboxes Work

This modern “postal service” is pretty simple, really, like most ingenious things are.

You get a mailbox and a real street address provided by your virtual mailbox service, which you can claim as your business address or office address if you’re a business owner and want to appear more professional. When sending out your “street address,” you might want to add business hours to your postal address information for receiving packages to amp up your professional image.

This is a real, honest-to-goodness street address where you can get your parcel delivered. The USPS acknowledges this mailing address and will actually deliver packages to the “home address” you provided along with all of your mail.

It’s just like how you receive mail via a post office box with a physical address or a private mailbox with a mailing address that you typically rent from the USPS or any number of PO box address providers.

The key difference is that the top virtual mailbox providers give you a completely unique street address, which looks more professional and inspires a great deal more trust than a package acceptance service provider or post office boxes.

Another difference with a virtual mailbox service is what happens after the mail is delivered, though. Instead of simply holding your mail until you either come pick it up or have it forwarded to a new location, a virtual mailbox service opens and digitally scans your mail (ensuring complete privacy, of course), then uploads the digital images to an email inbox so you can read your mail from anywhere in the world.

You can also have your postal mail forwarded to a mailing address or a home address, of course, and packages delivered can be sent along wherever you happen to be, too. I find that the more we become digital, the less I need to physically forward my mail. But this is a handy option.

A quick bulleted recap for the article skimmers:

A virtual mailbox company contracts with a physical location to aggregate postal mail in one location, in multiple cities.
The postal mail is received and the front cover of the mail is scanned.
You then receive an email letting you know that the mail has arrived.

Some Types of Postal Mail You Might Receive (and don’t want to miss):

Client Checks
Bank Statements (go digital if you can)
Mortgage Statements
Student Loan Documents
Legal Documents

Virtual Mailbox Signup Process

When you sign up for a virtual mailbox service, here is the signup process in action step by step:

Select an address in one of the designated pick up cities, location, or even just a nearby state. For example, I have a mailbox in New York. I live there part-time, but I don’t have to in order to have a local address. It can also help make your business look more official by having a local mailbox (versus PO Box) especially in a world renowned city even when you’re in a completely different location.
Select a plan that suits your needs and budget
Give out your new address to clients and agencies
Receive an email when new mail is received
Decide if you want to open it (have it scanned), download, delete, recycle, or forward to a physical address.

Important: Make sure to include your MAILBOX number or the mail will not be delivered.

Virtual Mailbox Services: EarthClassMail vs. Traveling Mailbox

I have personally tried two of the leading virtual mailbox services: