A virtual mailbox is a subscription: a company rents a real street address, opens your mail, scans it, and stores or forwards it on request. That is a different product from a USPS PO Box, which is a locker you check in person, and from a UPS Store mailbox, which hands mail across a counter but does not scan anything. Entry plans from the providers checked on 2026-08-31 start between 9.99 USD and 39 USD a month, and every one of them adds per-piece charges once you go past what the plan includes.
The fee buys a person opening and scanning your mail, not a bigger slot to check.
| Provider | Plan | Monthly price | What's included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anytime Mailbox | Entry tier (price set per mail center location) | 9.99 USD | 30 incoming mail items, 5 open-and-scan pages, 1 recipient, unlimited online storage |
| LegalZoom Virtual Mail formerly Earth Class Mail | Starter MailBox | 39 USD | 1 address, 2 recipients, 5 digitized items a month |
| Essentials MailBox | 59 USD | 1 address, 5 recipients, 25 digitized items a month | |
| Premium MailBox | 119 USD | 1 address, 20 recipients, 50 digitized items a month | |
| Startup MailRoom | 179 USD | 1 address, unlimited recipients, 100 digitized items a month | |
| Business MailRoom | 299 USD | 1 address, unlimited recipients, 250 digitized items a month |
Anytime Mailbox operates as a marketplace: the company sets a starting price and the exact figure depends on which of its 2,500-plus mail center locations you rent from. LegalZoom's Virtual Mail plans are flat nationwide. Both were read live on 2026-08-31.
Anytime Mailbox includes 5 open-and-scan pages a month, then charges 0.50 USD per page. LegalZoom's MailBox plans charge 0.15 USD per color page once a document runs past 20 pages; its MailRoom plans charge 0.10 USD per page black and white or 0.15 USD in color, no free allowance stated.
Every provider checked bills this apart from the monthly fee. Anytime Mailbox charges 5 USD per shipping bundle plus postage. LegalZoom charges 1.25 USD per domestic shipment plus postage, 5 USD flat for international plus postage, or 10 USD flat to expedite plus postage.
Anytime Mailbox charges 10 USD per person to add a recipient beyond the plan's included count. LegalZoom deposits a check for 10 USD each without a subscription, or bundles 5 checks a month into a separate 39 USD monthly add-on. LegalZoom's shredding is free; Anytime Mailbox lists shredding as a feature but does not state a separate fee for it.
A USPS PO Box and a UPS Store mailbox both just hold mail until you show up. A virtual mailbox is built around not showing up: the point of paying more is that someone else opens the envelope and emails you a scan the same day. That makes it a poor swap for a PO Box used mainly for bills and cheques, and a good fit for anyone traveling, running a business from an address that is not their home, or managing mail for a property they are not physically at.
Because a virtual mailbox is issued as a real street address rather than a USPS box number, it behaves like the PMB line covered on our PO Box vs UPS Store mailbox guide: UPS, FedEx and USPS all deliver to it, the provider signs on your behalf, and the item lands in the same scan-and-store queue as your mail. The full carrier-by-carrier rule for a plain USPS PO Box, which none of those carriers can reach directly, is on our PO Box vs home mailbox guide.
Entry-tier plans from the providers checked on 2026-08-31 run 9.99 USD to 39 USD a month for a real street address plus a set number of scanned mail items. Business-volume tiers from the same providers run 119 USD to 299 USD a month. On top of the plan, expect per-piece charges once you go past the included scan count and a separate fee any time you ask the provider to physically forward an item, plus postage.
A street address you can hand out as your own, a fixed number of incoming mail items the provider will open and scan each month, a smaller number of scan pages before per-page charges start, and online storage for the images. Anytime Mailbox's entry plan, checked 2026-08-31, bundles 30 incoming items and 5 open-and-scan pages a month with one recipient and unlimited online storage.
It is billed separately from the monthly plan at every provider checked. Anytime Mailbox charges 5 USD per shipping bundle plus postage. The LegalZoom plans that absorbed Earth Class Mail charge 1.25 USD per domestic shipment plus postage, 5 USD flat for an international shipment plus postage, or 10 USD flat to expedite, all read 2026-08-31.
Usually not, if all you need is somewhere for mail to land. A PO Box is priced per ZIP code by USPS with no scanning built in, and our PO Box cost guide has the size-by-size breakdown. A virtual mailbox costs more because the monthly fee is paying someone to open, scan and store your mail for you, and because it works as a real street address, which a PO Box does not.
Yes. A virtual mailbox is issued as a real street address with a suite or unit number, not a USPS PO Box, so it takes UPS, FedEx and USPS parcels the same way a UPS Store mailbox does. The provider signs for the package and logs it against your account.