Make your paper mail electronic – read anywhere.

[UPDATE: 1/27/10] Lots of angry people but I still use it!]

I just got off the phone with one of their client support executives and got the skinny on how the new plans work. I encourage you to read my review below regardless of the most recent changes to the ECM services.

• My plan was $27.99 per month and now it will be $19.95 per month but won’t include 50 scanned pages.
• I’ll now pay $1.50 per scanned mail piece but this includes up to 50 pages per mail piece and $1 more for an additional 50 pages. (So a 90 page piece of mail would cost $2.50 to scan) On average I scan about 6 mail pieces per month out of all my mail. This means that I’ll pay close to what I was paying before after my scanning charges.
• Shredding used to be free (recycling still is) but now costs $4.95 per month. I always liked to be able to shred certain documents with credit card numbers, etc. I was told over the phone, though, that the recycling is securely boxed up and shipped to the recycling facility where it is immediately destroyed. Not left laying around. Interpret this as you will.
• They have a service that deposits any check into any U.S. bank for $24.95 per month. Ouch! I only receive a couple of checks a month. Most of my clients ACH my fees to me.
• The plan features can be switched on month to month. This means that you can use the check deposit feature one month and not the next. Same for the shredding feature.

Over all the service still seems very useful to me and I’m going to stick with it. Just for perspective I get about 30 pieces of mail per month, scan 6 of those on average, and get 2 – 3 checks from clients.

HOWEVER! Most users who’ve commented here who were with ECM before the pricing change seem pretty pissed! Costs have gone up significantly for the small business user who needs to scan most of their mail. The only reason it’s still costing me about the same is that I have the Seattle walk up address and can go pick up my mail in bulk twice per month. I still like the convenience of having the downtown address, the scans if I need them, and a centralized location to receive my mail.

REVIEW

I’ve been using Earth Class Mail since the beginning of August 2007 for all my business mail and some of our personal mail. At first glance this service seems awesome. The premise of having all your mail go to a secure processing facility to be processed for access at anytime and from anywhere is very appealing to anyone who spends anytime working from a remote location or traveling. What’s more, I reasoned, it’s a lot cheaper than using the USPS mail forwarding service which in my case was costing me $40 per month minimum.(I believe this is the standard minimum cost for anyone and just results in having all your mail physically forwarded.)

In the past I would be traveling for an extended period of time only to come home to find a monstrous stack of mail waiting for me usually including one or two time sensitive documents gathering dust. I think people assume, when you’re running a business, that paper mail sent to a business address will be received immediately so they don’t think to notify the recipient that it’s coming. That’s just not the case these days for the mobile worker or frequent vacationer.

How Earth Class Mail Works

Rather than go into a lengthy written explanation I’ll refer to this helpful diagram. Click on it to see it full size.

Setting up the new Earth Class Mail account

Setting up my accounts was relatively straight forward although I was a little confused about exactly how to fill out the form 1583. Form 1583 is a U.S. Postal Service form that gives Earth Class Mail Corporation the authority to receive mail on your behalf. The U.S. Postal Service requires Form 1583 as a fraud prevention measure. Obviously it’s a necessary step but I think ECM could do a little more to make filling out the form correctly easier. Perhaps a step by step visual tour? I’m pretty government form and tech savvy and it required at least two phone calls to ECM support to figure out how to get it right for my four business entities.

UPDATE 9/19/08: Earth Class Mail has recently made this a whole lot easier with their 1583 Wizard

How the billing works

Plans are charged month to month. They no longer have the 6-month minimum contract periods nor do you have to make an up front deposit to cover your potential scans. You pay for scans when you need them against your credit card on file. The picture below is their new service offering as of August 2009 although they may take a few weeks to roll out these exact plans. I’m told that if you signup today under one of their legacy plans you’ll eventually be converted to one of these two plans. Please be aware that the plans at the site are not the same as below. But this is where it’s going for everyone regardless if you sign up under another plan today.

After speaking with the ECM representative today I’m convinced that most small businesses will be just fine with the Essential Plan. You may be thinking that you’ll need to do a lot of mail scanning. And perhaps you will. But I think you’ll find that not only do you rarely need physical copies of your mail, you often don’t even need to know what’s inside your mail. I know this sounds stupid on one hand but I think you’ll have the same experience I’ve had – most of what I get is just not needed because of the fact that most of my bills, banking, invoicing, and communications is happening electronically these days. Even so, scanning up to 10 pieces of mail per month just isn’t that expensive if you have the Essential Plan.

For larger businesses that have more than five employees who need to receive mail in their names and/or plan to have checks electronically deposited you’ll want to go with the Professional Plan. You’ll also get the scan downloader for batch downloads of your scanned documents. All accounts will be able to download their scanned mail but you’ll have to do it piece by piece without the downloader.

My favorite feature

It has been absolutely refreshing to be able to shred (UPDATE: As of 8/1/09 it appears that there’s going to be a $4.95 per month charge in addition to any plan you may have to shred mail but it may not be any more secure than just recycling but I wouldn’t bet on it.) or recycle my “virtual” mail at will.  I relish the opportunity to recycle all the annoying credit card applications and advertisements that I used to have to haul out to my trash every week. It’s also been enlightening to see how often I don’t actually need paper copies of actual mail. I’ve been seeking to go paperless for years and this allows me to preempt the step of having to scan mail I want to keep copies of but don’t want the paper version clogging up my life or productivity. (I typically just download the pdf’s of the scanned mail to a folder on my desktop.)

Overall I’ve been extremely pleased with Earth Class Mail’s offering. There are a few competing options but I wasn’t comfortable with them in comparison for one reason or another. (Security, reputation, price, etc.) It’s important to note that you’ll most likely want magazines and packages going to your physical location instead of the ECM processing facility unless you live in an RV or are overseas with the military.

I do have a wish list for Earth Class Mail:

• Improve the User Interface with AJAX scripting. This will allow the user to navigate their mail with greater ease and time savings. See Gmail for a great example. [Update – As of June 2009 their new interface is VERY ajaxy and more intuitive)

  Update Dec 07 – They recently dramatically improved their interface. Much quicker and behaves a little like a well coded AJAX site.
  Update June 09 – They did a complete redo of their interface. It behaves much like a good browser based email client. Much more intuitive.

• Allow for batch downloading of scanned documents. “Download All” would be very helpful for the user who has more than one scanned piece of mail in their queue. (As of August 2009 they are implementing this for their professional plans with a $4.95 charge.)
• Improve the 1583 process for people with multiple business entities but only a couple of recipients.

This service is great for the “Vacant Desk” worker or anyone who’s constantly going somewhere. Check out Earth Class Mail if you’re interested.

I highly tentatively recommend Earth Class Mail

It’s perfect for frequent travelers, people who are trying to go paperless, those who get headaches just looking at stacks of mail, or people who want to centralize their communications.

Earth Class Mail