Why We Don't Sell Mail Forwarding
The major formation incumbents all upsell mail forwarding. We don't. Here's the reasoning, and what to do instead.
Bitcoiners will scrutinize a $5/mo Bitcoin custody fee for forty-five minutes . . . and then willingly pay $360/yr for a mail-scanning service they will use four times. Let us fix that.
Mail forwarding is a $30-50/mo upsell on every competing formation platform. We don't sell it, and we won't. This post lays out why, what we recommend instead, and what the underlying brand argument is for refusing to upsell adjacent services we don't believe in.
The pricing
The fiat-first formation incumbents charge $30-50/mo for a virtual address with mail scanning. That's $360-$600/yr depending on which tier you land on. The higher-tier subscriptions bundle mail receipt into a broader annual plan at an effective $50/mo, also $600/yr. These prices are roughly the equivalent of a second registered-agent fee per year, for a service most customers use less than five times.
If you're buying mail forwarding because you think you need a US address to operate a US LLC: you don't. Your registered agent's address is on record with the Secretary of State and serves as the entity's legal address. The IRS will accept your registered agent's address on Form SS-4 (we use this routinely on EIN applications). Banks generally want a US address but will accept your RA's address on Wyoming, NM, and Delaware filings, depending on the bank.
If you're buying mail forwarding because you genuinely receive paper mail at your business address and need it scanned: there are dedicated services that do this better. Earth Class Mail is the original; iPostal1 is the cheaper alternative. Both run roughly $25-50/mo with significantly better scanning, OCR, and forwarding workflows than any formation platform's bolted-on offering.
Three reasons we don't sell it
One. Modern banking and IRS correspondence is increasingly digital. The IRS sends notices via mail still, but it also delivers them via authorized e-file representative and via portal access for entities with an IRS Online Account. Mercury, Relay, and most modern business banks send statements via email or in-app only. The volume of paper mail a US LLC actually receives in 2026 is meaningfully lower than it was in 2018. The product is solving a 2015 problem.
Two. The unit economics are bad for customers. $360-$600/yr for a service most customers use less than five times means you are paying $70-$120 per scanned letter on average. That is a worse rate than hand-delivering each letter via courier. We will not pretend that's a fair trade.
Three. It signals tourist-mode branding. Mail forwarding is the formation-platform equivalent of the airline-lounge-access subscription. It is sold to people who feel like they should have it, not to people who need it. We are not in the business of upselling adjacent services we do not believe in. The brand wants to be a tool for operators. Tools do not generate upsell revenue from things their customers won't use.
No banker theater. No premium tier. The same operational stack at every price point.
What to do instead
If you need physical mail receipt for a specific reason, say, a regulatory licensing application that requires a forwarded official document, or a Mercury account that needs to receive a paper card, use Earth Class Mail or iPostal1 directly. They are better at this than we would be and they cost the same.
If you only need a US address on record for the LLC, your registered agent's address serves that purpose. We include the Wyoming RA address on every WY LLC we ship at no extra cost. The address goes on Articles of Organization, on the EIN application, and is acceptable to most US banks for non-resident applications.
If you specifically need a New York / California / Texas address for state-tax or licensing reasons, register the LLC as a foreign entity in that state and designate a registered agent there. That is a real legal need; mail forwarding is not.
The broader pattern
This is part of a broader thing we believe about how to build OffshoreGuy. The brand is anti-banker-theater. We do not sell:
- Mail forwarding. - High-tier customer-success calls priced as an upsell. - Phone-sold compliance package upgrades. - "Concierge" formation tiers that just buy you a faster reply. - Banking introductions that we pretend are exclusive when they are openly available via the bank's website.
We do sell registered agent service (it is legally required) and a small set of attach services like EIN, apostille, and dissolution. We do not sell tax filing or bookkeeping. Obligations like Form 5472 + pro-forma 1120 are real and carry a $25,000/yr penalty if missed, but they are yours to file, through a US Enrolled Agent we can refer you to; we form and maintain the entity, we are not your accountant. We tell you on every product page what is and is not included. If you see something on a competing platform you think we should add, email hello@offshoreguy.com. We may have already considered and rejected it for these same reasons, but we'll explain our thinking.
Citizen, not tourist
The slogan exists because the alternative, formation platforms selling tourists a lifestyle of offshore-coded products, is the dominant business model in this industry. We refuse it. Operators get a US LLC and the four things they actually need on top. The rest is theater. We don't sell theater.