
Outbox Is Shutting Down - mariusz331
http://blog.outboxmail.com/post/74086768959/outbox-is-shutting-down-a-note-of-gratitude
======
codegeek
" senior leadership of USPS made it clear that they would never participate in
any project that would limit junk mail and that they were immediately shutting
down our partnership."

This part is really interesting. Why would USPS do that ? Can someone from
outbox elaborate on this ? I would love to get rid of the junk mail that I
receive on a _daily_ basis in my mailbox. It is crazy and I have to waste time
in taking it out of my mailbox, sorting through them to ensure they indeed are
junk and then throwing them into my recycle bin. Not to mention that the
recyle bin then needs to be placed bi-weekly outside to be picked up. It is
time we had a donotcall.gov equivalent for junk mails.

Sad to see these guys go. The business model sounds like something I would
have tried as a user. Funny though that never heard of them personally. Guess
need to watch more Jay Leno!!

~~~
wwwarhawk
Employee unions at the USPS worried about further job losses due to
technology. Can't do anything that would decrease revenue, even if it means
technological progress.

~~~
jingala
This comment is garbage. Do you think the CEO of USPS wants to decrease
revenue? Hell no.

~~~
grmarcil
Imagine you're the CEO of a business that is bleeding cash left, right, and
center, and someone comes to you with a plan that will reduce your revenue 20%
while reducing your costs 50%. You don't think you'd consider that plan even
for a second?

I'm not saying such a plan would work for USPS, and definitely not saying
Outbox could have brought that sort of value proposition to USPS, but reducing
revenue is not always a poor business decision.

------
encoderer
I may be wrong, but my impression of Outbox has always been that they were
designing an impressive solution to the wrong problem.

Sorting my important mail from my junk mail is just not something I need help
with. And the extraordinary wastefulness in my mind of paying a company to
follow postmen around and take back the mail just delivered to my box seems so
ecologically wrong that I couldn't support it on that ground alone.

~~~
zyxley
This is definitely my view.

I'd honestly be happy just to see a service in the "use us as your mailing
address" market with lower and less byzantine pricing than Earth Class Mail
($20/mo plus $5/mo for searchable PDFs, $1.50/piece to actually scan mail, $20
to deposit a check, $4.95/mo to shred mail, $0.30/mo/piece to store mail,
etc.) and without the subtly deceitful tactics of VirtualPostMail (auto-
applied promo codes that hide what the actual ongoing service limits are, big
listed pricing that actually doubles after 3 months, etc).

~~~
dnr
The VirtualPostMail pricing page may be confusing, but I think calling it
deceitful is a stretch. I think the prices are reasonable for the service they
provide. It may even be cheaper than it looks, as I don't think they enforce
the storage limits (I've definitely had stuff sitting there for many months
with no fees). It's true that their web app could use an overhaul, but it was
nicer than ECM's at the time I compared them.

(I have no affiliation, I've just been a satisfied customer for a few years.)

~~~
zyxley
Well, that's why I said _subtly_. It's not blatant about it, but it is a
deceitful approach.

These kind of tactics are familiar to me from previously working in the web
hosting industry, where the tricks of "the eye-catching price is actually the
temporary one, you have to look in the details for the real price" and "a
coupon code makes it look like your service can do more than it can" are very
common.

So is the aftermath, with many people who are confused and upset when the
"temporary" part runs out but not _quite_ confused and upset enough to cancel
the service.

~~~
dnr
The half-price for the first few months is misleading, I admit. I'm a careful
reader so it didn't bother me.

The coupon code thing is a little weird, but I don't see how you can complain
about it: it only increases your limits. It's just a way for them to offer two
types of plans: one for people who like to scan most mail, and one for people
who don't.

------
al2o3cr
Better title: "Libertarians Find Out Delivering Mail Is Hard and Expensive"

~~~
georgemcbay
Classic Bob the Angry Flower:

[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RmsoUYOh5Ak/Tx7K8aL_b5I/AAAAAAAAAW...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RmsoUYOh5Ak/Tx7K8aL_b5I/AAAAAAAAAW0/Y5v4MlpYdzg/s1600/Bob_the_Angry_Flower_Atlas_Shrugged_Part_2_comic_strip.gif)

------
nlh
WHAT.

This is really disappointing - first time in a while I've seen an "we're
shutting down" announcement and been really, truly, genuinely disappointed by
it.

Physical mail is but one of many small parts of daily life that's increasingly
feeling like an anachronism.

The fact that we have to regularly physically go to our mailboxes, open them,
receive physical paper communication, and then shred/dispose/keep it all is
annoying. I was really looking forward to Outbox growing and spreading to
other cities.

(BTW: It's worth noting that my rejection of paper mail doesn't mean I reject
the notion of the nice parts - hand-written letters, greeting cards, wedding
invitations. Those are great. But I'd be totally happy seeing a high quality
digitized version of those appear in the email inbox.)

I do hope someone figures out a good solution here, because I'm certain
there's demand for this service in some form or another.

(edit: As a friend pointed out - $5/month is probably far too cheap. Earth
Class Mail starts at $20. I'd gladly pay that for Outbox - probably more.)

~~~
rahulcap
Totally agree with this. Their business never made much sense in charging only
$5 to "undo" what USPS does, but it worked great and is really useful when
travelling. They should have tested a $19.99 price point before shutting down.
I'm not sure i would have kept paying it for too long, but worth a shot.

~~~
jmathai
I'm unfamiliar with the specifics of their service but if $5 wasn't working
out they wouldn't be able to solve it by simply increasing the price.

~~~
rahulcap
Yeah, i guess it was just too crazy of an idea to work. I personally would
have paid $20/month for at least the next 6 months as I am travelling a lot
and get tons of value from remote mail access. I agree, though, that with the
general value prop if its not worth $5 for most people, it is certainly not
worth $20! As a side note: I'm surprised they only had 2k users with a 5M
investment round. Seems like they burned cash in some expensive marketing
channels.

------
hellonoam
"total yield from the waitlist was under 10 percent" that's 10% paying
customers that's definitely not as bad as they made it sound.

I'm a little surprised why did they think it would be a cheap operation. They
send someone to pick up the mail from your house, that's insane. Of course
that will be expensive. And it's only $5 per month. There are a few old school
services that do the same but they ask the customer to redirect their mail to
a specific new address. I wonder why outbox didn't go down that route.

Definitely sad to see them go.

------
bstar77
I read this kind of quickly but did they actually say that they raised
$5,000,000 6 months ago, decided in that time that their business model would
not work then decided to go into 'stealth mode' and work on their next fancy?

------
BryanB55
I'm an Outbox customer and am really sad to see it go. I did it expect it
though. In fact, every time I thought of Outbox it was always accompanied with
worry about them shutting down. I just couldn't see how they could afford to
do what they do when customers only pay $5 per month.

I didn't read the entire post yet but I wonder why they never tried to or
considered raising prices. I would of paid substantially more for the service.

I don't see all that much value in the service for my personal mail but for my
business mail, I purchased a UPS mailbox and have all mail sent there and
outbox takes care of it for me without me having to go there all the time. I
just renewed my UPS mailbox for the year too!

------
jlas
Just a FYI there are a handful of companies already doing something very
similar. Except instead of physically picking up your mail, they receive it on
your behalf (made possible by USPS form 1583 [1]). Then they digitize and
forward (you pay S&H.)

[1]
[http://about.usps.com/forms/ps1583.pdf](http://about.usps.com/forms/ps1583.pdf)

~~~
tsmith
I'd been wanting something like this as I have a few physical mailboxes but
rarely need the physical mail itself. Do you have any useful links to the
1583-based providers?

~~~
msandford
I used to work for one of the Commercial Mail Receiving Agencies (CMRA) as
defined by the Form 1583. Here's a non-comprehensive list:

myus.com, earthclassmail.com, usglobalmail.com, bongous.com, usamail1.com,
maillinkplus.com, usa2me.com, usabox.com, reship.com and probably 50 or so
other.

The google keywords you want to search with are "mail forwarding" or
"international mail forwarding" or "virtual mailbox" to get started. Not all
of them offer pictures of the mail or scanning, but some of them definitely
do.

It's a REALLY fractured industry because there's essentially zero M&A
activity. The Form 1583 is a giant pain to fill out and it ties you to a
specific both company and address. Furthermore if you decide to switch from
one to another you can't take advantage of the USPS' normal "fill out this
form to get your mail forwarded" feature because as far as the USPS is
concerned that's the CMRA's problem, not theirs.

In fairness to the USPS it's a really tough task to determine not only what
address mail is going to but what person's name (and box/suite/apt/whatever
number) it's going to at that address. Then once you figure that out, you have
to figure out if that's one of the probably 500 people who are on the
"forward" list at any given time. I know because I built a system to that and
more for the company I worked at and it wasn't foolproof. So if it can't be
automated easily the only alternative is to have the postal worker on the
route do it. Where I worked we got many thousands of letters a day, it would
have taken our mailman/woman half a day or longer to go through everything
trying to match recipients up against the list of 500 people who want
forwarding.

------
smortaz
This is sad to see. As the co-founder of
[http://www.paperkarma.com](http://www.paperkarma.com) who's had to deal with
some of the same issues (USPS regulations) I was keeping an eye out & pulling
for them to succeed. We need further legislation to enable citizens better
control over unsolicited mail. You guys built a great service & should be very
proud! [edit: spelling]

~~~
trevorturk
I absolutely love PaperKarma. Keep up the good work!

------
cjoh
Seems really strange that they're shutting down. With a substantial customer
list and some infrastructure that's hard to build, that's a business that
could be sold for something -- perhaps not substantial exit money, but still.

That said, they were charging less than what the service cost to provide, and
-- judging from the comments here -- less than what their customers valued
their services for. So perhaps they didn't have a good idea of what value is
and how to sell it.

~~~
untog
_" With a substantial customer list"_

FTA: "we serviced a mere 2,000 customers in two relatively small markets"

~~~
cjoh
2,000 customers is substantial, especially when the feedback from those 2,000
seems to be "I would like to pay you more money"

~~~
untog
Not in startupland it isn't. pg's hockey stick growth and all that.

~~~
cjoh
I get the startupland thing. The point I'm making is -- couldn't they have
tried Flippa or something? Startupland isn't "valuable asset land" when it
comes to folding.

------
JacobJans
There is one small nugget in the article that demonstrates exactly why they
failed:

"This final challenge—product market fit"

They invested a very large amount of money, and put the most important
challenge at the very end.

"This final challenge" should never, ever, ever be the final challenge.
Product-market fit should be the first challenge. Everything flows from
matching the product to the market. The fact that they believed this was "the
final challenge" shows that they were making decisions in the wrong way -- a
way that brought them failure.

I only hope they consider profit/market fit BEFORE they spend more of their
investors money.

------
JoshTriplett
It sounds like their original business model got shut down due to positioning:
they pitched it as reducing postal spam, and in the proces they attracted
unwanted attention from the USPS, who profit from postal spam.

Meanwhile, Earth Class Mail
([https://www.earthclassmail.com/](https://www.earthclassmail.com/)) seems to
be going strong following the same "digitize your mail" approach. They don't
seem to build their business around spam reduction specifically, just around
paper reduction, which doesn't threaten the USPS.

------
ghshephard
Clearly there is no need for physical paper mail/envelope delivery to most
people's home. With just a few exceptions, I haven't received a single piece
of USPS physical mail "directly" since 2003. I was moving that fall, so I had
picked up a PostOffice Box (And I had been using paytrust for all my paper
bills since 1999) - and when I moved back to the Bay Area - I just never told
anyone what my home address was, and put a big "DONOTDELIVER" on the post
office box that came with my apartment.

The _only_ exceptions to that, were in 2010, when I needed to get a California
ID, and they would only mail it to my home address. Soon thereafter I started
getting Jury Summons (Ironic for this Canadian) - with those two exceptions -
no paper sent directly to me, couldn't be happier.

Pro Tip - A Post Office box at a "friendly" POBox location will throw away all
your junk mail (probably in violation of some kind of USPS statute) and for a
small fee, remail it to you anywhere in the world. Never have to change your
address ever again. Never receive any direct mail.

------
ivanplenty
Very sorry to hear this outcome, and I wish the best for the team. Perhaps you
can sell standalone products? There is still value in never having to touch
paper, and I would have been a happy customer had I known the wait list was
done. It was such a promising product!

Most interesting quote to me, and thank you so much for the candor.

> _After several months of testing and refining, we reasonably concluded that
> we were executing well and collecting good data—it told us that there wasn’t
> enough demand to support the cost model. Our monthly operating deficits were
> too high, and even though we continued to get better at acquisition, each
> small success actually saw our cash curve decline further because our
> density remained flat. For longer than we would be willing to tolerate, we
> would lose money for each additional customer we gained. Despite the massive
> interest in our company, we learned that the product we built did not find
> fit in the market we targeted._

P.S. I am doubly sorry to hear that the USPS shut down the partnership due to
threatening unwanted!! ad revenue... this is making me feel even more sad.

------
shravan
I'm terribly sad about this. I was eagerly anticipating their rollout to my
market and would've happily paid more than the $5/month charge for the benefit
of never opening another piece of junk mail again.

------
cfield
I am a current customer of Outbox and also a customer of VirtualPostMail (VPM)
for both personal and business mail. And I am a former EarthClassMail (ECM)
and PayTrust customer.

Since many seem to be asking about alternatives, I have generally positive
views about VPM and ECM. They get the job done, though neither of them will
blow your socks off from a technology standpoint (e.g., search, image
resolution). I used ECM for 2 1/2 years and then switched to VPM, which I've
been using for the last 2 1/2 years. VPM is considerably less expensive than
ECM (which probably targets pricing for SMBs rather than consumers).

For reasons I can't grasp, I consider dealing with physical mail one of the
most undesirable "life maintenance" activities imaginable. In 2000, I started
using paymybills.com (became Paytrust/Intuit) -- basically VPM for bills only
plus online bill pay. I paid ~$10/month and easily would have paid double
that. I emailed them around 2001 and suggested they expand to provide the same
service for all mail. When Intuit acquired Mint, I emailed Aaron Patzer a
suggestion that they look into doing to mail what Mint did for financial
information. He put me in touch with a product manager he said was looking
into this, but apparently it never went anywhere.

When I heard about ECM, I signed up for their service in a heartbeat. It
wasn't perfect, but I considered their service to be (barely) worth the
$800-$1000/year I paid them. When I learned about VPM, I quickly switched to
them and remain a generally happy customer and average about $200/year in
fees.

Similarly, I signed up for Outbox the instant I heard of it, wanting to test
it out on the trickle of mail I still get at home to see if it might be an
improvement on VPM. The one thing I never got from Outbox was peace of mind
that they would be around for the long haul, so I thankfully never cancelled
my VPM service. I sent Outbox an email in March 2013 inviting them to charge
more because I knew today's announcement was inevitable if they did not make
some fundamental changes. I never understood why they wouldn’t scan bulk mail
I wanted open (you had to have it delivered). But I was cheering for them and
am sad to see it come to an end.

[Edit: typo]

------
lazyant
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned yet the Seinfeld scene with Kramer and the
Postmaster General about junk mail:

[http://www.siyumhaseinfeld.com/eps/season9/905-TheJunkMail.h...](http://www.siyumhaseinfeld.com/eps/season9/905-TheJunkMail.html)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKlzQo3Wqo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKlzQo3Wqo)

------
pbreit
This is one of those things that seemed sorta cool (but not really) and
probably the future will look more like it than what we have today. But then
you start thinking about the cost to operate it and trying to get people to
pay for very marginal value. And it's pretty easy to predict demise. I'm sure
folks will say that's not always the case so please provide some examples.

------
billnguyen
Crazy. Some of the comments on this old TechCrunch article about the economics
of Outbox look Nostradamus-like

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/25/outbox-digitizes-sf-
snail-m...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/25/outbox-digitizes-sf-snail-mail/)

It just never fully made economic sense. Especially with the overhead of
undoing something that was just done, mail delivery.

------
digikata
With the listed problems getting to breakeven density, marketing traction, and
a mention of an email marketing campaign for what is a physical->electronic
mail service, I can't help but wonder if Outbox had ever ran a physical junk
mail campaign for targeted physical addresses in order to push up the customer
density. (not meant as a criticism, just idle curiosity)

------
evanm
A truly great service. I'd even be willing to pay 3-4x. My apt building is
from the early 1900s and my tiny mailbox overfills after 1-2 days -- it's been
wonderful to not have to come back from vacation to a clogged box. Outbox has
saved me all kinds of time and patience and am terribly sad to see them go.
Best of luck to the team in their next project!

------
oregondan
Hey everybody. Earth Class Mail is currently running a promo (OUTBOX2014) for
people feeling aimless in the wake of Outbox's closure. It'll give you two
months free and waive your sign-up fee. Shameless plug, I work there. I can
vouch for the service, though; it's legit, and we're working really hard to
grow the company.

~~~
rdl
ECM is still a bit pricey for many individuals (although if you travel, or
order a lot of stuff online and need it reshipped, it is a great deal.)

For a startup, especially a smaller one w/o an office manager or formal
office, it is an amazing value. The SF office in particular is very helpful.

------
jjcm
Damn. I have a post office box located in SF that's my main mailing address,
but I live in Seattle right now. I suppose it was my own fault relying on them
exclusively and not having a backup plan, but does anyone know any service
that does something similar to outbox mail? I'd love to keep using my SF
address.

------
chacham15
For those who have no idea what Outbox is, here is their original landing
page:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20140116081115/https://www.outbo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140116081115/https://www.outboxmail.com/)

------
AustinScript
I despise mail. I check it once a month and my box is crammed the max with ads
and the important mail items are crumpled. I would unsubscribe from all mail
if such a thing was possible.

I loved Outbox and will miss the service, however I do agree with the poster
below. 5$ seemed like a steal.

------
winterchil
Very sorry to see them go and it was a beautiful product. However, this is no
surprise at all. More surprising is that they were able to raise money for a
business model that is fundamentally unsustainable (negative gross margins).

------
ericmsimons
What a shame, I was really excited to try out their service. I never
considered that USPS would ban them from providing their service, but I'm sure
it has something to do with all the revenue that the USPS makes from spam
mail.

------
sunsu
I always thought it was absurd that they actually had people picking up your
mail from your mailbox. I wanted a "Google Voice" for mail. Just let me give
out some proxy mailing address that goes straight to their scanners.

------
nezza-_-
Shouldn't one of the first sentences of the article contain a deadline on how
long the service will remain functional? It's the most important thing current
users have to know.

~~~
evanbaehr
Good point. We link to our FAQ w/ the dates. I've included it below. We will
stop service on Monday January 28th.
[http://blog.outboxmail.com/post/74086747774/customer-faq-
for...](http://blog.outboxmail.com/post/74086747774/customer-faq-for-outbox-
ending-service)

------
karenxcheng
One of the best letters of this kind I've seen. I like how they were up front
about the mistakes/miscalculations they made, and what they learned from it.

------
crystaln
Why would they not pivot to being an Earth Class Mail competitor? At that
point, they are not competing with or undermining, but rather contributing to
the USPS.

~~~
lhl
I'm looking into Earth Class Mail and alternatives right now, and I think more
modern/advanced competition could definitely do well (and leverage most of
what Outbox has built).

Right now these services mostly target a very niche market of expats,
travelers, etc, but I could definitely see an argument (just from a
convenience perspective) of why this could be greatly expanded to a much more
general audience.

------
fuadksd
When you control the mail, you control... information!

------
MyNameIsMK
What pain-point was Outbox solving and was it really that painful to get you
to pull out money for a scanning solution...

------
abhi3188
Is it just me or today seems to be a day a lot of startup shutdown
announcements have made it to the hackernews homepage

------
nielsbot
sorry to see it go. USPS should have bought it or integrated it (but I saw the
blog post about them saying "we'll never do that")

Hell, I would have still paid for the service for the archiving and online
filing part even if they continued to send junk mail.

------
carsongross
Man, seems like this is "Useful Startups Going out of Business" month...

Good luck guys.

------
james33
That is unfortunate, I would have loved to use this service.

------
atoponce
I'm sorry, who is shutting down? Never heard of them

