5. Usage, Continued

The default scanning quality isn’t fantastic. In the test mail we sent, the scan looks like a low-grade fax copy. The same test flyer that we created with the USPS Click2Mail service was sent to the ECM service to see how it would turn out.

Click image to enlarge.

No real surprise-the image once again looks like a low-grade fax copy. That said, it is still proof positive that you can create, send and receive real paper mail digitally without ever actually touching anything other than your keyboard. That’s what the promise of the paperless office is all about, right?

You can also opt for higher-quality grayscale and/or color scans of your mail, though that requires an additional charge of $0.25 a page for grayscale and $0.30 for color.

The fact that your mail can exist in an Inbox, Pending Scans, Scanned, Archive or Pending Shredding folder makes ECM’s service confusing. With a large amount of mail, it could easily get very confusing as to what is where, especially since there is no search function.

There is also no master dashboard providing a macro overview of what you’ve got, which would be helpful to have.

Pricing for ECM is based on a trio of packages that are differentiated by the volume of mail scanned and received. Starting at $14.95 a month for the basic Bronze plan, which includes the actual mail address (or P.O box as well), ECM offers a very impressive value. You could easily spend that amount alone just for a mailbox in some states.

Conclusions

So it really is possible to create, send and receive a snail mail letter online (told you so). With the Click2Mail offering, it is relatively painless to create and send letters online, though the service isn’t particularly efficient from a price point of view for individual letters. It is convenient, though, and it does work for the most part as one would expect. On the receiving end, Earth Class Mail (ECM) is really a neat offering. Its ability to provision a real physical USPS mailbox, scan your mail online and also provide forwarding is an extremely valuable service and one that has no real peers in the marketplace today. The lack of a dashboard and our form 1583 issues aside, ECM is an easy-to-use service that once running, does work as advertised. As we all know, email is the killer app of the Internet age, though email has yet to kill off paper mail.

Snail mail is a necessary evil. With the help of USPS to some extent and perhaps more importantly with a service like ECM, you can successfully take your paper-mail online and live the dream of paperless (and paper-cut-free) real mail.

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