We go country by country through the legal rules, the paperwork, and the actual providers behind virtual mailboxes and registered offices — so you can register a company, receive mail, and look established somewhere you don't live.
A virtual address is a real street address you don't occupy. Someone else receives your mail there and hands it to you — scanned, forwarded, or held. What it's good for depends entirely on which of these four problems you're actually solving.
Most states and countries let you list a commercial mailing address on formation paperwork instead of a home address — but the address you register a company with, and the address that satisfies the state's legal-notice requirements, are frequently two different things. This trips up more first-time founders than anything else on this site.
Company filings are often public. Once your home address is on a state registry, it stays searchable indefinitely. A commercial address absorbs that exposure instead.
Banks are inconsistent about P.O. boxes but generally accept a commercial street address tied to a real mail-handling provider — which is a meaningfully different thing from a P.O. box in the eyes of both banks and regulators.
If you travel, relocate often, or simply don't want physical paperwork accumulating in a mailbox nobody checks, a provider that scans and forwards on request solves a logistics problem that has nothing to do with company formation at all.
The only country where every provider has to answer to the same federal form.
Every US virtual mailbox runs through the same federal checkpoint — a notarized form that has nothing to do with which state you're forming a company in. We break down what that form actually requires, why your registered agent's address and your business's public address are legally separate things, and which providers handle which case well.
Read the US guideYOUR BUSINESS NAME
1209 ORANGE ST, STE 3000
WILMINGTON, DE 19801
Everyday mail only — not a substitute for a registered agent.
The only country in this directory where the rules changed nationwide within the last two years.
Since March 2024, a P.O. box can't legally be a UK company's registered office at all. We cover the "appropriate address" standard Companies House now enforces, the separate director's service address that actually protects your home address, and why the registered office has to match your incorporation jurisdiction.
Read the UK guideYOUR COMPANY LTD
124 CITY ROAD
LONDON, EC1V 2NX
Must meet the "appropriate address" test — no P.O. boxes.
The full list of twenty is in the directory below — these are the ones with the most surprising legal mechanics.
The address is easy — the resident-director requirement, tightened again in 2025, is the real hurdle.
Read the guide →Every address must be legally serviceable — a real recipient reachable there, not just a mailbox.
Read the guide →The address choice and the company-structure choice are the same decision here.
Read the guide →Fully remote by design — the only question is whether you also need a licensed contact person.
Read the guide →Incorporate federally and pick any province — but you'll register there all over again.
Read the guide →The address is easy. A sole director legally can't also be the company secretary.
Read the guide →ASIC tracks your registered office and principal place of business separately — different deadlines apply to each.
Read the guide →A resident director hasn't been legally required since 2015 — banks still expect one anyway.
Read the guide →MCA verification can require a photo of your signage and a photo of your director standing at the address.
Read the guide →Thirty-five countries across five regions, each verified against its own current legal requirements — providers are added only once a partnership is confirmed, never as placeholders.