Auteur Mailbox vs Stable
Stable is the closest service to ours in spirit: a flat plan with scanning included. Here is where the two differ, explained plainly.
Read this first: this comparison was written by Auteur, and we sell Auteur Mailbox. It is our honest homework, not neutral advice, and it is not an Auteur Rating review. The Rating never covers our own products. Everything we say about Stable comes from their official website, checked on August 7, 2026. Their pricing and policies can change, so please confirm current details on their pricing page. We deliberately do not quote their prices here.
Two different ways to charge for mail
Stable
A flat plan with a mail allowance
Stable charges a flat monthly price with a set number of mail pieces per plan. Opening and scanning are free within that allowance, and mail beyond it is billed per piece. Team members log in with paid seats.
Auteur Mailbox
One counted thing, and a lower gate
We adopted the same model on purpose, so the comparison is simple: unlimited recipient names, 1 user included with paid additional users, free open-and-scan, and a per-piece overage. The difference is the base price. Our single plan is $19 a month or $190 a year at the founding price, with 30 pieces included, and we place no cap on how many users you can add.
Side by side
| Dimension | Stable | Auteur Mailbox |
|---|---|---|
| Availability | Live today, with addresses in dozens of US cities. | Pre-launch. Opening first in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles. Reservations are free and lock the founding price. |
| What is counted | Pieces of mail per month, set by plan. Junk is filtered and not counted. Extra pieces are billed per piece. | Also pieces of mail, the same way. The plan includes 30 a month, the allowance resets monthly, and each extra piece is $3 with everything still included. |
| Scanning | Opening and scanning are free within the plan, with physical limits on document size and bound items. | Every piece is opened and scanned as part of the plan, with the same physical limits: nothing larger than 8.5 by 14 inches, over 1,000 pages, or bound like a book or magazine. Anything we cannot scan still gets an exterior photo. |
| AI in the inbox | AI summaries are included. Their site describes summaries in English. | Henry summarizes and translates every letter in English, Korean, or Spanish, and tells you what to do next. |
| Recipients and users | Unlimited recipient names. Additional login seats are paid per user per month. | Unlimited recipient names too. Users work the same way as theirs, 1 included and $20 a month each after, except we put no cap on how many you add. |
| Forwarding | Actual carrier postage plus a transaction fee, with the fee amount not published on the pricing page. | Actual postage plus a flat $2 per shipment, stated on the pricing page. We add no margin to postage. |
| Check deposits | Offered as an add-on, electronic and mail-in, priced per check on volume-based plans for existing accounts. | A flat $2 per check, electronic where your bank supports it or mailed to your bank with postage included. No percentage of the amount. |
| USPS Form 1583 | Completed digitally, without a notary. | We are building our onboarding to work the same way, from anywhere in the world. It is a launch requirement we hold ourselves to. |
| Where the fine print lives | In a fair use policy hosted in their help center. | On an indexed public page, published before launch, with a change log. |
Stable facts from their official website, checked on August 7, 2026.
The four differences that remain
We copied Stable's model on purpose, and we say so openly: piece counting, free open-and-scan, unlimited recipient names, paid user seats, a 30-day storage window, the same package limits, the same scanning limits. When two services match on policy, the differences that remain are the real ones.
There are four. Our base price is a fraction of theirs for the same 30 pieces a month. Our user seats have no cap, while theirs stop at three. Henry summarizes and translates every letter in English, Korean, and Spanish, while their summaries are described in English. And check deposits are a flat $2 per check with us, against a volume-priced add-on with them.
Where each service sits
Stable is the premium flat plan: live today, in dozens of cities, with team seats, integrations, and a track record. Auteur is the same charging model at a founding price, opening in three California cities we run ourselves. Aggregators like iPostal1 sit below both on sticker price, with pay-per-action fees on top.
And if what you actually need is an office-grade business presence or higher volume than a mailbox plan, our partner save office runs US virtual offices.
Who should pick which
Pick Stable if
- •You need a working mailbox today. Stable is live and we are still pre-launch.
- •You need an address outside California, since our first cities are San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles.
- •Your team needs many login seats and admin controls right now.
- •You want a longer operating track record before trusting a provider.
Pick Auteur Mailbox if
- •You want the same model at a lower base price, $19 a month with 30 pieces and scanning included.
- •You read mail more comfortably in Korean or Spanish, since Henry translates every letter.
- •You want the forwarding fee stated as a number on the pricing page.
- •You want to lock a founding price now, ahead of the planned rise at launch.
See the full picture for yourself
Our pricing and our fair use policy are published in full, and reserving is free.