Most of the providers offer tiered plans and the nomenclature is a nightmare of Starter, Business, Premium, and Executive but the distinction under the branding is three things, namely, what address you get, how your mail is turned, and whether there are meeting rooms available to you  – go here to get most interesting topics!

The level one plans are lean. You get a registered business address, usually located in a nice business location and that is all. The mail is sent to the address that it is picked up or dispatched to you at a schedule. This level works to a solo freelancer, of a new company, that needs an ACRA approved address or one that is testing the waters in Singapore before fully committing to the venture. It is neither luxurious but it is functional and it usually does not cost more than the SGD 100/month, not much more.

More practical supporting items start to be added at the midtier plans. Here, mail scanning is common – one does not wait until a person has physically sent the mail, but an individual scans your mail and sends them in form of mails. A local voice number as well as call answering or forwarding is also offered by other providers. This is so because you might have a business where the client or the vendor can be in Singapore. The increment in price is generally justifiable on what is being offered though, it is moderate to ensure whether the answering of the call is done by a human operator or it is some robot redirection as they are not that similar.

The picture becomes more interesting with high-end plans and in such a situation, one should be very keen to read the fine print. The availability of the meeting rooms comes as a general thing, but it is a good idea to review the number of hours per month, the ability to make a booking, and the visualization of the overage rate. Other offers include coworking desk access on top of the identical which is convenient in case you need to have a good working environment at times but not permanently.

People are surprised by one thing and that is add-on fees. Plan might seem to be at an affordable price until you add up the per letter forwarding charges, courier or reception charges imposed separately. Always insist on being provided an entire breakdown other than what is advertised to you monthly.

There is also the effect of pricing by location levels that do not necessarily show up immediately. Orchard or Raffles place is more expensive to hold a speech than Jurong or Tai Seng – and it concerns some businesses how prestigious the location is. For others, it genuinely isn’t. A computer firm doing business with predominantly foreign clients will hardly need address in Marina Bay. This might not be true with a financial consultancy that is targeting the local corporate clients.

The other lever is the term of the contract. Monthly rolling plans are flexible and the rate is often high as compared to annual plan. Annual rate is likely to be more cost-effective when you are relatively certain that you will reconcile the service at least one year, however, once more, you need to read the conditions of cancellation so that you can be aware of any differences.

The fact of the situation is that the middle ground plan fits most of the businesses. Base plans can become limiting earlier and the high end ones can contain options not worth the cost as you would hardly make use of them. But that is a different calculus with the quantity of client-facing activity you are walking within your locality and, as such, it would be wise to establish a graph of your actual utilization and subsequently revert to what appears like the middle ground.