Good question. The answer is the same as why anyone didn't start a revolution in technology and communications sooner than they did: the technology wasn't ready, the market wasn't ready, or they didn't know how. In the case of Earth Class Mail postal mail, we developed the technology (and filed patents on it); the market has been made ready by cell-phone, email, fax, and consumers' own pain; and we brought together the right team of know-how.

Earth Class Mail is the first service ever to allow users to see their postal mail online before deciding what they want to do with each envelope – whether to shred, recycle, forward, open-and-scan, or archive it. To achieve this we needed to invent new automation technology for caching millions of pieces of mail -- and for retrieving a single piece of mail, or single document (yours) out of a sea of millions. Only with such exclusive technology can we offer online postal mail quickly, securely, and cost-effectively.

In fact, the “robotic storage vault” in our central processing facility (Beaverton, Oregon) is a building in itself – over 2.25 million cubic feet – able to store over 50 million pieces of mail and 300 million inches of documents behind steel walls.

Developing the systems behind Earth Class Mail and the other Earth Class Mail services required a confluence of notable talent in areas that don't commonly overlap – from robotics and mail-stream automation to massively-scaling IT systems and advanced security systems. It also required the convergence of newly available technologies to make it cost-effective so that our customers could also save money over alternative methods and become more productive.

Earth Class Mail has uniquely combined the best elements of traditional document outsourcing (e.g., scanning, confidential shredding, archival storage, mailroom management, etc.) under one roof and along a single automation pathway. The savings in transportation between multiple vendors alone would explain our significantly lower prices, but the convenience and security of a single vendor, and a single Internet interface for all of these services, simply cannot be matched by any other company at any price.

That does not prevent some companies from trying. You will occasionally find inferior knock-offs out there. Aside from the risk of casting your lot with a company whose patent infringements could get it shut down, the knock-offs are simply not scalable, meaning that as they approach a certain volume their service will degrade quickly, and they cannot guarantee the security we can.

Most importantly for organizations, the knock-offs cannot enable an organization or a third-party working on its behalf to receive and process mail onsite, without leaving its own premises. Only Earth Class Mail can do that.