Opus Virtual Offices sells one thing at one price: a real business address, a live receptionist answering your calls, and a company phone and fax number, for $99 a month at any of its 650-plus US locations. Manhattan costs the same as a suburban office park, which is unusual in this industry and the main reason people find it. Most reviews stop at the price. This one goes further, because the things that actually determine whether a virtual office works for you are not on the pricing page: the USPS form you have to file before anything activates, the three-month initial term, and the fact that some states and banks will not accept a virtual address for certain purposes. Here is the full picture, plus how to set it up properly.
There is a specific moment most founders hit in their first year. You are filling in a form, it asks for your business address, and the only truthful answer is the flat you live in. So you type it, and it goes on the state register, and then on your invoices, and eventually on Google Maps.
That is how a lot of people end up with their home address in public databases. It is also why virtual offices exist, and why the good ones are worth more than the $99 they cost.
Opus has been doing this since 2010, which in a market full of resold mailboxes counts for something. It is BBB accredited, it holds a 4.3 out of 5 on Trustpilot across a few hundred reviews, and it runs a genuinely simple offer: one plan, one price, everything in it.
I want to cover both halves of this properly. First what you get and what it honestly costs. Then the setup guidance, because the mistakes people make with virtual offices are almost never about price.
What a virtual office is, and what it is not
The category name is unhelpful, so let's be concrete. A virtual office is a real commercial building where a company you pay agrees to be your business address, receive your mail, and answer your phone in your company's name. Opus is explicit that these are actual offices with meeting rooms, not coworking floors and not mailbox stores.
Four things get confused with it constantly, and the differences matter for what you can legally do.
That last row is the one people get wrong. A virtual office address and a registered agent are different services. A registered agent has a legal duty to accept service of process during business hours and forward it to you. Opus will happily be your mailing and business address, and its own FAQ notes the address can appear on Articles of Organization, but it advises checking your state's rules because they change. If you need a registered agent, that is a separate appointment.
The other distinction worth drawing is against pure mail forwarding. Services like that scan your post and send it on, and they are cheaper. What they do not give you is a person who picks up the phone as your company. Whether that matters depends entirely on whether your customers ring you.
A mailbox makes your address look real. A receptionist makes your company sound real. They are not the same purchase.
What the $99 actually includes
Opus lists six things in the base plan. All six are included at every location, and none of them are metered.
Prestigious business address
A real commercial street address you can put on your website, invoices, business cards and registration documents. Same $99 whether it is Manhattan, Miami or Beverly Hills.
Live call answering, unlimited
US-based receptionists answer in your company name during business hours. Unlimited, not a 50-minute allowance with overage charges attached.
Personalised call transferring
Calls route to wherever you actually are, including internationally. You brief them on how you want different callers handled.
Company phone and fax number
A dedicated local or toll-free business number, plus a fax line. Your mobile number stops being your business number.
Professional mail receipt
Mail and packages received and held for collection, or forwarded on. Opus states it charges only the postage on forwarding, with no handling fee.
Voicemail and fax to email
Messages and faxes arrive in your inbox as files rather than sitting on a machine somewhere you are not.
Meeting rooms sit slightly outside the plan. You get an allowance of free hours to start with, and after that they are billed hourly through Opus's separate meeting rooms service. Availability depends on the building, so check your specific location if in-person meetings are part of your sales process.
Opus gives you a receptionist. It does not give you a phone platform your team works inside. If you have reps making outbound calls that need logging, or a support queue with routing rules, that is a different tool, and our Aircall review covers what that looks like properly. On a tighter budget, the per-seat options in our CallHippo review are worth a look. Plenty of small companies run both: Opus fields the front door, a phone system handles the team.
The benefits that actually hold up
Virtual office marketing leans hard on the word prestige, which I find close to meaningless. Here are the benefits I think survive scrutiny.
Your home address stops being public
This is the strongest argument and it gets undersold. Business registrations are public records. Once your residential address is on one, it propagates to data brokers, mapping services and mailing lists, and getting it back out is tedious work. A virtual office keeps that boundary intact from day one, which is worth far more than $99 if you have ever had a difficult customer.
Calls get answered when you cannot answer them
A missed call from a prospective client is usually a lost one, because they ring the next result instead. If you are a consultant driving between meetings or a trades business with your hands full, a person answering in your company's name is not a vanity purchase. It is the difference between a booked job and a voicemail nobody returns.
Flat pricing removes the guesswork
Most of this industry advertises a low headline and charges separately for the address, the answering, the mail handling and the forwarding. Opus's own comparison work claims rivals often land past $200 a month once assembled, and that competitors add handling fees on mail forwarding of anywhere from $10 to $95 while Opus charges only postage. Treat a vendor's own comparison with appropriate scepticism, but the structural point stands: one number is easier to budget than five.
You look established before you are
Fair or not, a commercial address and a receptionist change how bigger clients read you. If you are pitching enterprise buyers or applying for trade credit, the signal matters. It is cosmetic, and it works.
You can enter a market without opening one
A US address gives an overseas company a local presence for correspondence, returns and credibility without a lease. Worth being clear that an address is not the same as the right to employ people there, which is a separate and much bigger question we cover in our Deel review. But as a first step into a market, it is a cheap one.
It will not make an unlicensed business licensed. Certain regulated trades, professional practices and permit applications require a physical premises you actually occupy, and no address service changes that. It also will not satisfy every bank or every state registry, which is the next section's problem.
How to set it up properly, in six steps
Almost every complaint I read about virtual offices traces back to one of these steps being skipped. None of them are difficult. They are just easy to not know about.
Check your state and your bank before you pay
This is the step people skip and regret. A handful of state registries will not accept an address they identify as a virtual or mail-receiving location for entity formation, and banks apply their own rules. Opus notes that thousands of its customers have opened business accounts on their virtual address, but it cannot guarantee any individual bank's decision.
Five minutes on your Secretary of State's site, and a call to your bank, costs nothing. Signing up and discovering the address is rejected an hour later is a real thing that happens to people.
Pick the location for the right reason
Because every Opus address costs the same, choose on substance rather than budget. If clients will visit, pick a building you would be comfortable meeting them in and check its meeting room availability. If nobody will ever visit, pick the city that matches the market you sell into.
One practical note: a Wilmington, Delaware address reads differently from a Beverly Hills one to a corporate buyer. Neither is wrong. Just choose deliberately rather than defaulting to whichever is closest to home.
File USPS Form 1583 straight away
Here is the one nobody expects. Opus is a Commercial Mail Receiving Agency, which means federal rules require a completed USPS Form 1583 and identification for every person who will receive mail under your account before location services begin.
It is a short form and the identity check is routine, but until it is done your address is not live. Do it the day you sign up, not the week your first cheque is due to arrive.
Brief the receptionists like you would a new hire
An answering service is only as good as its instructions. Write down how you want the company introduced, which callers get put straight through, what happens outside your hours, and what should be taken as a message. Include the three questions your callers ask most and the answers you want given.
Spend twenty minutes on this and the service sounds like your company. Skip it and it sounds like an answering service, which is worse than a voicemail you recorded yourself.
Update everything, in one sitting
New address and number means a list: website footer and contact page, Google Business Profile, invoice and quote templates, email signature, social profiles, business cards, insurance and licence records, supplier accounts, payment processor. Set up forwarding from your old number too.
Do it as one deliberate pass rather than piecemeal over three months. Two addresses circulating at once causes exactly the confusion you bought the service to avoid. If you are also rebuilding the site around the new details, an agency like MarkSurge handles design and marketing together, or the templates in our Leadpages review will get a credible page up quickly on your own.
Diarise your renewal date now
The initial term is three months, cancellation requires a termination request through your online account with at least 30 days' notice, and Opus's terms state no prorated refunds apply. Every billing complaint I found came from someone who gave notice too late.
Put a reminder 45 days before your term ends, in the same calendar you actually check. That single action prevents the most common bad experience with this service.
Your suite number, phone and fax numbers, portal login, 1583 submission date and renewal date all matter later, usually when you are filling in a form under time pressure. Write them in one place the day you set up rather than digging through email in six months. Any simple scratchpad does the job, and RytePad's roundup of the best online notepads covers solid free options if you do not already have one.
Pricing and the fine print
There is one plan. That is genuinely the whole pricing page, which is refreshing enough to be worth saying out loud.
The terms worth reading twice
Opus advertises no long-term contract, and relative to competitors demanding six months or two years that is fair. It is not the same as month to month, though.
Sources disagree on what happens after the first three months. Opus's own blog says service then renews month to month, while its FAQ material and several third-party summaries describe automatic renewal for further three-month terms. Those are meaningfully different if you need to exit quickly.
Ask directly and get the answer in writing before you commit, and read the service agreement you accept at signup rather than the marketing page. Either way the 30-day notice requirement applies, so the practical advice is the same: give notice early.
On value, the comparison that matters is not against a mailbox, it is against assembling the same functions separately. A commercial mailing address, an answering service with unlimited minutes, and a dedicated business number bought individually will generally cost more than $99 combined. If you only need one of the three, Opus is the wrong shape and you should buy the one.
Who this works for
Consultants and solo professionals
You travel, you cannot always pick up, and you would rather clients did not have your home address or your personal mobile. This is the core case, and the one where the answering service earns its share of the fee rather than the address doing all the work.
Newly formed LLCs and startups
You need an address for formation, banking and public-facing use on day one, and a lease makes no sense. Verify state acceptance first, then this is a straightforward yes.
Fully remote teams
Nobody has an office and mail has nowhere to go. A single company address and main line gives customers one front door instead of whichever employee's details they happened to find.
E-commerce and overseas businesses entering the US
Online sellers need a returns address that is not their house. Foreign companies need US correspondence and credibility before committing to anything larger. Both are well served for a hundred dollars a month.
Sign up if…
- You need an address, a number and call answering together
- Keeping your home address off public records matters to you
- Missed calls cost you actual business
- You want a premium-city address without premium pricing
- You can live with a three-month commitment
Look elsewhere if…
- You only want mail scanning and forwarding, nothing else
- You need to cancel on a month's notice with no term
- Your state or bank rejects virtual addresses for your purpose
- You actually need desk space, so coworking fits better
- You need a registered agent, which is a separate service
The honest summary is that Opus is priced as a bundle and only makes sense as one. Address-only shoppers will find cheaper mail services, and Opus does offer a lighter address-only route, but the $99 plan is where its advantage lives.
Pros and cons
👍 What we liked
- One plan, one price, genuinely all-inclusive
- Flat $99 at 650+ locations including premium cities
- Unlimited live answering rather than a metered minute allowance
- Dedicated phone and fax number included, not an add-on
- Mail forwarding at postage cost with no handling fee
- Operating since 2010, BBB accredited, 4.3 on Trustpilot
- Three-month term undercuts the six-month norm
- Mobile apps and an online portal for account management
👎 What to watch
- Three-month initial term, so not truly month to month
- Cancellation needs 30 days' written notice and no refunds are prorated
- Renewal terms are described inconsistently across their own material
- USPS Form 1583 must clear before anything activates
- Some states and banks reject virtual addresses for certain uses
- Reported delays in mail forwarding in some customer feedback
- Meeting rooms and availability vary by building
- Overkill and overpriced if you only need mail handling
Get a real business address for $99 a month
A commercial address in your choice of 650-plus US cities, unlimited live call answering, a dedicated company phone and fax number, mail receipt and voicemail to email. One flat rate, no separate line items, no long-term contract.
$99/month all-inclusive · 650+ US locations · same price everywhere
Frequently asked questions
Six things, all included with nothing metered: a prestigious commercial business address, unlimited US-based live call answering in your company name, personalised call transferring, a dedicated company phone and fax number, professional mail and package receipt, and voicemail and fax delivered to your email as files.
The rate is the same at every one of Opus's 650-plus US locations, so a Manhattan address costs no more than a suburban one. Meeting rooms sit outside the plan: you get an allowance of free hours, then pay hourly, with availability depending on the building.
Usually, but verify before you pay. Opus states that a virtual office address can be included on Articles of Organization for LLC or entity registration, and advises reviewing your own state's requirements because regulations change.
The caveat is real. Some state registries decline addresses they identify as virtual or mail-receiving locations, and at least one customer has reported exactly that outcome after signing up. Check your Secretary of State's rules first. Separately, remember that a business address is not a registered agent, which is a distinct legal appointment with its own requirements.
There is an initial term of three months, which is shorter than the six-month minimum most competitors ask for but is not month to month. Cancelling means submitting a termination request through your online account with at least 30 days' notice before the end of your current term, and Opus's terms state that no prorated refunds apply.
One thing to clarify at signup: Opus's blog describes renewal as month to month after the first term, while its FAQ material and third-party summaries describe automatic renewal in further three-month blocks. Get the answer in writing, and set a calendar reminder 45 days before your term ends either way. Late notice is behind almost every billing complaint about this service.
Yes, and it catches people out. Opus operates as a Commercial Mail Receiving Agency, so federal rules require a completed USPS Form 1583 plus identification for every person who will receive mail under your account before location-related services can begin.
The form itself is short and the identity check is routine. Just do it immediately rather than assuming your address is live the moment you pay, particularly if you are waiting on a specific delivery or filing a registration against the new address.
Often yes. Opus says it has thousands of customers who have opened business bank accounts while using its locations, while being clear that it does not control banks and cannot guarantee any individual institution's decision.
Practically, policies vary by bank and even by branch. If banking is the main reason you are buying, ask your bank what it accepts before you sign up rather than after. It is a two-minute conversation that saves a three-month commitment.
It depends what you need, and this is the decision that actually matters. Mail-forwarding services are cheaper and often more flexible, with scanning, shredding and no minimum term, and if all you want is post handled they are the better buy.
Opus is a bundle. You are paying for an address, unlimited live answering and a dedicated business number together, and the value case only works if you want at least two of the three. Buying those separately generally costs more than $99 combined. Buying Opus for the address alone means paying for a receptionist you never use.
No, and it is not trying to. Opus gives you a number and human beings answering it. What it does not give you is a platform your team works inside, with call logging into a CRM, outbound dialling, routing rules and reporting.
If you have a sales or support team making and taking volume, you want a cloud phone system alongside it. Plenty of small companies run both: Opus covers the main line and the front door, and the phone system covers the team.
The verdict
Opus does the unglamorous thing well. One plan, one price, the same rate whether your address is in Manhattan or a suburb, and unlimited call answering rather than a minute allowance designed to be exceeded. In an industry where the advertised figure is usually the start of a negotiation with yourself, that simplicity is the product, and fifteen years of trading with BBB accreditation behind it is not nothing.
The benefits that hold up are the practical ones. Your home address stays out of public records. Calls get answered by a person when you cannot answer them. You get one predictable line on your expenses instead of five variable ones. For a consultant, a new LLC or a remote team, that is a straightforwardly good hundred dollars a month.
What stops it being a five is the paperwork and the exit. The three-month term is not month to month, cancellation needs 30 days' written notice through the portal, refunds are not prorated, and USPS Form 1583 has to clear before anything works. None of that is hidden, but none of it is on the pricing page either, and it is where the unhappy reviews come from. The inconsistency in how renewal terms are described across Opus's own material is worth resolving in writing before you sign.
Check your state and your bank, file the form on day one, brief the receptionists properly, and put your renewal date in the calendar. Do those four things and this is one of the better-value business services you can buy. Skip them and you will be writing one of the reviews I read while researching this.