How To Get A Physical Address When Homeless

Alternatives for your physical address

Don't know what address to use in your account? You have options!

Haley Chamberlain avatar

Written by Haley Chamberlain
Updated over a week ago

If you work from home, you may be surprised by the CAN-SPAM requirement to have a physical address in every email you send. Who wants to give out their home address to everyone on their mailing list?

Uh, no thank you.

Luckily there are a few options. The important thing to note with all of these is that the law doesn't require it to be your address, but simply an address at which you can be contacted. With that in mind, let's walk through your alternatives!

(If these seem complicated or expensive, skip to the bottom):

Rent a P.O. Box. Head down to your local post office and rent a post office box. This will give you an address where you can receive mail, without having to use your home address. Prices vary, but in general a P.O. box will cost you about $100 per year.
Use your work address. If you have a day job with an office, talk to your employer about using the office address. Any mail to the office with your name on it should find its way to your desk!
Ask a friend with a business. If a friend of yours owns a studio, coffee shop, or simply has an office with an address, you can ask them to forward mail to you. Again, the requirement is simply that if a notice with your name on it is sent to the address listed, it gets into your hands.
Head to a UPS Store. UPS Stores offer the convenience of a PO Box setup without the PO Box address. You get their physical street address and a "suite #" that directs the mail for you to the right box. Prices vary depending on the store so call your nearest location for details.
Try your co-working space. Many co-working spaces add a perk that businesses renting from them can use their address as the business address. If you rent from a co-working space already, check with the manager on their policies regarding incoming mail.

We recently set up our own system so that you can use our address for free in your emails! This meets the legal requirement to have an address in each email.

If someone reaches out with a legal notice we will open it, scan the mail, identify which of our customers it is intended for, and email you the PDF.

Here's the address:

113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA, 98104-2205

In order to use this address you are agreeing to a couple of things:

You can only use this if you are a current ConvertKit customer.
You agree to use this address only for email marketing using ConvertKit's services.
You give us permission to open all mail to this address in order to pass it on to the right source.
You agree that you will not use this address for fraud or any other unlawful activity.
You understand that we won't forward physical mail or packages. We'll only scan mail and send you a PDF over email.

That's it! Go ahead and use the address and save yourself $100/year on a PO box!