Test and advice of the ABC Liv corporate domiciliation service

When you create a company and you don’t have an office, the question of the address of the head office arises.
Domiciliating your company at home is a solution but not necessarily the ideal way to have a minimum of separation between your professional and private life: you will receive your professional mail in the middle of your personal mail, your postal address will be on all sites such as societe.com, infogreffe, ..
For my part, it was the fact that we were planning to move that bothered me the most: I had no desire to have to manage (and pay for) the steps of a head office transfer.
So I started looking for a company domiciliation company.
Corporate domiciliation services (or business domiciliation) simply offer you a postal address that will serve as the head office for your company.
We regularly see in TV reports journalists investigating a company who find themselves in front of a mailbox of a domiciliation company. Unsavoury companies that wish to remain discreet do indeed use this device, but only a tiny minority and it is completely legal.
There are several companies in the field of domiciliation (Digidom, Sofradom, …): all offer the same basic service: a mailbox as well as additional services: mail forwarding, office rental, telephone reception, ..
The rate will therefore vary depending on the services you request and the address you choose. Indeed, it is possible to choose a prestigious address, on the Champs Elysée for example. Obviously it will be more expensive.
For my part, I didn’t care about a prestigious address and I was looking for the most basic and cheapest service possible.
Luckily, it was ABCLiv, which had an address right next to my home, that offered the service at the best price.
So I signed a contract with them.
Everything was managed remotely: they sent me a contract which I returned signed with the payment, a proof of address and a copy of identity papers.
Once the contract was in place, I was able to use this “new address” as my headquarters and use it to create my company with ECL Direct.
I also went to La Poste to give power of attorney to ABC Liv so that they could pick up my registered mail.
For the first few months, I would pick up my mail once a week at my home address where ABC Liv has an office. The only small constraint: I don’t have direct access to the mailbox and therefore have to come by during ABC Liv’s opening hours. It seems to me that this is the case for all the domiciliation services (to be checked).
This service cost me 26 euros HT per month.
Then I moved as planned, so I added the mail forwarding option. Mail is redirected the same day, so we have an additional 48 to 72 hours between the moment our correspondent sends a mail and the moment we receive it. For my activity this isn’t embarrassing.
This service costs me 15 euros HT per month (shipping cost included).
Since I’m a nomad and I’ve been wandering around the world, I asked ABC Liv to forward the mail to my address Mail for the traveler who scans it for me. So all the mail of my company can be consulted online, very practical!
The only problem I’ve had in 4 years at ABC Liv is the following. By chance, a company whose name is very close to the name of my company also uses the services of ABC Liv, at the same address! In 4 years, I thus received by mistake twice the mail which was addressed to this company. I then returned it to ABC Liv who promised me that it wouldn’t happen again. It is impossible to know if this other company ever received mail addressed to me.
Apart from this unpleasant surprise, everything is going well and the service meets my expectations so I can recommend their services.
Another thing to know as well: ABC Liv increases its rates every year by about 5% (without warning you). It is rather unpleasant especially since we are a little bit bound feet and hands: we do not change as easily the domiciliation service as the paper supplier… I don’t know if the other players have such practices.
Feel free to share your experiences in domiciliation services or ask your questions in comments.