Digital Postal Mail Startup Zumbox Hits The Deadpool

Zumbox, the startup that created a service to deliver postal mail digitally in a paperless format, is shutting down.

The company announced the shutdown in an email sent this week to users of the service, which was first posted by InfoTrends writer Matt Swain. Zumbox is recommending that users export their digital documents by Monday April 14th — less than a week from today.

It’s a big letdown from the expectations many people had for Zumbox just a few years ago. The company, which was founded in 2006, raised more than $28 million across three rounds of funding, the most recent of which was a $10 million Series C in December 2010. The company’s website still includes some lofty promises, touting: “Your documents stored securely, forever.”

However, Zumbox is not the only one who apparently couldn’t make such a service work: Rival postal mail digitizing startup Outbox announced its own shutdown in January 2014.

Here is the email from Zumbox announcing the shutdown in full (via InfoTrends’ Matt Swain):

“Dear Digital Postal Mail Account Holder,

We are sad to announce today that after more than five years of working to revolutionize the way mail is delivered, we have made the very difficult decision to shut down the company. All of us at Zumbox, along with our partners and the mailing community, remain committed to the concept of digital postal mail and have great confidence this capability will one day be the way you receive and manage your postal mail. However, at this point, the time and cost required to deliver on the vision is more than the market is prepared to invest.

As a result, the Digital Postal Mail site will be taken down shortly. If you wish to export your digital documents, please do so by Monday, April 14, 2014. The username for your account is [redacted]. To export documents, choose Export Your Mail from the Settings menu within your account.

Thank you for supporting Digital Postal Mail.

The Zumbox Team”