The majority of providers provide tiered plans, and the naming structure is a nightmare of "Starter," "Business," "Premium," and "Executive" but the difference below the branding tends to be three factors: address you receive, how your mail is handled, is there access to meeting rooms. See our website here!
The level one plans are lean. You receive a registered business address, normally in a good business area and that is about it. The mail is delivered to the address where it is either picked up or sent to you at a schedule. To a solo freelancer, a new company incorporated that only requires an ACRA approved address or one testing the waters in Singapore before investing in it full throttle - this level works. It is not fancy, but practical and it typically costs less than the SGD 100/month, often less.
Other, more practical support begins to be added in mid-tier plans. Mail scanning is frequent here - one does not wait till someone has physically forwarded the mail, but rather a person scans your documents and forwards them through mails. Other providers also include a local voice number, call answering or forwarding. That is important in case you have a business where either the client or the vendor may be located in Singapore. The price increase is typically fair considering what is offered, however, it is reasonable to verify whether the call answering is performed by a human operator or it is an automated redirection since they are not quite similar.
Things are more interesting in premium plans, and it is in this case that you must be very careful when reading the fine print. The access to the meeting rooms is included in general, though it is worth checking the number of hours per month, the ease of making a booking, and the appearance of the overage rate. Other providers are coworking desk access on top of the same, which is handy should you require a proper working environment occasionally but not full time.
There is one aspect that surprises people, and they are add-on fees. Plan may appear competitively priced until you consider the per-letter forwarding fees, courier fees or reception services added on separately. Always request to be given a complete breakdown as opposed to the advertised monthly rate which is given to you.
Pricing also is influenced by location levels in a manner that does not necessarily manifest immediately. A speech in Raffles Place or orchard is more expensive than one in Jurong or Tai Seng - and it matters to some businesses how prestigious the location is. For others, it genuinely isn't. A software company that implements business with mostly foreign customers is likely to not require an address in Marina Bay. This may not be the case with a financial consultancy that is targeting the local corporate clients.
Another lever is the contract length. Monthly rolling plans offer you flexibility at a rate that is usually high compared to an annual plan. When you are fairly sure that you will use the service at least a year, then annual rate tends to be more economically reasonable, but again make sure that you review the cancellation conditions in case of any variations.
The truth of the matter is that the middle ground plan suits most of the businesses. Base plans may get constraining sooner and the high end ones may have options that are not worth the money because you would hardly utilize them. However, that calculus becomes different with the amount of activity that is client-facing you are walking locally, and therefore, it makes sense to chart your real usage and then fall back to whatever seems like the middle ground.