Australia Post mail redirection vs mail hold: which one do you actually need?

Australia Post mail redirection and mail hold sound like they might be the same thing, or at least close enough that it does not matter which one you pick. It matters. They are two separate products, built for two separate situations, and forum threads on Whirlpool and ChoiceAU are full of people who bought the wrong one and then discovered they cannot simply switch it online.

This page is about the AusPost-vs-AusPost decision specifically: redirection or hold, straight from Australia Post, no third party involved. At the end we will touch on where a virtual mailbox fits if neither AusPost product actually solves your problem.

Quick verdict

• Choose mail redirection if you are moving to a new address permanently or long-term and want your mail to follow you there automatically.
• Choose mail hold if you are staying at the same address but will not be home to collect mail for a period (holiday, hospital stay, extended trip) and want it held and delivered when you get back.
• If you picked the wrong one, expect to visit a post office in person with ID and your original receipt to change it. There is no self-service way to convert one into the other online.

What is Australia Post mail redirection?

Mail redirection permanently changes where your mail goes. You give Australia Post an old address and a new one, and for the length of the service, anything addressed to the old address is intercepted in the sorting network and delivered to the new one instead.

It is built for people who are moving house. The new address is where you actually live now, and the redirection exists to catch mail from senders who have not yet been told about the move. Pricing for a personal redirection to an Australian address currently runs from around $38.50 for one month up to around $192.50 for twelve months, with cheaper concession rates for eligible cardholders and a separate Home Office tier if you run a business, trust or SMSF from home. Rates are reviewed periodically, so check the current AusPost redirection page before you buy.

Redirection can be applied for online or at a post office, needs proof of identity, and covers up to six names on one application. International redirection exists as a separate, pricier tier, and some mail types (Registered Post, Cash on Delivery, Parcel Post, Express Post) cannot be redirected overseas at all.

What is Australia Post mail hold?

Mail hold does not send your mail anywhere. It stops delivery at your current address for a set period and holds everything at the local facility until the service ends, at which point delivery resumes as normal, usually the next business day.

It is built for people who are not moving. You still live at the same address, you are just not there to collect mail for a while: a six-week overseas holiday, a hospital stay, an extended work trip. Rather than have mail pile up in an overflowing letterbox or get returned to sender, AusPost keeps it until you are back.

You can hold mail from one week up to twelve months. Personal mail hold currently costs around $30.70 for the first week and about $7.20 for each week after that, with cheaper concession pricing for eligible cardholders and a flat Home Office rate of around $79 per month for business, trust or SMSF addresses. As with redirection, confirm current pricing on the AusPost mail hold page, since fees are periodically updated.

Side-by-side comparison

Why people mix these up

The confusion almost always comes from the word "away." Someone going overseas for two months searches for a way to deal with their mail while they are away, and redirection is the more heavily advertised of the two products, so that is what they buy. But redirection needs a destination address, and if you are travelling rather than relocating, there often is not a sensible one to give it. What they actually wanted was mail hold: stop delivery, resume it when I am back, nothing needs to move anywhere in the meantime.

The reverse mistake happens too. Someone moving house sets up a mail hold, thinking it will bridge the gap, only to find that at the end of the hold period every piece of held mail is delivered in one batch to an address they no longer live at, because a hold does not know about your new address at all. That is redirection's job.

This exact pain point turns up repeatedly in Whirlpool and ChoiceAU threads: people who bought the wrong service, then went looking for a way to switch it and found there is not a self-service option to convert a hold into a redirection or vice versa. AusPost's process for altering or cancelling either service is a form, completed in person at a post office, with proof of identity and your original receipt. If you are the kind of person who wants to set this up once online and forget about it, discovering that a correction requires an in-person visit is an unwelcome surprise, especially if you are the one who is not going to be near a post office (because, for instance, you are the person who is travelling).

How to pick the right one the first time

Ask yourself one question: after this period ends, will you be collecting mail at the same address you collect it at today, or a different one?

Same address: you want mail hold. Nothing about where you receive mail is changing, you just need Australia Post to sit on it for a while.

Different address: you want mail redirection. Your address is changing, and you want mail addressed to the old one to follow you.

If the honest answer is "I do not know yet," for example you are travelling indefinitely and have not decided if or when you will resettle, neither AusPost product is a great fit, because both assume a fixed endpoint: hold assumes you come back to the same address, redirection assumes you land at a new one you can name today.

Where a virtual mailbox fits

A virtual mailbox is a third option that is not offered by Australia Post at all. Instead of holding your mail in place or diverting it to a single new address, a virtual mailbox gives you a permanent street address where mail is received, logged and photographed by staff, and you decide what happens to each item individually from a browser: scan the contents, forward it anywhere in Australia or overseas, shred it, or leave it in storage.

This solves the "I do not know yet" problem that neither redirection nor hold handles well. There is no end date to plan around, no single destination address to commit to in advance, and no in-person post office visit if your plans change. It also covers parcels sent via DHL, FedEx and other private couriers, which AusPost's own redirection and hold services do not touch, since both only apply within Australia Post's own delivery network. And where AusPost redirection covers up to six names on one application, a HotSnail account can add other people as additional names, so a partner or housemate's mail gets logged under the same address without a separate signup.

For a full breakdown of how a virtual mailbox compares to AusPost redirection specifically, see our mail redirection vs virtual mailbox comparison. If you are weighing it against a PO Box instead, our virtual mailbox vs PO Box guide covers that. And if your situation is a temporary trip back to Australia rather than an ongoing move, see our piece on keeping your address stable while returning home temporarily.