These three national paper shredding services specialize in heavy duty shredding. They’ll come out to your office and either pick up boxes or bins or paper or shred them on the spot. Here we compare their pricing, services offered and customer satisfaction. See a pricing comparison below followed by a rundown of each company.

Don’t want to wait on a shredding service to pick up your sensitive documents? You can always visit Shredder Warehouse and purchase an industrial machine that can shred thousands of pages a minute, without the wait or expense of a shredding service. Click here to learn more.

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	Iron Mountain	ProShred	Shred-It
On-Site (Service brings equipment and shreds at your office)	$10 per box ($300 minimum)	$85 (1 bin) + $40 per additional bin*	$150 per bin
Off-Site (Service picks up paper and shreds at their location)	$99 (1 bin) + $40 per additional bin	Not Offered	$125 per bin
Drop Off at Store	Not Offered	$20 (under 25 lbs) $30 (26 to 50 lbs)	$10 per box or bag ($30 minimum)
	www.IronMountain.com	www.ProShred.com	www.ShredIt.com

* Pricing may vary in some markets.

Best Off-Site Shredding Service: Iron Mountain

Number of Locations: Over 1,000 (search here)
Services Offered:  On-site and off-site shredding, media destruction, data backup & records management 

Between the 3 national competitors, Iron Mountain has the best rates for off-site shredding. This is the type of service where Iron Mountain picks up your paper in a locked bin or vault and brings it back to their location for shredding. If you’re just scheduling a one-time shredding, the cost is $99 for one 96 gallon bin and $40 for each additional bin of paper. Shred-It, on the other hand, charges a flat $125 per bin, so it can get expensive fast if you have a lot of paper.

There’s also a big discount if you sign up for regular monthly or bimonthly off-site shredding. The cost is $65 for 2 bins (or 1 bin + 1 secure vault or console) plus $16 for each additional bin or console.

Iron Mountain also has on-site shredding, which is where they bring out equipment and shreds at your office. It’s a little more secure than off-site shredding and sometimes necessary if you need a witness present. The cost is $10 per box (standard copy-size) with a minimum charge of $300.

Iron Mountain has a strong A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau. However, while this may be expected for a business their size, I found a lot of negative reviews on Yelp. In particular users complained about all sorts of hidden fees they weren’t aware of until the bill came: administrative fees, late fees, rush job fees, carton retrieval fees, permanent withdrawal termination fees, and others. With this in mind, it’s probably worth a look at the fine print before signing up for regular service.

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Best On-Site Shredding Service: ProShred

Number of Locations: 27 (search here)
Services Offered:  On-site and drop-off shredding, media destruction

ProShred has by far the best rates for on-site shredding, which is actually the only type of shredding service they offer. At $85 for 1 bin and $40 for additional bins, they cost a fraction of the price of Shred-It ($150 per bin) and can be much cheaper than Iron Mountain considering their $300 minimum. If you sign up for regularly scheduled service, the cost is even lower at $45 (1 bin) + $40 for each additional bin. These prices may vary depending on the location.

One downside, however, is that they’re a smaller service and they are not available in every city. ProShred has 27 locations nationwide, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Philadelphia, Phoenix and more. Most major cities are covered, but you may be out of luck in a smaller city.

Perhaps because they’re a smaller service, ProShred actually has much better reviews than their competitors. Browsing through Yelp, I found almost all positive reviews on their various locations. The only negative thing I found was somebody who lost touch with a salesperson while trying to schedule an appointment.

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Shred-It

Number of Locations: Over 170
Services Offered:  On-site, off-site and drop-off shredding, media destruction

Shred-It offers the whole array of shredding services, including off-site and on-site shredding, as well as the option to drop off paper at their office. Their pricing is on the more expensive end: Iron Mountain beats them at off-site shredding and ProShred beats them at on-site shredding.

Part of the reason is that Shred-It charges a flat rate per bin – $150 for on-site shredding, for example. So if you had 5 bins of paper, you’d pay $600 for Shred-It compared to only $285 for ProShred. They do, however, offer a low cost drop-off service. At $10 per box or bag, you can drop off paper at one of their centers for shredding.

Shred-It has a solid A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau. Like Iron Mountain, however, I found a lot of negative reviews on Yelp. Rather than hidden fees, their biggest issue seems to be reliability. A lot of users complained about Shred-It employees showing up late or canceling without notice.

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Other Paper Shredding Services

These services are for businesses who need to purge lots of old records. If you just have a box or two you want to get rid of, but don’t want to deal with the hassle of feeding each page through a shredder, you can also drop documents off at FedEx. At a price of $0.79 per pound, FedEx will hold your documents and later transfer them to Iron Mountain for disposal.