Every LLC and corporation operating within the United States must designate a registered agent. This important role ensures that the state government has a point of contact for your business, enabling it to deliver important documents to a known entity.
You can serve as your own registered agent, or you can hand off this role to a family member or close friend. Maybe you even have the budget to hire an attorney or accountant to handle registered agent responsibilities!
Here at Incorporation Guru, we strongly prefer hiring a reputable registered agent service like ZenBusiness. Registered agent services cost much less than a lawyer or accountant, and they’re far more reliable and private than serving as your own agent. With the strong pricing model and outstanding customer feedback offered by ZenBusiness, it’s our top overall choice for registered agent services!
Let’s discuss the pros and cons of ZenBusiness and break down what it can offer your business for registered agent service. Is this the right company for you?
ZenBusiness Discount Code
Before we get started, we would like to quickly introduce you to this ZenBusiness discount. If you haven’t yet formed your LLC or corporation, ZenBusiness will handle the formation process and provide one year of registered agent service, all for one low price of $39! It’s an incredible bargain, especially considering that ZenBusiness is our top choice for registered agent, LLC, and incorporation services!
Why Should I Hire a Registered Agent Service?
As we mentioned, every formal business entity in the United States needs a registered agent to receive document deliveries from the state and forward them to the business. While this might sound unnecessary, it’s actually crucially important.
If you don’t have a registered agent, the state doesn’t know how to reliably contact your company. This means that your business could miss service of process, tax forms, and other vital document deliveries. In a worst-case scenario, this could lead to your business losing its good standing, being sued without your knowledge, and more.
While some businesses like hiring an attorney or accountant to be their registered agent, this can be extremely expensive, and your chosen lawyer or CPA may not even have much meaningful experience in the role.
On the other side of the coin, serving as your own agent (or designating a friend or family member) has plenty of issues as well. You would need to be present at your business address every weekday during standard working hours to ensure no missed deliveries. You may also need to make your personal address a matter of public record, which has obvious privacy concerns.
Meanwhile, a registered agent service provides the best of both worlds. You’ll save tons of money over hiring an attorney or accountant while ensuring your own privacy and avoiding the potential for missed deliveries. What’s not to like about that?
ZenBusiness Registered Agent Service Review
ZenBusiness is our top overall choice for registered agent service, for a handful of reasons. Let’s start by talking about the pros and cons of its service, then move into the details.
Pros
- Strong pricing model
- Outstanding customer feedback
- Free registered agent service with formation service
- Socially conscious company
Cons
- There are more experienced options available
What Packages Does ZenBusiness Offer for Registered Agent Service?
Many competitors only offer one package for registered agent service, but ZenBusiness has two plans available, both of which are quite appealing. (As a note, if you use our exclusive ZenBusiness discount code to form your LLC or corporation, you will receive one year of the $99 package.)
$99 per year:
- Registered agent service
- Online document access
- Unlimited customer support
$149 per year:
- Everything from the $99/year plan, plus…
- ZenBusiness’ Worry-Free Compliance service
- Costs $199 if ordered separately
- Annual report service
- 2 annual amendments to your formation documents
- Business alerts system
We think that the standard ZenBusiness registered agent service package is a solid deal, as it includes everything you need for compliant service. However, the $149 package is an outstanding deal that’s well worth the additional $50.
With the $149 package, ZenBusiness adds its Worry-Free Compliance feature. This service costs a whopping $199 if you buy it a la carte, but only $50 to add to your registered agent service package.
Worry-Free Compliance includes annual report service (including the tracking of your due dates), up to two amendments to your formation documents per year, and access to the ZenBusiness business alerts system. Adding this service is almost a no-brainer at this price point.
Overall Pricing and Value: 10/10
ZenBusiness may not be the absolute most affordable company in the registered agent service marketplace, but its baseline $99 package is still highly affordable and the $149 package is an absolute steal. With both options, you’ll receive registered agent service, online document access, and unlimited customer support.
Overall, you’d be hard-pressed to find a company that gives you more value per dollar, especially if you’re looking for business formation service as well. Keep in mind that, if you use our exclusive discount code, ZenBusiness will throw in a full year of registered agent service with your business formation for a total of just $39!
Track Record: 9/10
ZenBusiness was formed in 2015 in Austin, Texas. Its mission is to provide affordable business services by embracing technology and artificial intelligence. To date, ZenBusiness has formed more than 200,000 business entities.
ZenBusiness has an ambitious goal of one million more business formations within the next few years. We’re incredibly impressed by the ZenBusiness customer feedback reputation, as it has roughly 7,700 reviews available online while maintaining very high rating scores.
In an industry with more than a handful of questionable track records, ZenBusiness stands out as a shining example of how to provide business services the right way.
Customer Support: 9/10
With ZenBusiness, you can access customer support via phone, email, or its web-based live chat application. We’ve tried all three options, and in our experience, they provide timely responses with accurate information. They say that they reply to all emails within one business day, and we’ve never waited more than a few minutes to get ahold of someone by phone or chat.
As for the quality of their support, we’ve found that their representatives are knowledgeable, and they’ve been able to answer all of our questions.
You can contact ZenBusiness customer support from 9 am to 9 pm ET on weekdays or Sundays from 11 am to 8 pm ET. These extended hours of operation are very unique in the space — warranting a higher score on customer support.
Ease of Use: 10/10
You don’t need any experience with business services to successfully purchase registered agent service from ZenBusiness. While some competitors make you jump through a variety of hoops to place your order, that’s not the case with ZenBusiness.
It only takes a few minutes to fill out the ZenBusiness formation service order form, and the instructions are quite simple to follow. All you need to do is choose which package you’d like to purchase, enter some basic info about your business, and they’ll take care of the rest. They do have some upsells and third-party offers throughout the process that we’re not crazy about, but they’re fairly unobtrusive.
How Does ZenBusiness Work?
The process of ordering registered agent service from ZenBusiness couldn’t be much simpler. Here’s an overview of what you can expect when you click the “Get a Registered Agent” button on ZenBusiness’ website:
- Select your package: First, select your business entity type and formation state in the boxes at the top of the screen. ZenBusiness presents two registered agent service packages to choose from, as we discussed earlier. All you have to do is make your choice between them and you’re on to the next screen.
- Provide info about yourself and your business: Next, you’ll share some personal and business info with ZenBusiness. They’ll need to know your name, email address, phone number, state, and any other relevant info. They will give you a chance to review your information and make any necessary edits before moving on.
- Enter payment info and create an account: Finally, you will enter your credit card information and select a password for your account. Once you do, you can place your order and finish the process!
What Are ZenBusiness Customers Saying?
ZenBusiness has only been around for a few years but it already has 200,000+ business formations under its belt. We found nearly 8,000 reviews of ZenBusiness and were impressed that the company still holds a strong 4.7 out of 5 star average score, even with such a high volume of reviews.
We read through many of these ZenBusiness reviews and were impressed by how their customers clearly love the ease of use and affordability presented by ZenBusiness. The only negative reviews we could find were about billing issues, and to our eyes, it seemed like the people writing those reviews had been confused about what they were ordering in the first place.
Overall, ZenBusiness has a spectacular reputation and it seems that their customers are almost all happy with the service they receive.
Our Final Thoughts
ZenBusiness is our favorite company for both registered agent service and business formations. They pair super-reasonable price points with outstanding customer satisfaction, creating a winning combination for any entrepreneur’s needs.
We think ZenBusiness deserves a score of 9/10, and we would never hesitate to recommend their services to any of our friends or family members.
While the $99 registered agent service package offered by ZenBusiness is already a good deal, the $149 package adds so many valuable features that it’s our clear-cut preference. ZenBusiness may not have quite as long of a track record as some of its competitors, the extremely high-quality customer feedback they receive more than makes up it.