Inc Authority vs BizFilings

Overview

Do you need to form a limited liability company, but you don’t want to bother with the complexities and hassles of forming your own LLC?

There are many companies like Inc Authority and BizFilings that offer high-quality LLC formation service, but it can be tough to figure out which one is the best option for your new business.

In this Inc Authority vs BizFilings comparison guide, you’ll find all the relevant information about these two reputable service providers organized in a convenient manner. Let’s find out which one is the right choice for your LLC!

Do Inc Authority and BizFilings Offer Good Value?

Inc Authority and BizFilings are two good services to start an LLC. They each have some advantages over the other.

Inc Authority offers LLC formation service for free, as long as you pay your own state fee. By contrast, BizFilings charges $99. Plus, Inc Authority has a strong reputation for customer feedback, whereas BizFilings has very few reviews available. On the other hand, only BizFilings offers state-specific compliance assistance.

Check out the following comparison or read on as we discuss all the information you need to make a decision between these two respected companies.

7 Things They Have in Common

1) Affordable: With either BizFilings or Inc Authority, you’ll save a significant amount of money on your LLC formation compared to hiring a business attorney to handle your formation process.

2) Registered Agent Service: BizFilings and Inc Authority both include registered agent service with all of their LLC formation service packages — BizFilings provides six months, while Inc Authority offers a full year. Considering the fact that every LLC needs a registered agent anyway, these are good offers.

3) Customer Support: These two services both have customer support networks that can answer your tough questions. Why go it alone when you can get help from BizFilings or Inc Authority?

4) Experience: Both Inc Authority and BizFilings have helped form thousands of businesses over the years, and they both have plenty of expertise. You can definitely trust them to have the experience they need to form your compliant LLC.

5) Informative: The BizFilings “Business Owner’s Toolkit” is one of the most helpful educational resources offered by any LLC formation service provider, with tons of info about business entity types, industry guides, and more. As for Inc Authority, they have a blog where they share business tips and tricks. Both are helpful resources whether you’re a customer or not.

6) Additional Services: Do you need assistance with other popular business services like federal tax ID number (EIN) acquisition, foreign qualification, or LLC operating agreements? Inc Authority and BizFilings provide many additional services, making them one-stop shops for your LLC.

7) Trustworthy: These are both entirely legitimate operations with strong track records. These aren’t fly-by-night companies, but rather they’re well-respected entities with plenty of expertise to get the job done right.

Side-by-Side Comparisons

Pricing

It’s impossible to beat Inc Authority’s offer when it comes to pricing. That’s because they’re one of only a few companies in this industry that offers LLC formations free of charge, as long as you pay your own state fee. BizFilings starts its formation service pricing at $99, which is a reasonable but unexciting price point.

Obviously, everyone would rather pay $0 than $99. However, pricing isn’t everything. Let’s see how things shake out in the next few categories.

Features

Inc Authority provides one year of registered agent service with each LLC formation package, and BizFilings offers six months. While the difference between six and 12 months of registered agent service might not seem significant, you might be surprised by how much money this saves you.

When you consider that BizFilings charges $220 per year for registered agent service, it would actually cost you around $209 to get an LLC package from BizFilings that compares to what you can get from Inc Authority for free.

Experience

BizFilings opened in 1996, and they have handled more than 500,000 business filings since then. Inc Authority has been around longer, but they’ve served a much smaller volume of customers. Inc Authority was founded in 1989, and they’ve formed more than 140,000 LLCs and corporations over the years.

Customer Support

Inc Authority offers customer support via chat, phone, or email. Their representatives are available from 11 am to 8 pm ET on weekdays. BizFilings has support availability from 9 am until 8 pm ET every weekday. Like Inc Authority, you can access their support via phone, email, or chat.

In general, both of these companies provide solid support. Their reps are friendly and knowledgeable, and they respond to messages quickly. While this category is a close competition, we will give a small advantage to BizFilings due to their extended support availability.

Turnaround Times

BizFilings bases their processing times on which level of service you purchase, rather than the actual requirements of your state. They say that their Basic package requires a 4-6 week turnaround, while their Standard and Complete packages take 7-10 business days.

Inc Authority’s turnaround times are based on each state’s processing speeds. Therefore, your LLC documents could be filed and processed within a few days in some states, but in others, it could take several weeks.

Order Tracking

Both of these service providers have order-tracking tools available on their websites. Simply log into your account, and you’ll find your order status in your profile.

Registered Agent Service

Every LLC in America is required to designate a registered agent, which is a person or business entity that receives important document deliveries (like service of process) from your state government, informs you of the receipt, then forwards the documents to you. This is so crucial because the state needs to have a reliable means of contacting your business at any time.

As we’ve mentioned, Inc Authority includes one year of registered agent service at no extra cost with any LLC formation package. After that, their price point is a reasonable $99 per year. As for BizFilings, they include six months of registered agent service with their formation packages, but after that, they charge an annual fee of $220.

Customer Reviews

Inc Authority’s customer satisfaction reputation is strong. We found more than 11,000 reviews of their services, and they were overwhelmingly positive. Their clients clearly like their free LLC formation service offering, and they also seem to appreciate their quick processing speeds.

We were only able to track down 18 customer reviews for BizFilings. It’s impossible to meaningfully analyze such a small sample of data, so we’ll merely say it’s odd that a company that’s completed 500,000 business filings only has 18 reviews online.

Ease of Use

These companies are relative equals in this category, as they both make the LLC formation process quite simple compared to forming your own business using the DIY method. Still, we will give BizFilings a slight edge because their website is a bit more streamlined and user-friendly than the Inc Authority site.

Additional Services

Inc Authority and BizFilings both offer their customers a broad selection of additional business services, and they also provide many of the same services. For example, either of these companies can help you with registered agent service, certificates of good standing, EIN obtainment, and more. However, there are plenty of services that only one or the other provides.

With Inc Authority, you can access their business credit and business funding services to help you grow your business, which are both features BizFilings doesn’t offer. In addition, they offer revocable living trusts. On the other hand, BizFilings offers assistance with dissolutions, amendments, and dissolutions, while Inc Authority does not.

Which Is the Best LLC Service for You?

BizFilings and Inc Authority have plenty of common characteristics that make them two of the top LLC formation services available, but they also have some major differences that set them apart. If you haven’t yet made up your mind between them, let’s finish this comparison by quickly describing some scenarios that may sway your opinion one way or the other.

Regardless of which one you ultimately choose to help form your LLC, we think you’ll be quite pleased with the service you receive from these companies.

Choose Inc Authority if:

Are you interested in getting your LLC professionally formed for free? Does receiving a full year of registered agent service at no additional charge appeal to you? If so, Inc Authority is a great option.

Choose BizFilings if:

Is experience your most important attribute for a service provider? Are you forming an LLC in a state with additional compliance requirements, like New York’s publication requirement? BizFilings is worth a look.

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