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If you want to form a business in the United States, you’ll need to designate a registered agent. The role of the registered agent involves the usage of their address as your official business address, which means they’ll receive important document deliveries on your behalf, including service of process and official correspondence from your state government.
While you can legally serve as your own agent and still operate a compliant business entity, there are some other benefits of hiring a registered agent service. Having a registered agent makes it so that you don’t need to be available at your place of business during all standard business hours, and it also cuts down on the amount of junk mail you’ll receive.
There are many LLC formation services that also offer registered agent services to businesses, and it can be difficult to discern which one is the best option for your company. In this review, we’ll take a close look at Incorporate.com, one of the most popular service providers in the industry. Are they the right registered agent service for your business?
Incorporate.com opened in 1899, and they’ve served 750,000+ clients since then. Over the years, their name has changed several times ― from Corporation Service Company to The Company Corporation to Incorporate.com ― but the core business has stayed the same.
A fun fact about Incorporate.com is that they guarantee their services with a unique feature: their $75,000 Corporate Compliance Guarantee. With this guarantee, your purchase is protected against filing defects caused by negligence on the part of Incorporate.com. If your filing is found to be invalid through their fault, they’ll resolve the issue or pay you up to $75,000.
Incorporate.com is one of the oldest companies in the business services industry, as it opened for business well over a century ago, in 1899. Unfortunately, their registered agent service costs $235 per year. By contrast, ZenBusiness charges an annual rate of just $199.
Incorporate.com charges $235 per year for registered agent service, with no volume discounts available for clients needing service in several states. In addition, if you want them to file your Change of Registered Agent form with your state, you’ll need to pay the state fee, and Incorporate.com also requires you to pay the state expediting fee. As for additional features, they do include access to their CSCNavigator online compliance dashboard that helps you keep track of important filing due dates.
Incorporate.com charges $235 per year for registered agent service, while we charge $199. Also, we offer a free LLC formation service package that’s obviously much cheaper than the Incorporate.com $99 plan.
They also simply don’t have a great reputation regarding online customer feedback (more on that in a moment). For more information on your other options, take a look at our guide to the top registered agent services available.
For a company that’s been open for well over 100 years and served over 750,000 clients, it’s surprising that there’s so little customer feedback available for Incorporate.com. We found very few reviews on third-party sites, with rating scores mixed between positive and negative feedback. Overall, it’s difficult to do too much analysis on such a small sample of feedback.
Overall, we were pleased with the quality of Incorporate.com’s customer support department. They offer support over the phone, via email, or using their online chat function. With all three options, we received efficient responses. Their representatives were pleasant to talk to while also seeming knowledgeable and expanding upon their answers as necessary.
If experience is your priority, it could make some sense to use a company that’s been around since the 1800s. Their compliance dashboard is also a nice feature.
If you want to save money, or if you appreciate positive customer feedback, you might want to look elsewhere. For instance, we get great reviews and charge as little as $0 (plus state fee) for LLC formation service while including ongoing compliance assistance and other valuable features in our premium packages. We also charge just $199 per year for registered agent service.
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Incorporate.com was originally formed as the Corporation Service Company in 1899. Over the years, they’ve changed their name twice — first to The Company Corporation and then to Incorporate.com — but their core service remains the same: to make it easier for companies to form business entities. Despite the fact that they’ve been around for over a century, there are only a few reviews available for Incorporate.com, so it’s tough to analyze their customer reputation.
It’s normal to be uncertain about which online registered agent service is the right choice for your unique business. After all, there are a ton of options out there, and each of them has its own set of advantages and disadvantages.
However, we’ve done countless hours of research on this topic, reviewing and comparing all of the best LLC formation and registered agent services. We invite you to check out some of our comparison guides, which take a head-to-head view of the competition between Incorporate.com and its top competitors.
Incorporate.com vs. ZenBusiness: While Incorporate.com charges at least $99 for LLC formation and $235/year for registered agent service, we’ll form your LLC for free — just pay your state’s required fee — and provide registered agent service for $199/year. In addition, we receive excellent customer feedback, with thousands of reviews available and very few negative ones to be found.
Incorporate.com vs. Northwest Registered Agent: Overall, Northwest Registered Agent lives up to its name, as this company includes a year of its namesake registered agent service with each formation package. However, at $225, its LLC formations are more expensive than the other options in this guide. If you don’t want registered agent service, Incorporate.com can save you some money on your LLC formation, but its $235/year registered agent service costs more than Northwest’s package, which includes both features. Northwest charges $125/year for standalone registered agent service
Incorporate.com vs. Incfile: Like us at ZenBusiness, Incfile offers a free business formation package, so they come out ahead of Incorporate.com in the value proposition. Incfile charges $119/year for registered agent service, while Incorporate.com charges $235. Compared to many of its alternatives, Incfile also receives strong customer feedback, with thousands upon thousands of positive reviews. Incorporate.com clearly has more longevity than Incfile, but that’s the only area where they have an advantage.
Incorporate.com vs LegalZoom: LegalZoom recently debuted a free LLC formation package, matching us and Incfile in this area. However, it charges $249/year for registered agent service, whereas Incorporate.com charges $235. Even though Incorporate.com has been open for many more years, LegalZoom has a higher volume of customers served, with more than 4 million compared to Incorporate.com’s 750,000 customers. Customer feedback is another advantage for LegalZoom over some of its alternatives. While its reviews aren’t quite as impressive as those of ZenBusiness or Incfile, LegalZoom still has thousands of reviews, and most of them are positive.
You can reach Incorporate.com by phone at 855-236-4043, or you can fill out the contact form on their website and they’ll get back to you via email. We couldn’t find any info about their hours of operation, however.
In short, yes, every LLC and corporation operating in America today needs to designate a registered agent. This person or business entity receives service of process and important document deliveries from the state, then forwards them to your business. It’s a crucial part of any LLC or corporation’s compliance. However, you don’t necessarily need to hire a registered agent service — you can serve in this role yourself, appoint a family member or friend, hire an attorney or accountant to handle it, etc.
In their own words, “If you cancel your order before we have submitted it to a federal, state, or local office, Incorporate.com will refund the total amount paid for such order less a service fee. If you cancel your order after we have already submitted it, we will use our discretion to determine what portion, if any, we will refund.”
Incorporate.com offers business formations, annual reports, business licenses and permits, bylaws and operating agreements, Certificates of Good Standing, certified copies, stock and membership certificates, written consent forms, and more. In addition, they provide assistance with IRS filings, including employer identification number (EIN) acquisition, LLC tax status election, and nonprofit status. Finally, they offer mail forwarding, along with a handful of miscellaneous filings, like DBA registrations, foreign qualifications, amendments, entity conversions, dissolutions, and reinstatements.
Incorporate.com’s biggest advantage is its longevity. After all, any company that can stay in business for 120+ years must be doing something right. Their biggest disadvantage is their pricing, as you can find just about everything Incorporate.com sells at a lower price with one of their competitors.
Disclaimer: The content on this page is for information purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, or accounting advice. If you have specific questions about any of these topics, seek the counsel of a licensed professional.
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