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In this Northwest Registered Agent vs BizFilings comparison guide, we’ll discuss their main commonalities and differences. By doing so, we hope to make your decision a bit easier by helping you decide which one has your best interests in mind.
Northwest Registered Agent and BizFilings are both highly popular and reputable companies operating in the LLC services industry. Either one of them can easily form your compliant LLC, and they both have reasonable rates, especially compared to hiring a lawyer. However, each has its advantages.
First and foremost, Northwest Registered Agent has high-quality customer support, with a level of customization few competitors can match. Furthermore, Northwest receives strong customer feedback, whereas BizFilings has very few reviews available at all.
Overall though, BizFilings is a decent alternative to Northwest Registered Agent, especially if you’re looking for a company that offers state-specific compliance assistance.
Would you like to get some more info before making your decision? Read on to find out everything you need to know about these two respected LLC formation service providers.
1) Affordable: With either Northwest Registered Agent or BizFilings, you’ll save a tremendous amount of money compared to hiring a lawyer to draft and file your formation documents. Seeing as the LLC isn’t a terribly complex business structure, you may not even need an attorney’s expertise to begin with.
2) Customer Support: While saving money is always great, you don’t want to go it alone either. These service providers both have customer support networks that can answer all of your tough questions, saving you lots of wasted time hunting down answers on your own.
3) Experience: Northwest Registered Agent and BizFilings have each formed thousands of LLCs before, so you can be confident in their abilities to form your LLC in a compliant, efficient manner. They have the expertise necessary to get the job done right.
4) Efficiency: Are you in a rush to get your LLC formed? That’s no problem whatsoever for service providers like Northwest Registered Agent and BizFilings. They both offer expedited service (for an added cost, of course) that can dramatically speed up the turnaround time for your LLC.
5) Registered Agent Service: These two companies both include registered agent service with their LLC formation packages. BizFilings includes six months of registered agent service with their $99 Basic LLC service package, while Northwest Registered Agent throws in a full year.
6) Additional Services: These providers have plenty of other services available to help you maintain your LLC’s compliant status. From foreign qualifications to LLC operating agreements, Northwest Registered Agent and BizFilings have you covered.
7 ) Security: Both of these companies truly care about your online security. BizFilings secures its website using Norton Web Security, while Northwest Registered Agent runs its own servers and has its own in-house coders and developers.
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Northwest: At $225, their price point is quite high compared to many of their competitors. Still, the inclusion of a full year of their registered agent service is a good feature that makes their pricing more attractive. Once the first year is up, the registered agent service will renew at $125 per year.
BizFilings: Starting with their $99 Basic package, which includes six months of registered agent (which costs $220/year after that), their packages are all more expensive overall than some competing formation services. The Standard and Complete packages vary in price by state but generally don’t have enough valuable features to justify their price points.
Northwest: Northwest Registered Agent has been around since 1998, and since then they’ve served thousands of customers on their way to becoming a trusted and reliable midsize company in the business services industry.
BizFilings: As for BizFilings, they’re a similarly experienced operation with 500,000+ businesses formed since 1996.
Northwest: Northwest offers phone and email support. We first tested their email support, and while it took nearly 24 hours to receive an email back, the response was detailed, and the rep went beyond simply answering our question and checking off an email response. We also called and received similarly impressive service. The representative who answered the phone took the time to ask for details so that he could give us the most accurate answer.
BizFilings: BizFilings offers phone and email support, and there is also a “leave a message” feature on the left side of each page on their website. We called the listed phone number, and we were quickly able to navigate through their phone tree to speak with a real person. When we emailed, we received a response the same day after sending it early in the morning.
Both their phone and email responses were professional, and they answered our questions thoroughly, even providing additional details that were applicable based on what we asked. The best part of their customer support is how long their hours of availability are. You can reach BizFilings representatives from 9 am-8 pm ET every weekday, which is a much longer window than some competitors provide for support.
Northwest: When you select your state from the dropdown menu of the application, an estimated turnaround time will display on the screen. Most states have expedited service available for an additional fee, so you’ll see two turnaround times on the order form.
BizFilings: BizFilings bases their turnarounds on how much you spend on their services. Their Basic package has a 4-6 week turnaround, and the Standard and Complete packages take 7-10 days. They also offer expedited processing, which is a $60 upcharge for them to “prioritize your order above non-expedited orders,” but this does not actually speed anything up with the state. They have official state expediting fees tied in with that expediting option, but again, there’s no indication of how much this option will actually speed up your turnaround time.
Northwest: Northwest Registered Agent doesn’t have a ton of customer feedback, but they do have around 400 reviews, and they’re nearly all positive.
BizFilings: BizFilings has basically no customer feedback at all available online. In fact, we found just 18 total reviews for their services on the entire internet.
Northwest: The application process with Northwest is streamlined and easy to follow. You simply enter your personal info and business details and pay for the order. It doesn’t get more straightforward than this.
BizFilings: Their incorporation wizard is a convenient tool that can help you figure out whether you should form an LLC or a corporation. Once you start filling out your order form, there are opportunities for upsells along the way, but they’re quite unobtrusive and never feel pushy at all.
From the moment you start the application process, they automatically assign an order number to your application, so you can reference it with customer service if you need assistance.
With either Northwest Registered Agent or BizFilings, you’ll have access to a broad selection of additional services that can help you build, maintain, and expand your new LLC. They have quite a few services in common, as you can order registered agent service, annual reports, foreign qualifications, operating agreements, EIN acquisition, and more from either one of these companies.
However, there are also some exclusive services offered by each company that the other one doesn’t provide to their clients. For instance, only Northwest offers mail forwarding and virtual office services, while only BizFilings provides services like dissolutions, amendments, and entity conversions.
With Northwest Registered Agent and BizFilings, we’re discussing two of the top LLC formation services available online. They’re both highly experienced, and they’re capable of forming your new LLC in an efficient and effective manner.
Because they’re both strong options, some of you may remain undecided. With that in mind, we’ll cap off this comparison by briefly touching on some of the main reasons you may prefer one over the other. No matter which one you choose, we wish you the best of luck with your new LLC!
Do you want a full year of registered agent service bundled in with your formation? Are you interested in their personalized customer support? These are a few of the reasons people love what Northwest Registered Agent has to offer.
Are you looking for a company that handles every state-specific step of the LLC formation process? BizFilings is the only one of these two options that offers publication service. Otherwise, BizFilings’ lower prices are another appeal.
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Northwest has higher prices than many competitors, as they charge $225 plus the state’s fee to form a business. They only offer one package for LLC formations, but it includes everything you need to get your business off the ground — a name availability check, the preparation and filing of your formation documents, and a year of registered agent service.
Northwest Registered Agent, one of the most popular LLC websites, has formed more than 2 million businesses since 1998. Check out the comparison reviews below if you’d like to see how this company stacks up to other good LLC websites.
Northwest Registered Agent compared to:
Yes and no. Northwest doesn’t offer to handle state-specific requirements entirely, they do offer significant assistance with them.
If, for example, you need to complete New York’s publication requirement, Northwest encourages you to use their Albany, NY address as an “address for service of process” or a “principal office.” They then provide you with step-by-step instructions to help you complete this requirement.
However, we will reiterate that BizFilings does offer this service, and they also have an excellent price point of just $100. For more information on New York LLC publication services, including ZenBusiness, check out our guide to the best options.
Neither of these service providers goes too crazy with the upsells, but Northwest Registered Agent has the advantage in this category because they really don’t have any upsells at all.
To be clear though, this category is a very minor issue because BizFilings is also quite good in this regard.
BizFilings charges two different processing fees depending on when you request your refund.
If you cancel your order before they perform your business name availability check, they’ll refund your purchase price less a $50 fee. If you request a refund after the name check but before they submit your Articles of Organization to the state, there’s a $75 fee. Otherwise, refunds are not available.
As for Northwest, they have a flat $25 fee for refunds, which they refer to as a “You changed your mind fee.”
Depending on your state, one or the other could be much faster. Northwest has turnaround times based on the actual requirements of your formation state, and they vary from just a few days all the way up to several weeks.
BizFilings instead bases turnarounds on which LLC formation package you purchase: Basic takes 4-6 weeks, while Standard and Complete have processing times of 7-10 business days.
Of course you can. In fact, thousands of American entrepreneurs form their own business entities each year. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with doing this, we will caution that because each state is allowed to create its own rules regarding how LLCs are formed, there is some variance from state to state regarding how an LLC is formed.
Plus, services like us at ZenBusiness can start your LLC for free, as long as you cover the state fee.
The biggest advantage for BizFilings is that they provide assistance with state-specific compliance requirements like publication. As for Northwest, they have many advantages, but the most important one in our opinion is their personalized customer support.
Both of these companies do a good job of providing you with comprehensive solutions for your ongoing compliance requirements. After your free year of registered agent service, Northwest sells this service for $125 per year, which beats the BizFilings price point of $220 per year.
These service providers also both offer annual report service, which costs $100 with Northwest, and operates on a variable rate for BizFilings.
Northwest Registered Agent and Rocket Lawyer are two of the most popular LLC formation services available, and they both have plenty of strong attributes.
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