ZenBusiness reviews its own products and services and compares them to others in the industry.
ZenBusiness reviews and compares Northwest Registered Agent and LegalZoom for LLC formation. LegalZoom offers free formation (plus state fees) with extensive upsells while Northwest charges $39 with one year of free registered agent service but has extremely polarized customer reviews.
Starts at $0 + state fees and only takes 5-10 minutes“Northwest Registered Agent” is the registered trademark of Northwest Registered Agent, LLC “LegalZoom” is the registered trademark of LegalZoom.com, Inc.
Last Updated: September 10, 2025
*Mr. Cuban may receive financial compensation for his support.
If you’re looking to start a registered business, then you might be considering using a business formation service like Northwest Registered Agent or LegalZoom. These business formation companies (and other companies like them) can be very helpful if you feel overwhelmed by all the business paperwork you’re facing.
But in the Northwest Registered Agent vs. LegalZoom matchup, who comes out on top? Are there any alternatives you should consider instead? In this guide, we’ll review both Northwest Registered Agent and LegalZoom, comparing how these two options compete in terms of value, customer service, customer reviews, and more.
Let’s get started.
On the surface, LegalZoom and Northwest Registered Agent seem to be really similar: both companies can help you form and manage a business. But each company has its own unique pros and cons and company history.
LegalZoom first got its start in 2001. At first, LegalZoom offered just a few services, including LLC formation services and help with wills and testaments. Since then, they’ve greatly expanded their online legal service offerings; today, they’re one of the few companies to offer legal services for both business and personal needs. They’ve helped people with more than 9 million different legal needs.
Northwest Registered Agent, as their name implies, primarily focuses on offering registered agent services, but it also offers a variety of other services, including business formations. Northwest Registered Agent is actually a little bit older than LegalZoom (founded in 1998). They’re proud to be family-owned, so they’re more of a mid-sized company compared to LegalZoom.
Northwest Registered Agent and LegalZoom have a fair bit of common ground as two established companies in the business formation and legal services sector. We’ll dive into the most important differences between these brands throughout this guide, but here’s a quick glance at these companies.
In our assessment of Northwest Registered Agent and LegalZoom, we evaluated several different categories: each company’s LLC formation service, registered agent service, other services, customer feedback, customer support, and turnaround times.
Let’s dive in.
Both LegalZoom and Northwest Registered Agent can help you form a limited liability company (LLC), corporation, or nonprofit.
Intriguingly, LegalZoom offers a free LLC formation package (plus state filing fees). The “free” package is pretty straightforward, but it is a low-cost way to get your business started. LegalZoom also offers a variety of packages for LLC formation. Here’s the package breakdown:
If you’re interested in forming a corporation, LegalZoom’s corporation packages start at $149 (plus state fees).
In contrast, Northwest Registered Agent doesn’t offer different packages for LLC formation services. Instead, they charge a one-time fee of $39 (plus state fees) to form your LLC. Their service also includes access to several free trials, including a free year of registered agent service, a domain name, a website builder, business address service, and more. Most of these trials are limited (usually ranging between 90 days to a year), so if you’re not paying attention, you could easily end up spending more than that $39 after the trials expire.
While LegalZoom’s free LLC (plus state fees) is definitely appealing, Northwest Registered Agent’s $39 price tag (plus state fees) is also intriguing since it includes a free year of registered agent service.
A quick note about either service: when you form your LLC with one of these companies, pay special attention to the services you opt into. LegalZoom offers a good number of upsells for different services during the business formation process, so it’s easy to spend more than you planned for. In Northwest Registered Agent’s case, you’ll encounter a lot of free trials, which won’t cost you anything up front, but you will need to opt out or cancel these services to avoid extra charges.
If needed, you can hire either LegalZoom or Northwest Registered Agent to serve as your registered agent. You can buy these services as standalone products or as an add-on to your LLC formation service.
Technically, you can serve as your own registered agent if you meet certain criteria: you’re an individual resident of your state with a physical address, and you’re present at your listed address during all normal business hours. For many small business owners, that’s not feasible. So, for practicality’s sake (and for peace of mind), hiring a registered agent service is highly recommended. This is especially true if you operate around the country; then, a truly national registered agent service like ZenBusiness, LegalZoom, or Northwest Registered Agent can be extremely helpful.
If you hire LegalZoom as your registered agent, you’ll pay $249 per year. Northwest Registered Agent services cost just $125 per year, and you get your first year free if you use them to form your business. Their customer support team also told us they offer volume discounts if you hire them as your agent in five or more states. Northwest definitely has the lower price point in this category, but either service will help you comply with state requirements.
We won’t give a comprehensive list of every service offered by both LegalZoom and Northwest Registered Agent here (this guide would be really long if we did). But we can give you a picture of some of the other services available to you, which might be helpful if you’re looking to get a lot of business solutions in one place.
LegalZoom has a variety of other legal services for business and personal applications. For businesses, they provide help with business licenses, filing annual reports, writing operating agreements, getting an EIN, filling out dissolution paperwork, applying for a trademark, or navigating other intellectual property needs. On the personal legal services side of the business, LegalZoom provides help with trusts, living wills, divorce proceedings, power of attorney, and more. They also have a partnership with Bank of America that can help you get a business bank account, an offer you’d encounter during the LLC formation process.
Northwest Registered Agent offers business services only. Like we’ve mentioned, they can help you form a business, file your annual report, and get an EIN. They also have a few services to help you establish your business identity, such as website building and web hosting, domain name registration, phone service, SSL security, and mail forwarding (in select states). They can also help you register a trademark.
LegalZoom has a larger service library, but its prices can range from pretty reasonable to pretty expensive (depending on the service you’re choosing). Northwest Registered Agent has fewer service offerings, but most of them are priced affordably.
We find that checking customer reviews on third-party review sites like Trustpilot and the Better Business Bureau is a really helpful way to assess a company’s performance, so we checked out reviews for both companies.
LegalZoom has a pretty strong showing on Trustpilot; as of this writing, they have almost 23,000 reviews. Their average score sits at 4.6/5 stars across those reviews, so the majority of their customers are satisfied with their experience. Positive reviews often mention helpful customer service representatives and an easy startup process. Negative reviewers often mention that they unintentionally subscribed to unwanted services or had issues getting customer support when trying to cancel services.
In stark contrast, Northwest Registered Agent has a poor showing on Trustpilot. Their reviews are extremely polarizing. Granted, there are only 129 of them, but 47% of those reviews are 5-star reviews, and a whopping 41% of them are scathing 1-star reviews. While not everyone has a poor experience with Northwest Registered Agent, a good number of customers do. In particular, negative reviewers frequently mention confusing pricing structures, billing for unwanted services, and unhelpful customer support representatives.
If you value a strong history of customer feedback, Northwest isn’t the way to go. ZenBusiness and LegalZoom are much stronger choices in this category.
Customer support is another important category to consider; when you need help with your order or your business, you want to be confident that you’ll get answers to your questions promptly.
LegalZoom currently offers several customer support features, including live chat on its website and three different listed phone numbers (including two dedicated lines for sales and customer care). Currently, their support team operates between 5 a.m. and 7 p.m. PT on weekdays and 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. PT on weekends, meaning you have a nice window of opportunity to get help. When we tested their chat support, we got a clear answer to our question within ten minutes.
Usually, LegalZoom’s customer reviews also mention a positive experience with customer support; some even thank their support representatives by name. A few reviewers encountered support issues when they tried to get help with a delayed order or when they needed to cancel a service, but these reviews aren’t in the majority.
Northwest Registered Agent offers customer support by phone, email, or a contact form on their website. We couldn’t find any posted customer support hours. When we’ve tested their support channels with a few of our own questions, we got detailed answers, and we got an email response within one business day.
Judging by customer reviews, though, the customer support from Northwest Registered Agent can be a bit of a mixed bag. Some reviewers have a smooth, positive experience, but if you look at negative reviews, person after person mentions that customer support is nonexistent or unhelpful. If you’re looking for help with your business, the last thing you want is to be stuck waiting on support.
How quickly will these companies form your LLC? It depends, but if you’re in a rush, this is an important question to answer.
If you use Northwest Registered Agent to form your LLC, you’ll find the processing speed(s) listed after you select the state you’re organizing in. If your state offers any expediting filing options, you’ll have the opportunity to select your filing speed; Northwest will file your forms with the speed you pick.
Processing speeds with LegalZoom range between 5-14 business days for standard processing. You can also expedite your processing for an additional fee, which cuts your processing speed to just one business day.
LegalZoom and Northwest Registered Agent are both well-established business service companies, each with their own pros and cons. But that doesn’t mean they’re the right service for you.
You might be drawn to Northwest Registered Agent if you’re looking for a year of free registered agent services included in your business setup. But if you want a brand with a long history of excellent customer service, you’ll need to look elsewhere. Meanwhile, LegalZoom has a stronger reputation and a huge variety of both personal and business services, but some customers find the brand’s upsells to be tricky and annoying to navigate.
If those drawbacks have you looking for alternatives, check out ZenBusiness. We’re proud to offer our customers the best value and service. To start, we’ll form your LLC for free (plus state filing fees). We can also provide you with registered agent service at a great value ($99 for your first year and $199/year afterwards). Plus, our customer feedback is excellent: out of 24,367 Trustpilot reviews, we’ve got a 4.8/5 average score. We pride ourselves on providing superior customer service whenever you need it.
Here at ZenBusiness, we pride ourselves on providing reliable services for a variety of small business needs at a great value. Whether you need registered agent service for a good price, help starting your LLC, a Money Pro app for managing your business finances, or something else, we’ve got your back. We’ll help handle the red tape for you so you can focus on what you love: running your business.
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When reviewing LLC formation services, it’s helpful to examine how each company compares to other options on the market. One well-known service is Bizee, formerly known as Incfile. If you’d like to see how the two services in this comparison stack up to it, see our Incfile vs. LegalZoom comparison or Northwest Registered Agent vs. Incfile comparison.
Neither Northwest Registered Agent nor LegalZoom offers publication services for states like New York, which require you to publish a notice about your new business in certain publications to alert the public about your entity. It’s a shame that these brands don’t offer these essential services.
Here at ZenBusiness, we offer formation services along with state-specific compliance requirements like publication. If you need help with NY publication requirements, check out our New York publication service for more information.
Both LegalZoom and Northwest Registered Agent present upsells throughout the LLC formation process. That said, LegalZoom offers a lot more upsells more frequently during the process. Northwest keeps the number of upsells a lot smaller (and most of them are highlighted on a single page on the order platform).
With either service, be sure to read the fine print on each page to ensure that you understand what’s being offered, the price, if it’s a renewable service after a free trial, and so on.
LegalZoom has a satisfaction guarantee that states you can request a refund at any time within 60 days of your initial purchase. It’s nearly identical to the ZenBusiness refund policy and one of the most reasonable in the industry.
Northwest Registered Agent’s stated refund policy is a bit more vague. Refunds can only be given if you request one within 90 days of purchase. Even then, their terms of service page doesn’t promise any refunds; the site explicitly states that all refunds are granted at their sole discretion, so refunds come on a case-by-case basis (if they happen at all).
Note: With any business formation service, you can’t get a refund on money paid for state filing fees. Those fees are always non-refundable.
It depends on what you pay for. Northwest Registered Agent bases their turnaround speeds on each state’s processing capabilities, so some states take days and others take weeks. If your state offers expedited processing, you’ll have the opportunity to expedite within the order form.
Meanwhile, LegalZoom promises to file your business paperwork within 5-14 business days if you use standard processing. Expedited processing cuts that down to a one-day turnaround.
You absolutely can form an LLC on your own. Using a business formation service can be really helpful, though. Services like ZenBusiness, LegalZoom, and Northwest Registered Agent can all take some of the paperwork off your plate. These services can also help you navigate your state’s business compliance rules and regulations, which might be trickier than you expect.
LegalZoom’s biggest advantage is their basic LLC formation service, where they’ll form your LLC on your behalf for free (you just pay state fees). Northwest Registered Agent specializes in registered agent services, which you’ll get at an affordable price (and one year free if you use their LLC formation service).
Both LegalZoom and Northwest Registered Agent offer several services to help you stay compliant, including registered agent services and annual report services. LegalZoom offers registered agent service for $249 per year, and they also have annual report service available for $99. Meanwhile, Northwest Registered Agent charges $100 plus state fees for annual reports and $125 for registered agent service.
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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.
Written by ZenBusiness Editorial Team
The ZenBusiness Editorial Team has more than 20 years of combined small business publishing experience and has helped over 850,000 entrepreneurs launch and grow their companies. Our writers and business formation experts are dedicated to providing accurate, practical, and trustworthy guidance so business owners can make confident decisions.
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