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ZenBusiness reviews and compares Northwest Registered Agent and Rocket Lawyer for LLC formation. Northwest charges $39 with one year of free registered agent service while Rocket Lawyer charges $99 for non-members, and Northwest has extremely polarized customer reviews with mixed support experiences.
Starts at $0 + state fees and only takes 5-10 minutes“Northwest Registered Agent” is the registered trademark of Northwest Registered Agent, LLC “Rocket Lawyer” is the registered trademark of Rocket Lawyer, 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 Rocket Lawyer. 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. Rocket Lawyer 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 Rocket Lawyer, comparing how these two options compete in terms of value, customer service, customer reviews, and more.
Let’s get started.
On the surface, Rocket Lawyer 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, cons, and company history.
Rocket Laywer is one of a few companies that offer legal solutions for both business and personal needs. Since its inception in 2008, Rocket Lawyer has helped over 20 million people with a variety of different legal needs. Their services include business formations, templates for drafting legal documents like operating agreements or lease agreements, and more.
Northwest Registered Agent, as their name implies, primarily focuses on offering registered agent services, but they also offer a variety of other services, including business formations. Northwest Registered Agent is actually a decade older than Rocket Lawyer; they got their start in 1998, so they have a long history in the industry. They’re proud to be family-owned, so they’re more of a mid-sized company compared to some competitors.
We’ll dive into our full Northwest Registered Agent vs. Rocket Lawyer review in just a moment, but first, let’s take a quick glance at these companies.
In our assessment of Northwest Registered Agent and Rocket Lawyer, we evaluated each company on the basis of several different categories: business formation services, registered agent service, additional service offerings, customer feedback, and customer reviews.
Let’s take a closer look at those categories.
Rocket Lawyer and Northwest Registered Agent can both help you create a limited liability company, corporation, or nonprofit. But how much will it cost you? For a lot of small business owners, that’s an important question to answer. By way of example, we’ll use this section to discuss how much it costs to create an LLC with these brands.
Neither brand offers multiple tiers of LLC formation packages with different services bundled together, which is a common approach for many competitors. Instead, you can hire either company to simply file your LLC formation paperwork for you and then select any add-ons you need later.
For example, if you hire Northwest Registered Agent, you’ll pay $39 for their LLC formation service. For this one-time fee, Northwest Registered Agent will file your formation documents on your behalf. A big perk is that you’ll also get one year of free registered agent service if they form your LLC. Their service also includes access to several free trials, including a domain name, a website builder, business address service, and more. Most of these trials are limited (usually ranging between 90 days and a year), so if you’re not paying attention, you could easily end up spending more than that $39 after the trials expire.
The base price for Rocket Lawyer’s LLC formation service is $99 per entity formed. This service includes the preparation and submission of your Articles of Organization. However, if you’re a Rocket Legal Plus subscriber (more on this subscription service later), you’ll get a free entity formation service; every other business formation would be 50% off.
Both of these brands have pretty basic formation packages, with Northwest Registered Agent’s being just a little cheaper. The only exception to this is if you subscribe to Rocket Legal Plus.
Registered businesses such as LLCs and corporations are required to designate a registered agent — someone (an individual or business) to accept service of process on behalf of the company. In some cases, you can serve as your own registered agent, provided you meet the criteria: you’re an individual resident of the state, you have a physical address in the state, and you’re present at that address during all normal business hours.
For most entrepreneurs, it’s not sustainable or practical to serve as their own registered agent. That’s why many opt to hire a registered agent service like ZenBusiness, Rocket Lawyer, or Northwest Registered Agent.
Currently, Northwest Registered Agent service costs $125 per year (but you get a free year of service if you use their LLC service). The customer service team also told us that the brand offers volume discounts if you hire them as your agent in five or more states. Meanwhile, Rocket Lawyer charges a base fee of $249 per year for its registered agent service; Rocket Legal Plus subscribers get the service for 50% off.
Both Northwest Registered Agent and Rocket Lawyer offer a variety of services beyond LLC formations and registered agent services. If you’d like to get a variety of business needs taken care of with one service provider, then these brands might be able to help. We won’t cover every single service offered by each company (this guide would be unnecessarily long if we did), but we can give you a pretty good picture of what’s available.
Northwest Registered Agent offers various business services beyond their formation and registered agent products. They can help you file your annual report or 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 even help you register a trademark.
So far in this guide, we’ve mentioned Rocket Legal Plus a few different times. This membership operates on a subscription model, and it’s Rocket Lawyer’s primary service offering. If you subscribe to Rocket Legal Plus, you get free and quick answers to straightforward tax or legal questions. You’ll even gain unlimited access to Rocket Lawyer’s document library, including forms like LLC operating agreements, contract templates, lease agreements, and more. Online signatures for these forms are included, too. You’ll also get 50% off Rocket Lawyer’s library of Pro services, such as registered agent service, legal consultations for tougher law questions, tax help, and intellectual property services. Pro services usually range between $149 to $699 per product, so a 50% discount with Rocket Legal Plus could have your annual subscription paying for itself quickly.
Rocket Legal Plus currently costs $239.88 per year. Rocket Lawyer also offers a smaller subscription for online legal service, Rocket Legal, for $39.99 a month, which excludes the 50% discount for Pro services but still gives you quick answers to simple legal and tax questions and access to the Rocket Lawyer document library. With either subscription, Rocket Lawyer offers a free 7-day trial.
Rocket Lawyer’s subscription model isn’t the best fit for every entrepreneur, but if you expect to need ongoing legal support, they could be worth the cost. Northwest Registered Agent has a smaller service library by comparison.
When we’re assessing a company, we like to look at third-party review sites like Trustpilot or the Better Business Bureau; we find that these are great sources to get an unbiased view of what customers are saying. So we took a look at some of the reviews for Rocket Lawyer and Northwest Registered Agent.
Northwest Registered Agent has a very poor showing on Trustpilot (currently, they only have 129 reviews at the time of this writing). And to make matters worse, the reviews they do have are extremely polarized: 47% of them are 5-star reviews, but a whopping 41% are one-star clunkers. 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.
Meanwhile, Rocket Lawyer as a pretty solid score of 4.6/5 stars on Trustpilot. They’ve got a decent number of reviews (well over 9,000 at the time of this writing). They have a low percentage of 1-star reviews (just 4%), so a small number of customers have a poor experience with the brand.
In Rocket Lawyer’s positive reviews, reviewers often mention that they had an easy time creating legal documents at an affordable price, and the legal assistance from their consultation was helpful. Some negative reviews mention frustration with canceling after the free trial or higher costs than expected for services they thought would be included in the trial.
If you’re looking for reliable, personalized customer service, you may not find it with Northwest Registered Agent. ZenBusiness and Rocket Lawyer are much better choices in this regard.
Odds are, you’ll have questions someday; maybe you’ll have a question about making a change to your business, or you’ll need to ask a question about one of your business services. When that happens, you want to be confident that your LLC formation service will give you quick answers. That’s why we’ve taken a quick glance at the customer support channels available with these brands.
Northwest Registered Agent offers three channels for customer support: phone, email, or a contact form on their website (they don’t have any posted customer support hours, though). We’ve tested their support channels by asking a few of our own questions. Typically, we’ve received detailed answers, and even our emailed question was responded to within one business day.
Judging by customer reviews, though, not everyone has a positive experience with the brand’s customer support. If you read some of their negative reviews, you’ll see person after person complaining that customer support was unhelpful (or worse, nonexistent) when they needed help. If you need help with your business, you don’t want to be in their shoes, stuck waiting for assistance.
Rocket Lawyer provides similar support channels: a chat feature on their website, email (via the contact form on their website), or by phone. The support team is available from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. PT on weekdays. It’s a little disappointing to see that they don’t offer weekend support; if you’re a weekend warrior for your business, no Saturday or Sunday support could be a bit tedious.
When we tested Rocket Lawyer’s customer support ourselves, we didn’t have too much trouble getting the answers we needed. When we sent a question through their online form, we got an answer within a business day. It wasn’t elaborate or detailed (or formatted very well, honestly), but it did get our questions answered. Customer reviews do mention that customer support can be a little lacking when it comes to canceling subscriptions and addressing billing issues, though.
Northwest Registered Agent and Rocket Lawyer can both help you form a business, but neither brand will be the right fit for everyone. You might find yourself drawn to the affordable registered agent service from Northwest Registered Agent, or maybe you like the legal and attorney services you can get if you subscribe to Rocket Legal Plus.
But maybe you hesitate at Northwest Registered Agent’s polarized reviews, or you’d really like a brand with free LLC formation. If that’s you, check out ZenBusiness. We offer a free package for basic LLC formation (just pay your state fees). We can also provide you with registered agent service at a great value ($99 for your first year and $199/year afterwards). Plus, we’re BBB accredited, and our customer feedback is fantastic: out of 24,506 Trustpilot reviews, we’ve got a 4.8/5 average score. We pride ourselves on providing excellent and personalized customer support whenever you need it.
Recommended article: Inc Authority vs. Rocket Lawyer
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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Northwest Registered Agent actually offers only one package for LLC formations, but it includes a name availability check, the preparation and filing of your formation documents, and a year of registered agent service for a total of $39 (plus state fees).
Northwest Registered Agent is a family-owned LLC formation services company that was founded in 1998. Check out the comparison reviews below if you’d like to see how this company stacks up to other LLC websites.
Northwest Registered Agent compared to:
While they don’t have these services listed anywhere on their website, when we called Rocket Lawyer’s customer support team, we learned that they do offer to handle state-specific compliance requirements like publication. We’ll note that their publication service is pretty costly, though. At $299, this price point doesn’t include newspaper expenses or county fees. Northwest Registered Agent doesn’t appear to offer this service.
If you need help with NY publication requirements, check out our New York publication service for more information.
Compared to some competitor services, Northwest Registered Agent keeps the upsells to a minimum. Yes, they do present extra services that you can opt into, but most of the offers are presented in one place as opposed to constantly nagging you about extra services.
Rocket Lawyer doesn’t attempt upsells in the traditional sense, but that’s because their primary business model is their subscription plan. So when you use their site, you’ll see frequent reminders to sign up for their subscription instead of extra “products” that you can opt into.
Rocket Lawyer’s refund policy is a bit confusing at first glance, but here’s the gist: They’ll refund money for billing issues or if there was a problem with the delivery of a service you purchased. But if you have already used the service — such as an LLC formation or incorporation service — you won’t be eligible for a refund. If you qualify for a refund, you have to request it within 30 days of purchase.
Northwest Registered Agent’s stated refund policy is somewhat 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.
Turnaround times with Northwest Registered Agent and Rocket Lawyer are very similar, usually only varying by a day or two. This similarity happens because both service providers base their turnaround speeds on how quickly each individual state processes orders. One company or the other may be slightly faster in your state, but it’s likely not a significant difference.
You absolutely can form an LLC on your own. Using LLC services can be really helpful, though. Services like ZenBusiness, Northwest Registered Agent, and Rocket Lawyer 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.
Northwest Registered Agent’s primary advantage is the free year of registered agent service you can get if they form your business for you. Rocket Lawyer won’t be the right fit for everyone, but their legal services subscription can be helpful for entrepreneurs who need lots of assistance with legal document creation and other services.
Northwest Registered Agent offers registered agent service for $125 per year. They also offer an annual report service, which is available for $100 plus state fees. You can purchase Rocket Lawyer’s registered agent service for $249.99 per year (50% off if you subscribe to Rocket Legal Plus), but they don’t offer annual report service, so their level of assistance with ongoing compliance requirements is less impressive.
Northwest Registered Agent Comparisons
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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