ZenBusiness reviews its own products and services and compares them to others in the industry.
ZenBusiness compares Swyft Filings and LegalZoom for LLC formation. While both offer free formation (plus state fees), their registered agent services differ dramatically: Swyft Filings charges nearly $600 annually compared to LegalZoom’s $249. Both companies also present upsells that can unexpectedly increase costs.
Starts at $0 + state fees and only takes 5-10 minutes“Swyft Filings” is the registered trademark of Swyft Filings, LLC “LegalZoom” is the registered trademark of LegalZoom.com, Inc.
Last Updated: September 12, 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 Swyft Filings 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 Swyft Filings vs. LegalZoom matchup, who comes out on top? Are there any alternatives you should consider instead? In this guide, we’ll review both Swyft Filings 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 Swyft Filings seem to be really similar: both companies are online legal service businesses that can help you form and manage a business. But each company has its own unique pros, cons, and company history.
LegalZoom was founded in 2001 with a small library of services, including LLC formation services and helping individuals write wills and testaments. Over the years, they’ve expanded their service offerings to cover a variety of legal services for both personal and business applications. Since 2001, they’ve helped people sort out more than 9 million legal needs.
Swyft Filings got its start in 2015 in Houston, Texas. Since then, they’ve helped over 600,000 businesses with different needs, such as business formation, amendments, getting S corporation status, and more. Unlike LegalZoom, Swyft Filings only offers legal services for businesses, not personal legal needs.
Both Swyft Filings and LegalZoom have a lot of common ground since they’re both business formation service companies. But they do have their own distinctions, too. We’ll dive into the nitty-gritty of how these brands differ throughout this guide, but here’s a quick glance at these companies.
In our assessment of Swyft Filings and LegalZoom, we evaluated each company on the basis of several different categories: business formation services, registered agent service, additional services, customer feedback, customer reviews, and turnaround times.
Let’s take a closer look at those categories.
You can use LegalZoom and Swyft Filings to create a corporation, LLC, or nonprofit. In this section, we’ll focus on their LLC formation services (since LLCs are one of the most popular structures for small business owners). With either brand, you can choose between three different packages to form your LLC.
Here’s a quick look at LegalZoom’s LLC formation packages:
If you’re interested in forming a corporation, LegalZoom’s corporation packages start at $149 (plus state fees).
Meanwhile, here’s the breakdown for Swyft Filings’ LLC packages:
Swyft Filings has matching prices and similar packages for corporation formation packages, too. The brand is also currently running a summer sale of $50 off Standard or Premium packages (at the time of this writing). But it’s unclear how long that sale will last.
All told, LegalZoom and Swyft Filings have pretty similar pricing structures. The exact inclusions in their packages vary, though.
Every registered business, like an LLC or corporation, needs to designate a registered agent. In some cases, you can serve as your own agent, but that’s not a good fit for many small business owners. Since being your own agent requires you to be a resident of the state, have a physical address, and be present at that address during all normal business hours, a lot of small business owners decide to hire a registered agent service instead.
You can hire either LegalZoom or Swyft Filings to serve as your registered agent. Currently, LegalZoom charges $249 per year for registered agent service. Meanwhile, Swyft Filings charges $149 quarterly, so their registered agent service costs almost $600 per year.
Both LegalZoom and Swyft Filings charge more than many competitors in the registered agent service sector, but Swyft Filings has a much higher price point. In contrast, ZenBusiness offers this service for $99 for your first year and $199 per year after that.
If you’re looking to get ongoing legal services or meet other business needs with one brand, then you’ll want to know what other products and services on offer through LegalZoom and Swyft Filings. Both brands offer a variety of other services. We won’t list all of them here (this guide would be unnecessarily long if we did), but we can give you a general idea of what services to expect from these companies.
As an online legal service provider, LegalZoom provides both business and personal legal services. For example, on the personal side of things, they can help you set up a living will or trust, handle divorce proceedings, assign power of attorney, and more. For business services, they can help you research business licenses, file your annual report, get an EIN, dissolve a business, navigate trademark applications, and more. LegalZoom also offers legal services through licensed attorneys if you need more customized support than their standard services can give.
Meanwhile, Swyft Filings only serves business needs. They do have a wide variety of business services, though. On top of formations and registered agent service, Swyft Filings offers business license help, annual report services (and initial reports, if your state requires one), EIN acquisition, conversion or dissolution services, and more.
Pricing for these services varies. We won’t give a comprehensive price list here, but in general, we found that both LegalZoom and Swyft Filings have some affordable services and others that are pricier.
When we’re assessing a brand, we like to consult third-party customer reviews on sites like Trustpilot or the Better Business Bureau to see how the company’s performing. So we took a look at reviews for both Swyft Filings and LegalZoom.
For a company that’s only 10 years old, Swyft Filings actually has a reasonably strong showing on Trustpilot. At the time of this writing, they’ve got over 7,000 reviews, and their average score sits at 4.6/5 stars. Most of their reviews are pretty positive, thanking customer support for their assistance. In fact, most of their reviews mention a positive experience with customer support. In the negative reviews on Trustpilot, disappointed customers mention frustration about high costs for unexpected add-ons and difficulty canceling subscriptions.
It’s also worth mentioning that Swyft Filings is not accredited by the Better Business Bureau, and they don’t have a rating from the BBB, either. If you value BBB accreditation and scoring, you’ll want to look elsewhere.
LegalZoom has the same average score as Swyft Filings on Trustpilot: 4.6/5 stars. That said, LegalZoom has a much higher volume of customer reviews (almost 23,000 of them, at the time of this writing). They’re BBB accredited, too.
LegalZoom’s positive customer reviews typically mention that the LLC formation process is easy to navigate and that customer support representatives were helpful. That said, customers who left a negative review complained that it was hard to get support when they tried to cancel a subscription. A few also mentioned that they were frustrated over subscriptions they’d unknowingly opted into.
All told, both LegalZoom and Swyft Filings have decent customer reviews, but there’s definitely room for improvement.
If you ever have a question about your business, you want to feel confident that you’ll get the help you need quickly and easily (and from a kind, courteous support rep). So let’s see how these brands stack up.
Swyft Filings offers customer support by email, phone, or a chat feature on their website. When we tested their support channels, we were able to get an answer to our question in about ten minutes, although it did take a few messages to get clarification (the rep answered the question with a form response and we needed more detailed info). Email support took longer.
Swyft’s customer support team is available from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. CT on Monday through Friday (note: the posted hours on their website’s footer are out of date). It’s a little disappointing that they don’t have any weekend support hours, especially if you’re a weekend warrior running your side hustle on the weekends.
Meanwhile, LegalZoom offers customer support through live chat or by phone. In fact, they have three different phone numbers listed on their site, with two of them specifically dedicated to sales and customer support. Their support hours run from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. PT on weekdays or 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends. When we tested their support using their live chat feature, we got a prompt response in just a few minutes.
For both these brands, customer reviewers usually praise the customer support they received. However, both brands have a few reviews that mention issues with customer support, especially when disputing unexpected charges or trying to cancel services.
How quickly will Swyft Filings or LegalZoom create your business? Ultimately, it depends on what state you’re in. Business formations are heavily dictated by your Secretary of State’s processing speed; after they get your paperwork, your state might process your form automatically or take a few weeks to do so. Neither LegalZoom nor Swyft Filings has any control over how quickly the state works.
What these brands can control is how swiftly they fill out your paperwork and hand it off to the state. If you’re using LegalZoom, you’ll find that standard processing gives you a 5-14 day turnaround. You can upgrade to expedited processing to have a one-day turnaround, but it’ll cost extra.
Meanwhile, Swyft Filings bases its processing speed on the formation package you choose. If you use the free (plus state fees) option, your processing speed is 10 days. The Standard package gets you a 5-day turnaround, and the Premium package has same-day turnaround as long as you file before 3 p.m. You can also upgrade for express or same-day processing for $50 or $100 respectively, no matter what package you pick.
LegalZoom and Swyft Filings can both help you start and manage a company, but are they the best LLC formation services? Both brands have strong reputations for business formation services, but no company will be the right fit for every single entrepreneur. You might be drawn to LegalZoom if you need legal services for both personal and business applications. If you want a faster turnaround time than LegalZoom, you might be drawn to Swyft Filings, since even their free LLC package (plus state fees) has a ten-day turnaround.
But if you’re worried about higher price points, upsells and sneaky subscriptions, or the lack of BBB accreditation (in Swyft Filings’ case), then you might be looking for some alternatives. If that’s you, check out ZenBusiness. We’re proud to offer our customers the best value and service. Like LegalZoom and Swyft Filings, we’ll form your LLC for free (plus state filing fees). But 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 24,405 Trustpilot reviews, we’ve got a 4.8/5 average score. We pride ourselves on providing excellent customer support whenever you need it.
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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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LegalZoom, one of the most well-known services online, has formed more than 2 million businesses since 2001. Check out the comparison reviews below if you’d like to see how this giant stacks up to other good LLC websites.
LegalZoom compared to:
We couldn’t find a service listing for publication services on Swyft Filings or LegalZoom’s websites, so it doesn’t appear that these brands offer help with publication requirements. ZenBusiness does, though. If you need help with NY publication requirements, check out our New York publication service for more information.
Both LegalZoom and Swyft Filings offer a fair number of upsells throughout their order forms, especially if you’re using the free LLC services (plus state fees). When we used Swyft Filings’ form, we even found that customers are automatically subscribed to the brand’s annual compliance service without much notice during the business filing process — you have to remove it yourself if you don’t want it. It’s pretty sneaky. LegalZoom also offers lots of add-ons that could have you spending a lot more than you originally planned.
With either service provider, pay special attention to the services you opt into, and read the fine print to ensure you understand exactly what you’re signing up for and what it’ll cost you.
LegalZoom offers a 100% 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.
Swyft Filings has a somewhat vague refund policy; they say that they do offer some refunds, but they must be requested within 60 days of purchase; a processing fee might be deducted. Additionally, their refund policy states that their obligation ends after they’ve filed paperwork with government agencies, so practically speaking, you’d have to request a refund within a few days.
It depends on what processing speed you pay for. LegalZoom’s standard processing ranges between 5-14 days, and their expedited processing cuts it down to one business day. Meanwhile, Swyft Filings offer standard processing, which gives you formation within 10 days. Their express processing speed cuts that to five days, and same-day processing will have your LLC formed that day (or the next day, if you file after 3 p.m. CT).
You absolutely can form an LLC on your own. Using a business formation service can be really helpful, though. Services like ZenBusiness, LegalZoom, and Swyft Filings 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 its track record of experience. They’ve served a massive volume of clients, and they have a large variety of services to choose from. As for Swyft Filings, their biggest advantage is their turnaround times, which are often quicker than LegalZoom’s.
Swyft Filings 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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