Northwest Registered Agent vs. ZenBusiness

6 Things They Have in Common

1) Affordable: With either ZenBusiness or Northwest Registered Agent, you’ll save a significant amount of money on your LLC formation compared to hiring a business attorney to handle your formation process.

2) Great Customer Feedback: Although we have a higher volume of reviews than Northwest does, both of these companies receive high average customer review ratings.

3) Valuable Features: Both companies have feature-rich LLC formation service packages that include advanced features.

4) Customer Support: These two services both have customer support networks that can answer your tough questions. Why go it alone when you can get help from ZenBusiness or Northwest?

5) Efficiency: These companies both work quickly and can get your formation processed with the state in a matter of weeks or even days.

6) Additional Services: Both Northwest and ZenBusiness have many other services to help you focus more on building your business and less on paperwork.

Side-by-Side Comparisons

Pricing

ZenBusiness: We offer LLC service for free (just pay your state’s fee). If you’re looking for some advanced features, our $199 Pro package adds ongoing compliance assistance, an operating agreement template, an employer identification number (EIN), and faster processing. You also might like our $299 Premium plan, as it adds a business website builder, a domain name, a business email address, and 25+ business document templates.

Northwest: At $225, their price point is high compared to many 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.

Experience

ZenBusiness: We were founded in 2015 in Austin, Texas. Since then, we’ve served 500,000+ customers. We’re a public benefit corporation that provides $5,000 grants to help our customers kickstart their businesses.

Northwest: Northwest Registered Agent has been around since 1998, and since then, they’ve served 2+ million customers.

Customer Support

ZenBusiness: ZenBusiness provides access to our customer service team by phone, email, or web chat. We have expanded availability that even includes Sundays — very few competitors have any weekend availability. We pride ourselves in continuously improving the quality and responsiveness of our customer support, and we believe we compare favorably to the vast majority of competitors in this area.

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.

Turnaround Times

ZenBusiness: With ZenBusiness, all formation speeds vary based on state capabilities. Also, if you’re in a hurry, you can choose one of our premium packages to speed things up a bit. When compared to other formation services, we are usually either just as fast or slightly faster. To find out your turnaround time, simply plug in your state and immediately see your estimated processing speed.

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.

Customer Reviews

ZenBusiness: ZenBusiness excels when it comes to customer feedback, as we have more than 12,000 reviews available online, and nearly all of them are positive. Our clients are clearly satisfied with our services, and they frequently praise our efficiency, along with the general ease of use provided by our platform.

Northwest: Northwest Registered Agent doesn’t have a ton of customer feedback, but they do have around 800 reviews, and they’re mostly positive.

Ease of Use

ZenBusiness: It’s important to us to make the LLC formation process as simple as possible. All you have to do is choose your LLC package from our three options, provide us with some information about yourself and your business, select which add-on services you’d like, and pay for the order. It doesn’t get much easier than this.

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. There aren’t any upsells, and Northwest only offers one LLC formation service package.

Additional Services

Both ZenBusiness and Northwest Registered Agent provide access to many additional business services, and there’s a considerable amount of overlap between these companies’ offerings. For instance, either can help you with employer identification number (EIN) acquisition, annual reports, foreign registrations, and more.

However, each has some services that the other doesn’t provide. ZenBusiness offers bookkeeping and accounting services, which Northwest doesn’t. On the other hand, only Northwest provides its customers with virtual office services.