Search best LLC formation services and one page-one list crowns LegalZoom at a flawless 5.0. Another, live on the same results page that same week, ranks it fifth at 4.5. MyCompanyWorks sits at #3 on one page and #11 on another while its published price never moved.
ZenBusiness is #1 on one list and an afterthought on the next. Every one of those pages monetizes through affiliate links, and one carries a live promo line, “get the best price until end of July,” inside its #1 pick's pros list. The rankings track commission economics, not price.
The four inputs I used instead:
- Two-year cost of ownership in service fees, because a free first year hides the renewal invoice.
- Verification status. I tried to load every vendor's own pricing page, and where a vendor blocked that check I say so.
- Independent user evidence: BBB records and Trustpilot volume, not star ratings of my own.
- Ecommerce fit, judged against the requirement chain below.
Nine services are ranked; the rest are named with reasons before the FAQ.
None of those lists told you what your payment processor will demand, and that requirement chain is what makes this decision different for an online seller:
- The EIN is the gate. Stripe's own docs require a business tax ID, name and address, representative identity details, and beneficial-owner information for multi-member LLCs. You can take card payments before the EIN is assigned, but no balance moves to a bank account until it is.
- The payout account must be titled in the LLC's exact legal name or a registered DBA, not your personal name.
- Shopify Payments matches the IRS-registered name down to punctuation and capitalization. Its help center lists an SS-4 or 147c letter as the fallback when auto-verification fails.
- Amazon Seller Central asks for a full document set, per seller verification guides: Articles of Organization, the EIN confirmation letter, an unredacted bank statement and address proof under 90 days old, matching down to the zip code.
- Sales tax registration is triggered by nexus, not by formation. Roughly $100,000 in sales or 200 transactions in a state, post-Wayfair.
The registered agent address also lands on a public state filing anyone can search, which is why a home-based Shopify seller is really buying an address, not a filing service.
1. Northwest Registered Agent: Best Overall for Ecommerce Founders
$39 in year one with the first year of registered agent included, then $125 in year two. That is $164 for two years of formation plus agent coverage. LegalZoom charges $498 for the same two things.
Pricing: $39 + state fees, one time.
Every number in this entry is secondary. northwestregisteredagent.com returned HTTP 403 to my fetch on two separate attempts, so nothing here is first-party verified. The $39 bundle and the $125 flat renewal come from three independent sources that agree with each other.
| Year 1 service cost | $39 (registered agent included) |
|---|---|
| Year 2 service cost | $125 |
Key Features
- Free first year of registered agent service bundled into the formation fee
- Mail scanning for up to five documents, plus renewal reminders
- A $125 renewal that sources agree stays flat in later years
- EIN service at $50 for US applicants, $200 for founders without an SSN or ITIN
Pros
- ✔️ $164 buys two years of formation plus agent service, a third of LegalZoom's $498
- ✔️ The renewal does not escalate, which is the whole argument for paying it
- ✔️ Free operating agreement template on its own site
Cons
- ❌ No first-party verification. Its pages blocked automated fetches twice
- ❌ Trustpilot data conflicts: 4.0, 4.2 and 4.7 stars across sources, with review counts from 281 to over 3,200
- ❌ Phone system problems. One reviewer described issues bad enough that they cancelled
For ecommerce founders: this is the cheapest legitimate way to keep a home address off a public filing for a full year, the real purchase for a home-based Shopify, Etsy or Amazon seller. The free operating agreement template counts too, because business bank accounts and Amazon entity updates both request it, and ZenBusiness charges $99 for the same document.
Best for: home-based sellers who want the lowest predictable two-year cost and a private filing address.
Skip if: you need a price confirmed on the vendor's own page before you spend.
2. Bizee: Lowest Two Year Total Cost, With a Real Catch
Bizee has the lowest two-year cost in this article and the weakest BBB standing in it. Both facts are verified, and they point in opposite directions.
Pricing: Basic $0, Standard $199, Premium $399, all plus state fees, all one-time payments.
| Year 1 service cost | $0 (registered agent free for year one) |
|---|---|
| Year 2 service cost | $119 for the agent renewal, secondary-sourced, so $119 across two years |
Key Features
- A genuinely $0 base tier with no monthly charge, verified on bizee.com/llc/pricing
- The cheapest ongoing agent rate in this research at $119/yr
- Expedited one-business-day filing for $50
- Trustpilot 4.7 across 16,000 to 25,000+ reviews, depending on the source
Bizee's BBB profile, pulled directly, shows a C rating with 86 complaints filed plus BBB's own note that the business “has failed to resolve underlying cause(s) of a pattern of complaints.” Two themes recur: a customer who paid $454 after a representative confirmed the advertised one-business-day timeline and then waited far longer on the EIN, and an application never submitted as expedited despite the customer paying for it.
Free-tier filing runs three to four weeks. Bizee submits within one business day and the rest is state processing time, per its own help pages, which is the clarification no competitor makes and how “fast” and “three weeks” are both defensible.
Cons
- ❌ BBB C rating, 86 complaints, and an explicit unresolved-pattern note
- ❌ Three to four weeks on the free tier unless you pay the $50 expedite
- ❌ Complaints about paid expedite never being applied
For ecommerce founders: a three-week filing stalls the whole chain of formation, then EIN, then bank account, then Stripe or Amazon verification, realistically six weeks before payouts clear. Launching against Q4 or BFCM, pay the $50 or pick Northwest.
Verdict: the best ongoing price on this page, and the only pick where I would read the complaint record before handing over a card.
3. ZenBusiness: Best Compliance Dashboard for Stores That Will Scale
The $0 Starter tier does not include a registered agent. The free first year everyone repeats from the comparison lists is Worry-Free Compliance Filing, a different product that converts to $199 a year on its own. The agent is a separate $199/yr line that never comes free on any tier.
Pricing: Starter $0, Pro $199, Premium $399, all plus state fees. Pro and Premium renew at their own price annually; Starter does not renew.
I fetched zenbusiness.com/pricing twice and got identical numbers both times, so unlike Northwest, every figure in this entry is first-party verified.
Add-ons, same verified page
- Registered agent $199/yr
- Operating agreement $99 one-time
- EIN $99 one-time
- Worry-Free Compliance $199/yr, free for year one on Starter
- Advanced Compliance Protection $299/yr
| Year 1 service cost | $199 (Starter plus the agent you actually need) |
|---|---|
| Year 2 service cost | $199, or $398 if that free Worry-Free year rolls over unnoticed |
Key Features
- The strongest ongoing compliance dashboard and filing calendar in this field
- Trustpilot 4.8 across 26,000+ reviews, per secondary sources
- Replies to roughly 94% of negative Trustpilot reviews, which reads as active reputation management rather than a quality signal
- An all-in-one add-on menu with every price published upfront
Cons
- ❌ The $199/yr agent is the second-priciest rate here, behind only LegalZoom
- ❌ Post-signup upsell pressure. Reviewers describe in-app prompts and phone calls pushing add-ons after signup
- ❌ Surprise charges when the free Worry-Free year ends
For ecommerce founders: the case for paying more is multi-state. Once economic nexus starts pulling you into foreign qualification and annual reports in several states, a compliance calendar earns its keep. One store in one state, and you are paying $199 twice for what Northwest charges $125 flat.
Year-two service cost, agent included:
- Bizee: $119
- Northwest: $125
- ZenBusiness: $199
4. LegalZoom: Best for Bundled Legal and Attorney Access
Two upgrades arrive already ticked at LegalZoom's checkout, expedited processing and the Founder's Kit, worth roughly $198 combined unless you untick them.
Pricing: Basic $0, Pro $249, Premium $299, all plus state fees. Verified on LegalZoom's own LLC pricing page, tier contents included:
- Basic: articles of organization, name check, 1-800Accountant tax consult
- Pro: adds the operating agreement, the EIN, a 30-day Business Attorney Plan trial, 150+ document templates for a year, a Wix site builder
- Premium: adds a 6-month LZ Books trial (invoicing, expense tracking, mileage capture)
| Year 1 service cost | $249 (Basic plus the $249 agent, a secondary-sourced rate) |
|---|---|
| Year 2 service cost | $249, so $498 across two years, roughly triple Northwest's $164 |
Accept every default and Pro costs $249, plus $198 of pre-checked add-ons, plus the $249 agent: about $696 before a cent of state fees.
Pros
- ✔️ BBB A+ rating, confirmed on its BBB profile (the fetch disclosed no complaint counts, so read it as a rating, not a clean record)
- ✔️ Pro bundles the EIN and operating agreement in one purchase
- ✔️ The most brand recognition here, with an attorney plan bundled into Pro and Premium
Cons
- ❌ The bundled 30-day attorney plan auto-charges $49/month after the trial (verified), and LZ Books charges $9.99/month after six months
- ❌ $249/yr registered agent with auto-renew on by default, the highest standalone rate here. One source reports isolated $499 renewals in late 2025, unconfirmed
- ❌ Cancellation reportedly requires a phone call to a retention team, not a self-serve toggle
For ecommerce founders: Pro's real value is that the EIN and operating agreement are the two documents Shopify Payments and Amazon verification ask for, in one checkout. The EIN is free from the IRS and free operating agreement templates exist, so you are paying for the bundle, not the documents.
Buy LegalZoom if you want an attorney reachable by phone and will use the document library. Skip it if you only need a filing and an address: $498 over two years buys what Northwest does for $164.
5. Inc Authority: Best Genuinely Free First Year
One documented checkout finished at $50 total, the Colorado state filing fee, with formation, the first year of registered agent and the EIN all at $0. That is one reported walkthrough, not a guarantee, though the $0 service fee behind it is verified first-party.
Pricing: $0 in service fees, state filing fee only. Verified on incauthority.com.
| Year 1 service cost | $0 |
|---|---|
| Year 2 service cost | $179 for the agent renewal, secondary-sourced |
Key Features
- Free EIN included
- A full free first year of registered agent service
- A 24-hour processing claim
- A custom website at no extra charge
Pros
- ✔️ Nothing to pay but the state if you decline every option in checkout
- ✔️ The EIN is bundled free, which no other $0 tier here does
Cons
- ❌ Relentless post-signup sales contact, the dominant theme across reviews and Reddit threads
- ❌ The $179 renewal sits at the high end of this field
- ❌ Add-on prices conflict across sources and appear nowhere on Inc Authority's own site: EIN at $75 or $49, operating agreement at $59 or $89, plus a tax-planning consultation reported at $899
For anyone taking a $0 offer, industry compliance guidance is consistent: bundle the agent at formation to capture the free year, then diary the renewal date yourself. Auto-renewal is on by default across this industry, and the renewal rate is materially higher than the promotional one.
For ecommerce founders: the free EIN matters more here than anywhere else, because the EIN is the gate on Stripe payouts and Shopify Payments name matching. Getting it at $0 removes the one genuine blocker between filing and a working checkout.
Best for: cash-tight founders who can ignore a sales call.
Skip if: you are launching a store this week and cannot afford the interruptions.
6. Rocket Lawyer: Best if You Need Ongoing Legal Documents
Almost every list on page one quotes Rocket Lawyer at $99.99 plus a $39.99 monthly membership. That is not what rocketlawyer.com/pricing showed when I loaded it. It showed three annual memberships, each bundling one free business registration.
Pricing: Standard $149/yr, Plus $249/yr (most popular), Pro $349/yr. Each includes one free business registration; state fees still apply.
One-time services, same verified page
- EIN $70
- Registered agent $125/yr
- Annual report $100
- DBA filing $100
- Articles of dissolution $125
- Trademark from $350
| Year 1 service cost | $274 (Standard membership plus the $125 agent) |
|---|---|
| Year 2 service cost | $274 with the membership, so $548 across two years, the highest total here, or $125 if you drop the membership and keep only the agent, which lands at $399 |
Key Features
- Unlimited document creation and e-signature
- Ask an Attorney access and live consultations, escalating by tier
- Identical add-on pricing across all three tiers
I am not splitting the difference on that pricing conflict. The membership structure came from the vendor's own page; the $99.99 and $39.99/month figures come from aggregator sites, so the vendor page wins. One reported limit: the free registration is one-time per customer across entity types, so no free LLC now and free corporation later.
Cons
- ❌ The ongoing cost is a recurring membership, not a one-time formation fee
- ❌ The free formation only stays free while you keep paying
- ❌ Pricing is described inconsistently across the web, a friction cost of its own
For ecommerce founders: worth it only if you will pull supplier agreements, contractor ICAs, terms of sale and privacy policies out of the document library. If the filing is all you need, you are renting a $149/yr membership to dodge a one-time fee.
Verdict: buy the membership for the document library, not for the free filing.
7. Harbor Compliance: Best Registered Agent for Privacy and Multi State Sellers
The address you type into the registered agent field lands on a public state filing anyone can search, including the customer who is angry about a refund. For a seller running a store out of a spare room, that address is the actual purchase. The industry makes this argument itself, ZenBusiness's marketing most bluntly; the public filing is the verifiable half.
Pricing: registered agent $99/yr as a new customer, renewing at $149/yr. Multi-year prepay runs $198 for two years or $297 for three. Verified on harborcompliance.com.
| Year 1 service cost | $99 for the agent. Formation is quote-based, so a year-one total cannot be computed without a call |
|---|---|
| Year 2 service cost | $149 |
Key Features
- Same-day document delivery
- Entity manager software with unlimited document storage
- SOC 2 Type II compliant storage, a genuine differentiator here
- Multi-year prepay discount
Cons
- ❌ No published formation price. I looked; the page says it depends on your individual situation
- ❌ The $149 renewal sits above Bizee's $119 and Northwest's $125
- ❌ No meaningful independent user-evidence record surfaced, so there is no ratings line here
For ecommerce founders: this is the pick for the seller about to become multi-state. Once economic nexus pulls you into foreign qualification and annual reports in several states, one provider covering agent duty everywhere with a document trail beats a cheap one-state filing. The SOC 2 storage earns its keep the day a marketplace requests documents.
Agent rates after year one, ascending:
- Bizee: $119
- Northwest: $125
- Rocket Lawyer: $125
- Harbor Compliance: $149
- Swyft Filings: $149
- Inc Authority: $179
- ZenBusiness: $199
- LegalZoom: $249
- MyCompanyWorks: not published
8. MyCompanyWorks: Best Flat Fee With the Operating Agreement Included
$79 buys the operating agreement that ZenBusiness charges $99 for and Swyft charges $35 for, plus next-business-day processing, with no tier ladder to climb.
Pricing: $79 + state fee, one starting price, no tiers. Verified on mycompanyworks.com/pricing.
| Year 1 service cost | $79 plus an unpublished agent rate |
|---|---|
| Year 2 service cost | Not computable, because the agent add-on carries no published price |
Key Features
- Unlimited name searches
- A custom operating agreement
- Organizational minutes
Pros
- ✔️ One flat $79, with no tier ladder and no processing-speed upsell
- ✔️ Next-business-day filing at the base price, which Swyft prices at $269 on Premium
Cons
- ❌ No published agent rate. I checked the pricing page; it is not there, and that breaks the two-year math
- ❌ Low brand visibility and review volume, so almost no independent user evidence exists to check
This article ranks on two-year cost, which you cannot compute for a service that will not publish its recurring rate, so the table below says “not published” rather than guessing.
MyCompanyWorks is also the cleanest case study for ignoring affiliate rankings: #3 on one page-one list, #11 on another, while its published price, $79, never moved.
For ecommerce founders: the bundled operating agreement is the practical win. Business bank accounts, Shopify Payments escalations and Amazon entity updates all tend to ask for it, and next-business-day filing keeps the formation, then EIN, then bank, then processor chain moving.
Buy it if you want one number on one page and you are content to be your own registered agent or source one separately. Skip it if you want a single provider handling both, priced upfront.
9. Swyft Filings: Best for Fast Filing on a Budget
The $0 tier is real. So is the multi-page checkout where the EIN, the operating agreement and the required agent arrive one screen at a time, each with a price you did not see coming.
Pricing, verified on swyftfilings.com:
- Basic: $0 + state fees, 7 to 10 business days
- Standard: $169, marked down from $199, 3 business days, includes the operating agreement and custom organizational minutes
- Premium: $269, marked down from $299, 1 business day, adds a professional business address and unlimited attorney consultations
| Year 1 service cost | $149 (Basic plus the $149 agent, a reviewer-reported rate) |
|---|---|
| Year 2 service cost | $149 |
Key Features
- Three processing speeds tied to the three tiers
- A professional business address and unlimited attorney consultations on Premium
- Trustpilot 4.7 across roughly 7,600 to 7,900 reviews, per secondary sources
Cons
- ❌ Add-on prices reported by reviewers rather than surfaced upfront: EIN $70, operating agreement $35, required registered agent $149/yr
- ❌ BBB status is unresolvable. One source claims F and not accredited, another claims A+, and BBB's own profile says the business is not accredited and BBB has insufficient information to assign a grade. That non-rating is the closest thing to a verified fact here
For ecommerce founders: Premium's one-business-day filing is the fastest clean path through the formation, then EIN, then bank, then Stripe or Amazon chain, and its business address doubles as home-address privacy. Even Basic's 7 to 10 days beats Bizee's free tier by weeks.
Best for: founders with a launch date who will read every checkout screen.
Skip if: you want a BBB record you can actually interpret.
LLC Formation Services FAQ: Costs, Payment Processors, and the DIY Route
Every cost column below excludes state filing fees, which run from $35 in Montana to $500 in Massachusetts (Kentucky $40, Texas $300, Alaska $250, most states $50 to $200), because no service can waive them. Where a rate is not published, the cell says so.
| Service | Best for | Formation fee | Year 1 service cost | Year 2 service cost | Agent renewal | Independent evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northwest* | Overall | $39 | $39 | $125 | $125 | Trustpilot conflicts, 4.0 to 4.7 |
| Bizee | Lowest 2-year cost | $0 | $0 | $119* | $119* | BBB C, 86 complaints |
| ZenBusiness | Compliance dashboard | $0 | $199 | $199 | $199 | Trustpilot 4.8, 26k+ (secondary) |
| LegalZoom | Attorney access | $0 | $249* | $249* | $249* | BBB A+ |
| Inc Authority | Free first year | $0 | $0 | $179* | $179* | Upsell complaints |
| Rocket Lawyer | Document library | $149/yr membership | $274 | $274 | $125 | None surfaced |
| Harbor Compliance | Privacy, multi-state | Not published | Not published | $149 | $149 ($99 year one) | None surfaced |
| MyCompanyWorks | Flat fee, agreement included | $79 | Not published | Not published | Not published | Minimal review volume |
| Swyft Filings | Fast filing | $0 | $149* | $149* | $149* | BBB will not rate |
*Secondary-sourced cells: every Northwest figure, plus every agent-rate cell for Bizee, Inc Authority, LegalZoom and Swyft Filings.
You may need none of these. If you are a single-member store in your own home state and you are willing to be your own registered agent, the whole job is the state fee, a free EIN direct from the IRS, and a free operating agreement template. Templates are free from Northwest, Wolters Kluwer, LawDepot, Docusign and eForms. The IRS's own EIN page returned HTTP 404 to my fetch, so that process detail is secondary-sourced.
A formation service saves you roughly an hour of paperwork, not money, and the real reason to pay is the registered agent address and mail handling, which makes it a privacy purchase, not a filing purchase.
The order above was set by verified cost and evidence, and wherever a vendor blocked verification I said so.
Is $0 LLC formation actually free?
The service fee is genuinely $0 at Inc Authority, ZenBusiness Starter and Bizee Basic, verified on all three pricing pages. The state fee always applies, and the agent renewal arrives in year two. Two-year service cost ranks the computable ones differently: $119 with Bizee, $164 with Northwest, $179 with Inc Authority, $298 with Swyft Filings, $398 with ZenBusiness, $498 with LegalZoom and $548 with Rocket Lawyer if you keep the membership. Auto-renewal is on by default at nearly every service, so mark the renewal date yourself.
What documents does an LLC need to switch on Stripe, Shopify Payments and Amazon?
An EIN, formation documents, and a bank account titled in the LLC's exact legal name. Stripe, per its own docs, wants the EIN, business name and address, representative identity details, and beneficial-owner information for multi-member LLCs, and you can take payments before the EIN is assigned but not payouts. Shopify Payments, per its help center, needs an exact IRS name match, with an SS-4 or 147c letter as fallback. Amazon, per seller verification guides, wants Articles of Organization, the EIN letter, an unredacted bank statement and address proof under 90 days old, matching to the zip code.
Do New York and West Virginia really not require a registered agent?
Partly true, and the competitor lists state it wrong. Neither state forces you to appoint a private agent, because the Secretary of State is the default recipient of service of process (NY LLC Law §301; WV LLC Act §§31B-1-108 and 31B-1-111). The catch: service on the Secretary of State is legally complete even if the forwarded notice never reaches you at a stale address, so you can lose by default without seeing the papers. That is secondary-sourced guidance, not a statute reading or legal advice.
Can a non-US founder use these services and get an EIN without an SSN?
Yes, but the online EIN application is closed to you. Complete Form SS-4 by hand, write N/A in the SSN or ITIN field rather than leaving it blank, then fax it to +1 304-707-9471 or call the IRS international line at +1 267-941-1099. Expect four business days by fax, though non-SSN applicants often wait two to six weeks. Northwest sells a non-US EIN service at $200; Active Filings' International Silver runs $999, Wyoming, Florida and Delaware only, all of it secondary-sourced, including the IRS process after its page 404'd on my fetch.
When does an ecommerce LLC have to register for sales tax?
Not at formation. Registration is triggered by nexus, either physical presence or economic nexus under the 2018 Wayfair ruling, typically around $100,000 in sales or 200 transactions in a given state. Permits themselves cost roughly $0 to $100. Forming in Wyoming or Delaware does not create an obligation in the states you ship to; you register state by state as you cross each threshold (secondary-sourced).
Comments 0 Responses