Do you want to form an LLC, but you don’t know if LegalZoom is the best company to assist with your formation? With so many choices for LLC service online, it can be tricky to figure out which one would best serve your company.
This LegalZoom LLC service alternatives guide is structured in a way that gives you a quick rundown on a few of their competitors, in order to discern if one of them might be a better choice for you.
What This Service Is Best Known For: Great low rates, feature-packed formation packages, and a dedication to giving back.
ZenBusiness opened its doors in 2015 and has a unique approach to business formation services thanks to the use of automation to speed up and simplify several parts of the process. Plus, we have formed over 300,000 businesses.
Let’s see how we stack up when compared to LegalZoom.
- ZenBusiness is one of the more affordable LLC services online. For just $49 (plus state fee), you can form a business and get a full year of annual report service. That off the bat will save you $30 as opposed to forming an LLC with LegalZoom.
- If you like seeing positive customer reviews, you’ll love ZenBusiness. With more than 10,000 reviews available online, it’s difficult to find more than just a small handful of negative reviews.
- As a company, ZenBusiness has a commitment to giving back. Being a public benefit corporation, ZenBusiness partners with Kiva.org to provide financial lending services to poverty-stricken individuals, and also loan money to women-owned and minority-owned businesses.
What This Service Is Best Known For: Excellent customer support and outstanding registered agent service.
Northwest was formed in 1998, and with thousands of LLC formations since then, they’re an experienced and reliable option. If you’re looking for a solid mid-size company, they might just be the right choice for you. How do they compare to LegalZoom?
- If you use our discount, Northwest offers LLC formation service at the price point of $39, which is much lower than LegalZoom’s $79 package.
- Northwest’s claim to fame is its excellent customer support network. While some competitors outsource their support to anonymous call centers in foreign countries, Northwest keeps it all in-house, with knowledgeable reps providing personalized service.
- As you may have guessed from reading their name, Northwest Registered Agent excels at offering registered agent service, and they include a full year with any formation package. Furthermore, Northwest was the first major registered agent provider that locally scans each and every document they receive on your behalf.
Want to learn more about Northwest Registered Agent? Read our review.
What This Service Is Best Known For: Free LLC formations that still come with great features.
IncFile opened in 2004, and they’ve served more than 500,000 businesses since then. Their popularity can be attributed to a number of positive qualities, from their low prices to their great customer feedback. Let’s take a look at how they compare to LegalZoom.
- Offering a free package that only requires you to pay your state fee, IncFile is the most affordable LLC service available. Especially compared to LegalZoom’s $79 price point, it’s easy to see why IncFile is a good choice.
- Another of IncFile’s major advantages over LegalZoom is the features included in that LLC service package. IncFile provides a full year of registered agent service with any LLC formation. LegalZoom doesn’t include registered agent service, although they do provide a banking resolution to help you open business bank accounts.
- Customer feedback is a major strong point for IncFile. They have more than 33,500 reviews available online, and they maintain high average ratings.
Want to learn more about IncFile? Read our review.
Need Help Forming an LLC?
| Service | Price | Known For | Value | Legit? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LegalZoom | $79 + state fee | Brand | Fair | Yes |
| 🥇 ZenBusiness | $49 + state fee | Overall Value | Excellent | Yes |
As a business owner, you have so much to think about. Let an LLC service take care of the formation paperwork so you can sleep easy knowing everything is totally taken care of.
ZenBusiness has formed over 300,000 businesses, is reliable, fast and affordable. Not to mention $30 less than LegalZoom!
3 Fast Facts About LegalZoom
Before we move on, here’s a reminder of what LegalZoom has to offer. This should help you solidify your preference between LegalZoom and your other options:
- Unrivaled Experience: LegalZoom has an incredible amount of experience compared to most of its competitors. While most companies in this industry have served a few thousand customers, LegalZoom has millions of successful LLC formations.
- Satisfaction Guaranteed: The online business services industry is not known for its generous refund policies. However, LegalZoom is the exception to the rule. They offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee that’s one of the strongest refund policies in the industry.
- No Registered Agent Service Included: It’s not all positives for LegalZoom, however. Many competitors include a year of registered agent service with LLC formation packages, but LegalZoom does not. In addition, they charge more for this service than most competitors.
Customer Feedback Comparison
One of the most important aspects of any LLC formation service is the customer feedback the company receives. To help you analyze each company’s customer reviews, we decided to create this customer feedback comparison section that breaks down how these companies stack up next to each other in this crucial area.
LLC formation services can have customer feedback collections that vary considerably in both quality and quantity. With this in mind, we created the following comparison in an attempt to make it as easy as possible for you to compare these companies in an apples-to-apples manner.
- ZenBusiness: 10,540 reviews / 4.7-star average score
- Northwest Registered Agent: 386 reviews / 4.5-star average score
- IncFile: 33,672 reviews / 4.8-star average score
- LegalZoom: 6,128 reviews / 4.3-star average score
Frequently Asked Questions
Q&A for these alternatives to LegalZoom
How Do They Compare Directly With Top LLC Services?
If you’d like to see how these LLC formation websites compare side-by-side, check out our comparative reviews:
Do Any of These Services Handle Requirements Like Publication?
Only one of these four companies provides state-specific publication services: ZenBusiness.
Northwest does at least provide their customers with a set of instructions to complete their own publication requirement, but IncFile and LegalZoom don’t help at all. With this in mind, it’s a pretty significant advantage for ZenBusiness to be the only option in this guide for those of you forming businesses in states that require publication.
For more information on the best New York LLC publication services, check out our full guide on this topic.
Which Service Has the Fewest Upsells?
LegalZoom attempts quite a few upsells, to the point where we added this question to our FAQ sections because of them.
By the time you progress through their LLC formation service order form to the package select screen, you’ve already encountered $1,080 worth of upsell attempts. None of the other companies discussed in this guide bother us regarding upsells in the slightest.
Are Any of These Services Faster Than the Others?
The filing times for Northwest and IncFile are quite close in most states, because these companies all use the same criteria to come up with their turnaround time estimates: the actual processing times of each state.
While one of them might be a day or two quicker in a few isolated states, for the most part there is no significant difference. The exceptions to this are LegalZoom and ZenBusiness because turnaround times vary based on which level of service you purchase. LegalZoom’s cheapest package takes 30 business days, while their most expensive plan takes 7-10 business days.
Meanwhile, ZenBusiness does vary your turnaround times somewhat from state to state, but our processing speeds do also depend on which package you select.
Which Service Has the Best Refund Policy?
LegalZoom and ZenBusiness have nearly identical refund policies that are the best in this industry. With either of these services, you’ll receive a 60-day satisfaction guarantee. If you are unhappy with the service for any reason, all you need to do is request a refund.
Can I Just Form an LLC on My Own, Without a Service?
You absolutely can. In fact, it’s not uncommon at all for entrepreneurs to form their own LLCs without professional help. However, there’s nothing quite like the peace of mind we get from using a professional service because we have the utmost confidence in their expertise.