ZenBusiness

Velo® is ZenBusiness's AI guide, and it is included from the free plan up rather than sold as an upgrade. According to the Velo product page, it has handled over 2 million conversations and is built on the company's experience forming nearly a million businesses.

What it does in practice:

• Works through business ideas and whether they are feasible before you file
• Builds a step-by-step plan specific to your state and business type
• Files formation paperwork for LLCs, S corps and C corps
• Tracks state filing and compliance deadlines and alerts you
• Hands you to a human specialist when the question needs one

The useful part is that it keeps working after registration. Most formation services go quiet once the filing clears; Velo® stays attached to the compliance calendar, which is where new owners actually get caught out. It is free to try without a credit card.

The filing flow is built for people who have never registered a company, and it shows in two specific places.

First, the name check runs at the start rather than at the end. You find out immediately if your chosen name is taken in your state, and you can keep searching without restarting the form. Services that check the name after payment turn a five-minute job into a support ticket.

Second, the flow is four clear steps: complete the forms and pick your services, submit to the state, receive state verification, then access the documents in your account. No stage asks you to interpret a legal term without an explanation next to it.

Filing speed depends entirely on which plan you bought:

• Starter: 7 to 10 business days, or add rush processing for $79
• Pro and Premium: 1 business day

One qualifier that applies to every provider in this category, and that ZenBusiness states directly on its plan pages: these are the times to prepare and submit your paperwork. The Secretary of State then takes its own review time on top, which varies by state and season. A "1-day" plan does not mean an approved LLC in one day.

You cannot form a company in most US states without naming a registered agent to receive legal and tax documents. ZenBusiness charges $199 a year for the service, currently discounted to $99 for the first year, and it covers all 50 states. Both figures come from the registered agent service page, read on 18 August 2026.

The service covers document receipt, secure digital delivery, email notifications and priority handling of legal notices, with state notices scanned and uploaded to your dashboard.

Two limits worth knowing before you commit:

• The service is offered to LLCs and corporations, but not to professional limited liability companies (PLLCs) or nonprofits.
• Registered agent service is not included in Starter or Pro. Only Premium bundles it.

If a registered agent is the main thing you are shopping for rather than the filing, Northwest is the stronger buy at $125 a year, and it throws the first year in free with a $39 filing. If you want to see the three side by side, the comparison tool puts their plans in one table.

Worry-Free Compliance is the service ZenBusiness leans on hardest in its marketing, and the free first year is real: it is included with every plan, Starter included. It tracks your annual report deadlines, files them, and covers amendments when your details change.

The number to write down is the renewal: $199 a year. Miss that in the checkout summary and year two arrives with a bill roughly equal to the Pro plan you did not buy.

Whether that is worth paying depends on your state. Annual report requirements are not uniform: some states want a report every year with a fee attached, some every two years, and a few do not require one at all. In a state with a simple annual filing you can do yourself in fifteen minutes, $199 buys you convenience. In a state with layered requirements, or if you are running the company across state lines, it buys you not forgetting.

The practical test: look up your own state's annual report fee and deadline first, then decide. Our explainer on what a limited liability company is covers the ongoing obligations that come with the structure.

Published add-on prices, all read from the ZenBusiness plan pages on 18 August 2026:

The EIN charge is worth a note. You can get an EIN directly from the IRS at no cost, and it takes about ten minutes online. Paying $99 buys you not doing it yourself, which is a fair trade for some founders and pure waste for others.

The sticker price on a formation plan is a poor guide to what you will actually spend, because the recurring cost is the registered agent, not the filing. Below is a three-year total using each provider's published prices, assuming the cheapest formation plan plus registered agent service, and excluding state fees, which are identical whichever provider you choose.

Figures use the current first-year promotional agent price where one is published, and the standard renewal after that. Worry-Free Compliance is excluded from the ZenBusiness row because it is free in year one and optional afterwards; adding it takes the three-year total to $895. The Swyft Filings figure looks wrong at a glance but is not: that service bills its registered agent at $149 per quarter, not per year.

Read that table the right way. Northwest is the cheapest place to keep a company registered, and it is not close. ZenBusiness is the cheapest place to start one, with a better dashboard, faster support and an AI guide the others do not match. If you value the first year experience and the compliance tooling, the roughly $200 premium over three years is a reasonable price. If you only want an address on file and mail scanned, you are paying for software you will not open.

For a longer treatment of one of these matchups, see ZenBusiness vs LegalZoom.

Two guarantees apply, and both have edges worth knowing.

100% accuracy guarantee. If ZenBusiness makes a filing error, it corrects it with the state at no extra cost. This covers their mistakes, not a change of mind about your business name.

60-day money-back guarantee. Formation plans are refundable within 60 days, less state and third-party fees. The limit is in the timing, and ZenBusiness states it plainly in its terms: once documents are submitted to the government on your behalf, the filing fees cannot be refunded. Non-formation subscriptions run on a shorter 30-day window, and no refund is issued at all while an outstanding balance sits on the account.

In practice this means the decision point is submission, not day 60. If you are having second thoughts, act before the paperwork goes to the state.

Three things ZenBusiness does not do, which matter if any of them describe you:

• No nonprofit formation. ZenBusiness states on its own state-specific corporation pages that it does not support nonprofit corporation formations. LegalZoom and Swyft Filings both do.
• No registered agent for PLLCs or nonprofits. The registered agent service is limited to LLCs and corporations.
• DBAs in certain states only. ZenBusiness files DBA names for existing domestic LLCs and corporations in good standing, but coverage is not nationwide.

None of these affect a standard single-state LLC, which is what most readers of this page are forming. They matter if you are choosing one provider to handle several entity types.

Yes, and the paper trail is public. ZenBusiness was founded in 2015, is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and raised $200 million in Series C funding at a $1.7 billion valuation in November 2021, in a round led by Oak HC/FT with SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Cathay Innovation and Greycroft participating, announced by the company on 9 November 2021. Ross Buhrdorf, previously the founding chief technology officer of HomeAway, is founder and chief executive.

On the service side, the company carries an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau and a 4.8 Trustpilot score across 32,128 reviews as published on its own reviews page on 18 August 2026. It was named a Silver Stevie® Award winner for Sales and Customer Service in the Front-Line Customer Service Team category in 2024.

The company reports having launched more than 950,000 businesses. That figure is self-reported and cannot be independently audited, which is true of every equivalent claim in this category, so treat it as scale rather than as a verified count.