Skip to content
Ask About LLCYou ask. We answer, with the fee and the source.
How we answer

How do we decide which services to recommend?

Ask About LLC names the services it would send a friend to after answering four questions: what three years cost, how many of the chores the price covers, whether the price is posted plainly, and whether it grows with your company. Here is the sourcing, the writing format, the arithmetic and the weights.

Answered by the Ask About LLC editorial team ·

Where do the facts come from?

When a state sets the rule or the fee, the answer comes from the state's own forms, fee schedules and statutes. You see the link beside the fact, and the month the fact was last looked at. What a company charges comes from the company's own price page, and the date we read it is printed where the price appears.

How is each page written?

Every page opens with a one-line reply, then the supporting numbers, then the source. A word you may not know links to word help.

How do you add up the cost?

Three years is the first-year price plus two renewals. For the state, three years means the filing fee, the reports in years two and three and any yearly minimum tax. A cost with no fixed number, such as a newspaper notice, gets explained and left out of the sum.

What gets scored?

  1. What you pay over three years (33%). Year one plus two renewals at each company's own published prices. The state charges every filer the same, so state fees are shown on their own and do not move the order.
  2. Chores the price takes care of (29%). Which of the repeat jobs are inside the price: the registered agent, the state report, the EIN application and use in other states.
  3. Answers on the price page (14%). Can you find the first-year price, the renewal price and the state fee before you reach checkout, in words a newcomer understands?
  4. What happens at renewal (13%). A price that holds in year two is worth more than a low opening bid that climbs.
  5. Room to add states (11%). One state or all fifty. It matters the day your LLC needs a second state.

When two services land close together, the page says which question separated them and what the runner-up still does well.

The order is the Ask About LLC editorial view of these questions. It is not a customer rating.

Which companies get ranked?

Each state page ranks Mainstay Filing, which serves all fifty states, against the registered agent companies built around that state. A company is ranked only for a service it sells at a posted price.

What should you not expect?

We print no customer scores. The answers are general information, and the ranking is an editorial call.