So in this video I'll give you a detailed breakdown of the top three best LLC services that you can use to form your LLC today specifically in this video we're going to be covering the pros and cons of each LLC service and we'll cover the different price points of each of these services and then I'll also show you a step-by-step process that I personally used when forming my LLC and we'll also talk about you know How these different Services rank against each other in a format of good better and best and then I'll also show
you a bonus service towards the end of the video that I personally used when forming my es Corp and you know depending on how much money you're going to be making that one could end up being the best fit for you so we'll talk about it as well this video is exactly what I wish I had around 7 years ago when I started my business and I had to go Through tons of Articles trying to find the right LLC formation service that work best for me hey everyone welcome to the channel my name is Josh
I'm one of highest earning Freelancers on upwork.com with over $1.1 million earned I also have direct clients as well so my total business income is around $2 million so I can tell you from my personal experience that the legal and tax status of your business is definitely something you don't want to Handle yourself because you know you don't want to put yourself at the risk of filing something incorrectly or doing something incorrectly that could affect your taxes and you know penalties and all that stuff my goal is to give you my honest opinion of each
LLC service in this video to help you start your business and form your LLC the right way so the first LLC formation service is Northwest registered agent so one of the things that really stands out about Northwest is their excellent us-based customer support this is actually one of the things that I like most about Northwest and I really feel like it helps differentiate them as well as an LLC service so you can see here they employ over 900 customer service employees Nationwide and these are all in the US and that's one thing you're going to
find is different about Northwest a lot of these other LLC Services you know they do have good Customer support but they do leverage a lot of overseas you know employees for their customer support but Northwest does not working with other companies signing up with different types of services a lot of times you'll get emails from different companies and it's a no reply email address like you can't reply to that email and ask a question however if you sign up with Northwest whatever email communication they send out doesn't matter what it is you can Reply to
it and talk to someone from customer support so some other things that I really like about their customer support is that they will never you know sell your information to third parties a lot of other companies will do this their support phone number is at the bottom of every page on the website this is something else that's very you know good and differentiates them in today's day and age where most of these websites try to force you to talk to you know an AI generated autochat this is one of the reasons why their customer support
is so great they make it very clear how you can contact them you know there's nothing worse than sending an email about something that's really important about your business and having to wait for someone to reply to you in like 1 to three days if you call them and you get their voicemail they will return your call within 2 hours and every email from their staff has a proper signature so You know exactly who you're talking to you know you're not sending an email to a group inbox and then a bunch of people are replying
to it companies that understand that customer service in Word of Mouth is the most important thing for a business they get that and a lot of these other you know LLC Services don't and that's one of the best things about Northwest registered agent their LLC formation service is also a flat rate at $39 Now you can add things on to it which you know I would recommend and I'll show you in this video but they have one flat rate that doesn't have any hidden fees and they charge the same price every year for their registered
agent they don't try to like hook you in at like a low price and then the following year like increas it substantially like a lot of these other services do and you know they've even stated that they have hundreds of people that come to them Every single day who are frustrated you know with different LLC services and looking for a better alternative they literally say on their website that they don't care about growth or Revenue they focus on the customer and customer satisfaction which is really smart because if you focus on the customer the growth
in Revenue come automatically so I really like that about them and it's something you don't see on you know any other LC service and when you sign up With Northwest the registered agent service is free for your first year having a registered agent you know basically keep your business organized in compliance with legal obligations that's the reason that you want to have a registered agent they have a flat rate for the registered agent it's $125 a year which is actually a really good price you know when you compare it to other services as well having
a registered agent no matter who you use For it it's a requirement to establish your business they're also the only National registered agent that let you use their own office Northwest Own address on in State records to minimize your exposure so you don't have to list your home address and they also have very strict privacy practices in place to prevent someone or you know a hacker from accessing your data they also have very affordable add-ons that you can add individually and they're not packaged Together like a lot of other LLC services do so for their
add-ons like Boi Ein which is your tax ID we'll talk more about what these mean and business identity services you can actually individually choose and you know pick and choose which ones you want they don't force everything into a package and say Hey you buy this package or you don't they give you the option to individually choose so for the Boi which is the business ownership information It's actually a you know somewhat new requirement that you have to do now and I personally would recommend adding it on so you don't have to do it yourself
it's a federal requirement so you're going to have to do it one way or another and I'll show you how to do that in Northwest when I show you the step-by-step sign up process so we'll get to that here in a moment now when you do business taxes or you have like an account do it or whatever service you Use they're going to be using your business tax ID which is going to be your EIN so it's a very important number and I'll you know again I'll show you some more about that here in a
moment and Northwest will basically take care of all the paperwork that's involved with getting your eiin or tax ID from the IRS and they also have a bunch of you know optional business IDE entity Services they will actually build a three-page business website for you so It's going to have like a homepage about page and contact page with your own business domain which that comes you know that's another thing as well their main goal with these Services is to help establish an online presence for your business in less than 10 minutes so we'll take a
look at those as well now I want to show you the step-by-step sign up process I want to show you you know how I set up my LLC the different add-ons that I would highly recommend That you get and just show you the step-by-step process it's extremely simple so let's go ahead and take a look at that now so to get to the Northwest signup page you can use the first link Down Below in the description or you can go to Josh burch.com forn Northwest so let's go ahead and go there and if you do
use my link Down Below in the description that's actually my affiliate link so you will be supporting the channel you don't need to you know you Can go to their website and sign up if you want to do that but if you choose to use my link I greatly appreciate it and I just want to let you know that so this is the homepage of Northwest so let's go ahead and click right here where it says let's get you started so first off we have to choose you know what type of business that we want
to start so obviously that's going to be LLC if you're watching this video they have corporation like es Corp and you know Nonprofit as well but you know for the the purpose of this video we're starting in LLC so make sure you have that selected right here okay so next next we need to select the state in which we're forming the LLC so for me I live in Kentucky so I'm going to scroll down through here and there we go there's Kentucky now you can see when I selected Kentucky the pricing changed over here on
the right hand side so each state has their own filing fee and you can see Right here that Kentucky the filing fee for an LLC is $40 which is actually pretty cheap compared to other states and I'll show you what I mean by that there's different LLC formation websites where you can you know form an LLC for free that's how they advertise it however it's never completely free because you have to pay you know the state fee so you can see California has three different options they have $90 where it's processed in 10 days and
then All the way up to 165 where it it's processed in 6 days and you know depending on which one you select it could be even higher like Alabama like you wouldn't think that Alabama has higher fees than California but Alabama's range from $236 to $311 so let's go back to Kentucky you know we like the $40 fees a lot more than what I was looking at earlier and you know you do have a few options here like if I wanted you know it processed In one business day I could choose this option here for
115 I don't really care about that so what I'm going to do is just leave it here on the you know processed in 5 days they do offer same business day filing but I still have to wait on Kentucky and you know like I said you can change this here processed in 531 but the overall time is really going to depend on your state and then the last option we have on this first page here is again we talked about this A little while ago the beneficial ownership information or Boi this again is a new
federal requirement you have to start filing this so you can actually use Northwest to file this for you and then we can see over here here it is Boi report compliance it's only 20 $25 with Northwest and I say only $25 because all the other LC services that I've looked at the other two on this video as well it's more expensive with those and it's actually you know pretty significantly More expensive so Northwest has the cheapest Boi filing that I found so far and for any of these if you want to see more information about
them you can actually click on this question mark here and it tells you why it's you know a federal requirement and you have 30 days to actually file it so let's go ahead and move on to the next page we can click continue or you can actually click up here as well so let's go ahead and do that okay so now on the company Tab we need to fill out some information about our business the first thing being what do we want the business name to be so my business name is going to be Josh
Burns Tech okay then we have an option do we want to send a copy of lawsuits and legal notices to your attorney if you don't have an attorney like you don't have a lawyer that you've worked with in the past that you want you know those things to go to then leave this selected As no if you do have one you can do yes and you can put their email address right here so I'm going to go ahead and just put no for this okay so next you need to basically you know write down your
business purpose like what is the purpose of your business what services do you provide what products do you sell you know things like that so you can choose this option here to use a generic business purpose so if you you know select that it's just going to use Something generic okay so for me I could say providing SQL Server DBA consulting services and content creation I do you know SQL Server database Administration for a bunch of companies all over the US so that's one half of my business and the other half is my content creation
like the content I create on YouTube on my blog and things like that as well we can go ahead and move down here okay so next physical address you want To be on record with the state now this is where the registered agent comes in you can use Northwest as the registered agent you get that service free for a year so I'm going to leave this selected here our registered agent address now again if you don't want to use them as your registered agent you have to either have a specific address that you can use
or you have to use your home address so again that's one of the benefit of having a registered agent and again you Can click this option here and it tells you you know what this actually means what the principal address is and you know that's why I'm going to go ahead and select to use them instead of using my own address and then for mailing address I'm going to use Northwest registered agent as well so again this is the main benefit of having a registered agent service and that's why we're going to keep those two
options selected okay so for management type you Have two options you have member managed which this is the main one that pretty much you know the majority of llc's that get formed will choose and then you also have manager managed the key difference here is for member managed basically the owners can make all the decisions for the LLC and then manag or manage is basically you have to like appoint a manager and they are in charge of making a lot of the decisions so if you're going to be a single member LLC which Most of
you will that's you know what I am then go ahead and select member managed and you can see a you know much more detailed description of what both of these mean but again for you know probably 99% of you this is the option you're going to select if you're a single member LLC it's going to be one person and that one person is going to be you so we'll type in for me Joshua Burns and again we're going to use them as our registered agent so Everything here is good we can go ahead and click
continue and then contact details go ahead and fill out your contact details here they'll keep it private as you can see so we'll go ahead and Skip past that for now and then for account setup go ahead and put in your email address and type in a password as well definitely make sure it's a strong password and that's all you have to do on this one so we'll go ahead and go to the next tab this is what we talked About earlier this is a you know custom thing that Northwest offers to you and it's
completely optional so their business identity package comes with five different Services you have domain name registration which is free for one year so for me that would be you know reserving the domain name josh.com I can use this service right here to buy that domain name and I would have it registered for the first year and the next year I would have to pay for the Registration the next is the website it's going to be hosted by Northwest registered agent again they'll build you a three-page website with a homepage contact page and a out page
and then next you have the SSL certificate for your website which is something you would definitely want you can also have up to 10 business email addresses so for me personally I use about two or three different email addresses I have my main business email address and then I have Another one which is basically a contact email address so I don't have to put my email address on my website and you know other places as well you can use Northwest service here to have a business phone number and basically have it forward to your personal
cell phone so if someone you know calls your business number then your personal phone your cell phone is going to ring but you don't have to publicly put your personal phone number on like your website and Other places as well so the business identity package you can get for free for 90 days and if you choose to keep it after 90 days then you can get a 20% discount if you use every one of them now let's say for instance you're you're like okay the you know business phone number service looks cool you know I
I would probably use that and maybe use you know the business email addresses as well but you know say you don't want to do the website hosting or domain name You want to use someone else which is what I personally do so you know I personally use hostinger.com I've talked about them in other videos I have I use them for my website hosting I also have a business email set up through them they're you know in my opinion the best website hosting service so you can find a link Down Below in the description I have
a promo code with them which is Josh Burns Tech the great thing about Northwest is that you can individually Choose what you want so you don't have to you know pay for everything you can individually choose things so if you wanted the phone service you could select the phone service and maybe you want like phone service and business email you can do that you can choose whatever you want so you know let's say you chose you know this option here for everything so what's going to happen is the first 90 days you don't pay anything
and then after 90 days each one of these Different services are $9 per month so you know if you choose all of them that's going to be $45 per month if you choose one it's going to be $9 per month once we finish the sign up process I'm going to show you a presentation slide it's going to have the total amount you would be spending you know for this main plan here we're doing another option if you do add-ons and then how much you'll be paying per year okay so now let's look at some other
items that we can Choose to add on as well so first off we have the tax ID so if you form an LLC you're going to have to get a tax ID or Ein you'll either have to do it through whatever service you use like Northwest or you have to go to your State's website and do it manually yourself so I'm going to go ahead and select it here you can see there's two pricing options if you have a Social Security number it's going to be $50 if you don't it's going to be 200 so
we're going to go Ahead and leave this selected right here and then there's a few different ones as well like you could do as corporate election with the IRS there are two basic sides of your business when you form an LLC there's the legal status and there's the tax status I'm going to talk more about this later in the video when I tell you about the bonus service but you could also form an escorp so you could use escorp as your tax election and what that's going to do is you know Essentially help you save
some money on self-employment taxes if you make $60,000 or more with your business then it can be beneficial for you now I'm not going to select it here like you could select it but you would still have to work with a CPA to manage everything for you or a service which again I'll show you about later so they also have a premium mail service so if you were to use them as your registered agent they will basically accept all you know types Of mail communication but I'm not going to select that we're going to leave
that unchecked and same thing for trademark like if you wanted to trademark your business name you could pay them to you know trademark it for you but you know I think for most of you you're probably not going to select any of these additional options here okay so that's everything on optional items we can go ahead and click continue and now the Only thing we have to do is pay for our LLC to be formed you could basically get the basic package set flat rate $39 when you sign up and then we have $40 for
the Kentucky LLC formation fees and we also added the tax ID or the Ein and lastly we added the Boi report compliance as well these are the basic things that you know I would recommend that you add on when you sign up with Northwest so you know it's really going to depend on how much your state fees Are but for me the total price of using Northwest is going to be 15 $4 for everything that I personally wanted to add on to it okay so now let's take a look at two different plans that I
put together for you which is basically what you're going to pay if you choose to form your LLC with Northwest and the other half is going to be if you choose to use them as your registered agent which is going to renew after a year okay so the first plan which I just Showed you is going to be $114 plus whatever your state fees are and that's going to give you the registered agent agent which is free for one year it's going to give you your tax ID or Ein and the Boi report compliance so
that's plan one plan two is also going to be $114 and that's going to include everything from plan one with the business identity free trial so again it's going to be the same price for the First three months and then if you you know want to use the business identity Services then it's going to be $45 per month but again if you choose the whole package it's discounted at 20% so it's going to be a little bit cheaper and you can also pick and choose which ones you add on as well which I just showed
you okay so if you choose plan one the annual price you're going to be paying per year is either going to be $225 plus State fees or it's going to be $125 plus State fees now let me explain that so it's going to be $225 if you choose their registered agent service which is $125 and you want them to file your annual report as well so every LLC is required to file an annual report with your state so for me that's Kentucky they charge $100 for that so per year with this annual plan if you
want the registered agent service and you also want them to file your annual report it's going to be $225 now for me I personally would not use this annual report service because in Kentucky it's it's really easy for me to file that myself I just have to go to their website and you know I just answer some questions file it and it's only $15 so I think that part really depends on what state you're in if it's really difficult for you to file an annual report in your state I think this service would be very
beneficial okay and then for plan two the annual price Is going to be $657 plus State fees okay so what makes up this number here is the registered agent which is $125 the annual report which is $100 and the business identity package again it's $45 a month but you save 20% if you choose to use the whole thing so for me personally when forming my business you know what I would do is Select plan one because these are the three things that I would really want And then for the annual fees again I would do
plan one annual but I would do the annual report myself so so you know basically using Northwest I would personally be paying $125 per year so another thing I like about Northwest is you know for the annual report you know even if you don't want them to file it for you you still get reminders and notifications when it's doe so Northwest is a phenomenal LLC service they have really affordable Pricing they have great customer service and later on in the video we'll see how they compare to the other LLC Services which we're going to talk
about now okay so the next best LLC service is busy formerly known as ink file I think around you know 2 or 3 years ago they rebranded from Ink file to busy so if you see you know busy ink file same thing they just rebranded so ink file is actually who I used to form my business Josh bur Tech LLC back in around 2018 in 2018 ink file was by far the most popular LLC service that was out there you know you saw ink file anywhere bsy actually offers a free LLC formation package now again
it's never completely free no matter what service you use if they Market it as free it's never free because you have state fees you always have to pay the state fees but bizy does have a free LLC formation package where you get their registered agent service free for one year the main difference Here is with Northwest you still have that $39 fee but with bsy on their basic plan they don't have their own fee it's going to be free next year when your registered agent service has to renew and you pay for it with busy
it's going to be $119 and you know like you remember with Northwest it's $125 so busy is around $6 cheaper so another benefit with bsy is that they are time tested they were founded in 2004 and in Houston Texas and they're actually still headquartered there today and they've also helped over 1 million business entities since then and my business Josh friend Tech LLC is one of those 1 million so another thing you get with busy which I like a lot as well is you get lifetime notifications so these are going to be you know filing
date reminders like you know you have to do your annual report every year which we talked about and it's also going to tell You about deadlines again for your annual report and other notifications as well for the lifetime of your LLC and they also have phone support which is available Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. central Time and just like Northwest they do put their phone number on you know every page of their website okay so this is the main page of the website and we'll come back here again when I show
you the sign up process but you can see right here at The top of the page that is their support phone number so anytime I've had to contact their support whether it's calling or you know going through like email I've always been helped really quick now one thing I will say about their phone support their call center is not strictly based in the US they have a lot of overseas you know employees working for their call center I haven't had an issue with busy's customer service but I do give Northwest an Advantage in that area
now to get to the sign up page again you can use the link Down Below in my description or or you can go to joshb burst.com slbs so let's go ahead and go there okay so now on the homepage you can either select incorporate now or you can select form your LLC for free now so either one of these is fine let's go ahead and click this button here okay so first we need to select our entity type we're going to do LLC and we need to select the state which is going to be Kentucky
or you know whatever state you live in go ahead and select that here so you can see here it's be $0 for the basic package and then we have the $40 State fee which we looked at earlier with Northwest with this basic package here we can select it and you can see it also has a 3-we processing time so if you choose this option here it basically means that within 3 weeks bsy is going to file your LLC information with your state so that's basically what comes with this right here the filing of your articles
of organization you can see that right here and that's what they're going to file for you with the state so it's going to come with that again you get the free registered agent service for one year and then after your first year it's going to be $119 again we'll take a look at specific pricing um once we get through the Section here so and then here you have the option to pay for faster filing so if you don't want to wait those 3 weeks you could pay $50 and have it filed within 2 days I
would probably select because you know I could afford $50 for that and it would be nice not having to wait 3 weeks so we can select this add on here I actually did the standard package and I'll show you why so let me just go ahead and switch over to standard so I can show you okay so next We have business contract templates so this is going to be basically stuff like service agreements for your business privacy policies like Consulting agreements if you work with other companies for Consulting so I didn't select that when I
you know formed my l see with busy you can actually get those contract templates somewhere else if you want probably cheaper but if you do want it it's an additional $150 so next we have the Ein which is Your tax ID number again that's something you definitely want that's one reason why I chose the standard package because it's included with this package now if you want to try to make things as cheap as possible you could just pay the $70 for it here and add it on but if you do choose the standard package it
is included now another great thing with the standard package is you also get the operating agreement now the operating agreement is something you definitely Want um especially if you aren't a single member LLC because that will detail everything out like your finances and you know who owns like what percentage of your business you can also pay for a domain name and business email right here so again that's kind of like Northwest having you know if I wanted to get the Josh burch.com domain I could get that here and a business email bundle together now you
can add these on here it's only available with The Premium plan you don't need to pay an LLC service for a domain name and business email there are better services that are made for that like hostinger who I use they're linked Down Below in the description so I think it's a much better place to build your website and to you know have your business email because they actually that's what they're made for okay so next up we have have lifetime compliance alerts now this is something I think you will definitely Want and it's something I
wanted so you can see here you can't add it on it's included in the standard plan again another reason why I recommend it and then next up another reason why I recommend the standard plan you have unlimited phone and email support that is one thing that kind of differentiates Northwest over busy is that you have you know lifetime support if you you know sign up with them for that $39 plan they have it's their only plan but with bsy You can see here you don't have that support on the basic plan you have to pay
for standard so that's one advantage Northwest has and then the last things you get with every package you have your online dashboard that's basically the website you log into they give you a business banking account offer like a lot of these services will partner with a some type of bank and recommend them to you as your business Bank you don't have to use them there are tons of banks You can use for your business banking and checking and then you get a business tax consultation as well so you know I think that could be beneficial
you know doing that um consultation if you haven't done that before as you can see here you basically have to file this form whenever you want to be taxed as an ESC Corp later in the video I'll tell you what I use for this because my business is now taxed as an escorp this is my first year doing it and you know Basically I decided to do it to help you know reduce the taxes I pay on self-employment and I'll tell you about that later but you can see here it's included with these standard and
premium packages it's not something I used with busy because again I'm using someone else for my escorp to manage my bookkeeping and payroll and everything else basically with the standard package what you know I paid for when I formed my LLC you know back in 2018 the pricing Was probably different back then I can't even remember what it was if I was forming an LLC today this is what I would choose this package and then you know the expedited filing you don't have to choose that it's it's optional if you're fine waiting 3 weeks leave
it unchecked it's going to be $239 if you you know you're impatient you want it filed as soon as possible select it here and it'll be 289 but let's say you want this to be as cheap As possible you don't care care about all this other stuff I showed you if we go to basic then again you're going to pay state fees $40 for me but if you live in another state like we looked at with Alabama it could be over $200 and and that's really it for the sign up process like the rest of
it is what we just went through with the Northwest registered agent and then you're going to go through the same questions like the exact same questions We looked at with Northwest you'll go through all those and then you can pay for your LLC formation it's really that easy so one thing I want to recommend to you is that when you do form your LLC with you know busy Northwest the next LLC service we're going to talk about whoever it is make sure you save your receipt at the end of it so whether you do your
taxes yourself or you have an accountant or CPA like I do what I did is I you know had this receipt for busy Gave it to them and I said hey this is when I formed my LLC and they actually use that as a business expense okay so now let's look at the one time pricing a busy compared with the annual pricing like we did with Northwest okay so again the basic plan is going to be 0 plus State fees and that's going to include your registered agent which is free for one year okay so
the next option is going to be the standard plan which again is what I recommend it's what I Use and that is going to be $199 plus State fees and that's going to include everything from the basic plan so your registered agent your EIN which is your tax tax ID number your operating agreement Unlimited phone and email support and lifetime compliance alerts as well I really like everything that's bundled here in this $199 plus State fees which is why I use that plan they also have a Premium plan I don't really recommend it you know
It's $299 plus State fees you get everything from the other plans and you also get a domain name business email two-day filing Time Business contract templates I just think the standard package is much better you know what you get for your money if you you know want all those things together then you know I could see it being worth it but in my opinion I would rather go with the standard plan and for the annual pricing It's going to be $19 plus State fees that is one advantage of busy over Northwest is that their registered
agent service is you know around $6 cheaper per year they're really close in price you know I wouldn't let that be your differentiating Factor but they are a little bit cheaper now you can pay them to file your annual report as well which we looked at with Northwest and to have busy do that for you it's I think $99 I'll actually log in and show you because I made a a really stupid mistake so what I did is I got you know a compliance email reminder from Kentucky like the state I got that from them
and I also got one from busy with the annual report now when I first formed my LLC I thought those were like two different things I thought I had to pay it you know through bizy and the state so I did my annual report through the State website again it was only $15 but then I also paid bsy for it which was $99 now one good benefit of bsy is they actually noticed that I had already filed it and they gave me a refund for that $99 so you know you could pay busy to do
it if you live in a state where it's kind of complicated to do your annual report then you know there could be value in that but if you live somewhere like I do In Kentucky where it's $15 and you like fill something out on their website which takes five minutes to do then it's not worth it to use one of these LLC services to do that for you okay so this is the main dashboard you're going to see when you get signed up and you log into busy so you can see here they're actually reminding
me of the Boi report you know this is one of the benefits you get with busy if you go with that standard plan like I did because you get Lifetime compliance and you know alerts and notifications you can pay them $99 to file it for you now that's one benefit of Northwest because again you could add it on for only $25 and with bsy it's going to be 99 okay so let's scroll down a little bit and there you go you can see that I followed my company with bsy I didn't make that up I
you know I'm telling the truth and you know it's in good active standing as well and let's scroll down a Little bit more okay so from here you can see a bunch of different things you can actually add on and pay for and you can also get your different certificates as well like your certificate of good standing and then you can do company changes like if you need to make an amendment you have to pay for that there was a fee involved with like you know for me personally um I bought a new house you
know a few years ago and I had to change the add address of my business Not the you know public one but the private one so you know that's going to be on your articles of organization now if you move or something you have an address change you would have to come into busy Northwest whoever you're using and basically file an amendment which is going to change your address for your LLC with the state okay so let's go to all orders receipts right here okay so you can see that I did pay them you know
to do my annual Report in 2021 I think that's before I realized how cheap it was to do it yourself on ky's website so you can see here in 2023 I paid them to file my annual report and then they refunded it to me that's what I want to show you here is you know make sure you look into the annual report for your state if it's really easy for you to file it and you know cheap then there's no reason you need to pay you know busy or whoever this is how easy it Is
so this is the Kentucky website I can type in you know Josh Burns Tech LLC do a search there's my business so we can select it and you can see here it says this company has already filed an annual report for this year but this is how easy it is you go through one two three four five different tabs you know fill out your information it's basically going to be you know updating anything that needs to be updated and then you have the last option here which is Review and file so you click on that
you make sure everything looks correct and then you file it and then you can see over here on this side total charges $15 so again there's no reason to use an LLC service if it's that cheap and easy for you as well but it can vary depending on your state okay so the next best LLC service is Swift filings which is actually the newest LLC service on this list they were founded in 2015 so pretty recent by a lawyer who wanted to Simplify the process of business formation so although they are a lot newer than
you know busy and Northwest registered agent they've already helped over 300,000 businesses form their entities which is you know really impressive in that short amount of time they've also maintained a 4.7 out of five stars on trust pilot and you know I went through the reviews and one thing I thought was really good is that they reply to pretty much every negative Comment and it's not like a generic reply either like they actually reply with you know any type of like correspondence they've sent to that you know individual user so Swift filings has a you
know really similar package structure as busy there are differences in pricing and you know what's included and I'll show you that and one benefit of their premium package is they offer same day filing if you submit your order before 300 p.m. a.m. Central Time so Swift filings does offer the fastest filing time with your state it doesn't mean that your state is also going to do everything in one business day so you may have to wait longer than one business day because you're going to have to wait on the state as well now one of
the downsides in my opinion is that the registered agent is not free for one year now with busy and Northwest like we covered earlier you get that registered agent service free for one Year year so with swift filings you're going to have to pay $149 every quarter for their registered agent service and when you sign up you're going to be build $149 the first time three business days after you sign up so when you add it up it's going to be about $596 for their registered agent service for a whole year compared to Northwest which
is you know $125 and busy which is 119 so it is a Lot more expensive they also have a service called compliance guard now this includes notifications alerts your annual report and one free Amendment now this service is $199 per year and in my opinion I don't think it's worth it because notifications and alerts are included with you know the standard packages on other LLC platforms like Northwest and busy and again is you know depending on what state you're in it's really cheap To file your own annual report like I do the only real benefit
here is maybe the one free Amendment not having to pay for that I've had my LLC since 2018 and I've rarely had to file any amendments but they do offer lifetime customer support which is available Monday through Friday 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. central Time like busy so the lifetime customer support is one benefit of Swift filings even if you're on the free plan so that is one benefit of Using them okay so now let's take a look at the sign up process on Swift filings and I'll show you how it differs from both busy
and Northwest registered agent so like the other LLC services in this video you can go to Swift fings using the link Down Below in my description which is my affiliate link or you can go to Josh prin tech.com Swift so let's go ahead and go there now okay so on this page we we want to select LLC right here so we have that Selected and then go ahead and select your state again for me that's going to be Kentucky and let's click incorporate now okay so from here let's go ahead and scroll down a little
bit so we can see the different plans so 0 $199 and $299 so again the processing time is one of their differentiating factors on the standard plan you have five business days compared to busy you know you have to basically choose the ad on to make it Faster and then premium is the same day processing so that is one of the benefits of Swift filings however with bsy you could choose the add-on which was $50 more remember on the basic package you don't get lifetime customer support with bsy so another thing you get with a
standard and Premium plan is the custom organizational minutes now this can be a you know legal compliance requirement for certain businesses it's not really needed for a lot of them but But you know if it is for yours then if you go with the standard package or premium it's going to be free and included but um with the basic package you can add it on for $25 they also give you a custom LLC kit with the Premium plan or you can add it on for $99 this is a digital one that's going to be stored
in one place and it's going to have a bunch of documents about your business um whenever I form my LLC with bsy in 2018 they actually send sent me This in the mail and I still have it somewhere stored you know down in my basement but it's actually a binder and it has a bunch of those initial documents in it so you can get that same thing in a digital kit with swift filings so next we have the operating agreement again this is something I definitely recommend that you get it's included with these standard and
premium plans and with the basic plan it's $35 which is actually pretty cheap but this Is something you definitely want and next we have the Boi report so this is different from busy because it's included in these standard and premium packages and again I'm busy after you get signed up you can pay $99 for them to file it for you but it's not included in any of their plans at the moment and down here you can see that the Ein or tax ID is included in the standard and premium packages and you can add it
on for $70 in the basic the custom LLC Banking so it's one of those things that might be beneficial for some people but the majority of you won't need it I know I didn't when I created mine and down here you have the expedited processing so you can add it on for the other plans and then the Premium plan again has that same day you know processing which is going to be $100 if you pay for it in the other plans and like the other LLC Services they have some additional add-ons like the website and
domain Package um some business documents and you know business email again you can use other services for these things you don't need to add it on through an LC service this next one here for the personal business address and virtual mailbox this is something I personally didn't add on and you know the majority of you probably don't need it as well but if if you do want it it's going to be $29 a month with the uh basic plan and then the other ones you Get some months free and then last you can see everything
that's included with every single package you know the main things are going to be AE free tax consultation like again is something you get with busy and you also get a free trial of their compliance C service again this is $199 per year and in my opinion it's not worth it let's take a look at the different pricing plans how much you're going to have to pay initially how much You're going to have to pay per year like we did with the other LLC Services the basic plan is going to be $0 plus whatever your
state fees are and this is going to include your filing service and lifetime support again the main thing with the basic plan with swift filings is it doesn't come with that oneyear free registered agent service you're going to have to pay $149 3 days after you sign up and then you'll be build the same $149 every quarter and next for the standard plan it's going to be $199 plus State fees the same thing as busy and what you get with that is you know the organizational minutes the operating agreement the Boi Ein and also Express
processing the one thing again you don't get is the registered agent free for one year but the one thing this does include here that busy doesn't is the Boi report again with bsy it's an additional $99 to get them to file it For you so that is one benefit of Swift filings next we have the premium package it's going to be $299 plus State fees that includes everything from the other plans plus the LLC kit same day processing and that one-year website and domain package now for the annual pricing that's going to be $596 plus
State fees and that's because the registered agent service is $149 build every quarter now for me Personally if I was you know forming my LLC on Swift filings I think I would choose the standard package right here because it comes with a Boi report Express processing and your EIN as well that's what I would personally choose okay so next I'm going to rank the three best LLC services in a format of good better and best so I'm going to tell you exactly who I would use and which one I think is the overall best LLC
service that's worth your money this Year okay so starting with the good ranking or the third best LLC service that is going to be Swift Swift filings now the pros of Swift filings are the same day filing which we just talked about and the lifetime customer support on all plans and the cons compared to both busy and Northwest are the expensive registered agent service again it's $149 per quarter and the other con is the $199 that you have to pay for compliance card for the annual report one free Amendment and then the other compliance Al
and notifications again I just really don't think it's worth that price and I think what you get with both busy and Northwest registered agent is currently better than Swift filings so coming in at number two with the better ranking is busy formerly known as ink file so bsy has the best free package that includes One year of free registered agent service their free package is better than Swift and again Northwest doesn't have a free package because they have that $39 onetime fee and the registered agent service with bsy is also the cheapest out of all
three it's $119 per year after your first year which is going to be free and with busy you also get lifetime compliance notifications and alerts on both these standard and premium plans compared to Swift filings where you have to pay for again compliance card which is $199 per year which is separate and and now for the number one best overall LLC formation service that's going to be Northwest registered agent they have the best overall support out of every LLC service I've ever looked into they are the only one that's completely us-based they reply to your
emails within one business day you can call anytime and get connected with someone from the US In their support department they really get that customer service and Word of Mouth is by far the best way to you know actually grow your Revenue which they say they don't care about they do care about it they just know that you know if your customers are happy it's going to you know cause them to tell more people about them which is going to grow their revenue so Northwest really gets the importance of having really good customer service they
also have the best Overall package which is $114 plus State fees for the registered agents service which is free the Ein and Boi report that was the best overall package out of everything that we looked at they also have the best data privacy they will never sell your data and they have strict privacy practices in place to ensure that your data doesn't get leaked or hacked as well I think the only thing I would give busy in Swift filings maybe a little bit of an edge is That they do have a free plan plus State
fees because with Northwest you have to pay the the $39 which is that onetime fee however if your business is currently making $60,000 a year or more then the best option might be to form your LLC with the escorp taxation that's exactly what I did using collective.com and I've been using them for about 7 months so far and I personally should have restructured as an escorp a long time ago I basically kept putting it off And putting it off because of you know just the feeling of to being overwhelming not knowing what I needed to
do you know I would have had to use my local accountant and go through them until I found collective.com and they handle you know everything I was worried and overwhelmed about having to do myself or go through an accountant which is like the bookkeeping payroll and you know staying in compliance with the IRS so if your business is currently making $60,000 a year or more then I would definitely recommend watching my complete tutorial on Collective which I recently uploaded I cover my entire experience using Collective all the pros all the cons I show you what
the collective dashboard looks like I show you my business bank account and credit card you know some options for those and I also show you how you can get your first month completely for free as well so definitely watch this video right Here next
