Every high-ticket store hits the same wall in week two. A supplier sends back a dealer application asking for your legal business name, your EIN and your resale certificate, and you realise you are trying to buy $4,000 units as a person with a Gmail address. The entity is not paperwork for its own sake. It is the thing that makes the rest of the business possible.
Bizee advertises formation at $0 plus state fees, which raises the obvious question of what free actually covers. This is how I would use it, what the free tier does and does not include, and the step I would do myself rather than pay anyone for. What I could verify comes from Bizee’s own pricing page and the IRS’s published page on getting an EIN, read on 29 September 2026. Where the page did not publish something, I say so rather than guessing.
I am not a lawyer or an accountant and none of this is legal or tax advice. Which entity type and which state suit you are questions for a professional who knows your circumstances.
I run Ecommerce Paradise and I would rather you spent the formation budget on product photography. If the business model is new to you, start with what high-ticket dropshipping actually is.
Get the Entity Filed Without a Service Fee
Bizee advertises starting a business for $0 plus state fees, and includes one year of registered agent service free with its formation packages.
What “Free” Means Here
Bizee’s pricing page leads with starting a business for $0 plus state fees, and states that formation packages include one year of registered agent service for free, with Bizee handling all the paperwork and filing for you.
Read the second half of that headline as carefully as the first. State fees are not a footnote. They vary by state and no service can waive them, because they go to the state rather than to the filer, so look yours up before you compare service fees at all. What $0 plus state fees means is that the service is free and the filing is not.
One thing worth being straight about: when I read Bizee’s pricing page it did not publish package names, exact package prices, EIN details, operating agreement details, turnaround times or year-two renewal pricing. Those figures may well be on the order flow, but I am not going to print numbers I could not verify. Check the live order page for the tier you want, and I have broken down what I could establish in my Bizee pricing guide.
The page does offer one useful general figure: it estimates the annual cost to own an LLC as usually at least $100 but rarely over $1,000, not including federal or state taxes. That is a reasonable planning range and a more honest number than most of this category publishes.
The Registered Agent Renewal Is the Real Cost
Registered agent service is included for one year with Bizee’s formation packages. What happens after that year is not published on the pricing page I read, so it is worth asking before you file rather than after.
Bizee’s page did not publish a year-two figure when I read it, so I cannot tell you what it is or whether there is one. What I would do is ask, because a recurring cost is the sort of thing worth knowing before you commit rather than discovering on a renewal notice.
My own habit, and it is mine rather than Bizee’s advice: put the renewal date and the renewal price in a calendar the day you form the entity. Registered agent renewals are the most reliably forgotten recurring cost in this business.
The Part You Should Do Yourself
Before you add anything to a cart, know this. The IRS states plainly that you never have to pay a fee for an EIN, and that if your application is approved, it issues your EIN immediately online.
Free, and issued immediately online if approved. Formation services commonly offer EIN filing as a paid add-on, and where they do, what you are buying is someone else doing a task the IRS does not charge for.
There are two real exceptions, so I am not going to tell you never to pay for it.
The IRS requires the responsible party’s Social Security number or individual taxpayer ID number. If you are a non-US founder with neither, the self-service route is not simply open to you, and the IRS notes that a third-party designee must have signed authorization to apply. In that situation a paid service is solving an actual problem.
The second is scheduling. The IRS states you can apply for only one EIN per responsible party per day, so forming several entities is a multi-day job regardless of who files.
The application also keeps hours, which catches out anyone assuming a government form runs overnight. Eastern time: Monday to Friday, 6:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. the next day; Saturday, 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.; Sunday, 6:00 p.m. to midnight.
Step 1: Settle the Two Things No Service Can Decide
Entity type and state come before any order form, and neither is a filing service’s call.
I am deliberately not going to recommend either. Both carry tax and liability consequences that depend on where you live, where you operate, whether you have partners and how you intend to take money out of the business. A short conversation with a CPA costs less than refiling.
What I will say from experience is what getting it wrong costs: changing entity type or domicile later has meant new filings, sometimes a new EIN, and updating every supplier, processor and bank already holding your details. That is a week of admin one phone call now can avoid.
Step 2: File, Then Get the EIN, Then the Bank Account
The order is not arbitrary and doing it backwards causes waiting.
The entity is filed first because the EIN application asks about the entity. The EIN comes second. The business bank account is third, and in my experience banks want the formation document and the EIN in front of them. Everything downstream, from payment processors to supplier applications, wants to see the bank account.
If you are doing the EIN yourself, aim for a weekday morning inside the IRS’s published hours. If you are paying for it, that is a legitimate choice and the reason should be the SSN or ITIN question rather than not knowing it was free.
Keep every document from this stage somewhere you control rather than only inside a service’s dashboard. Your formation certificate, your EIN letter and your operating agreement will be asked for repeatedly by suppliers and banks for years. On the document side, I have written up how I handle supplier paperwork.
Step 3: Start the Free Business-Credit Foundation Immediately
This is the step almost everyone does too late, and it is free.
Dun & Bradstreet states there is no cost to request and receive a D-U-N-S Number, and that normal processing can take up to 30 business days, with a paid expedited option delivering within eight business days. D&B does not publish the expedite fee on that page, so check it if you need the faster route.
Thirty business days is around six weeks. The reason to start it the week you form the entity rather than the week a supplier asks is exactly that lead time. A dealer application held up for six weeks on a free form is a genuinely avoidable loss.
Why it matters for a store rather than for a bank loan: per the SBA’s guidance, with business credit, banks, suppliers, vendors, retailers and other businesses will be able to assess your company’s creditworthiness. Suppliers and vendors are named explicitly. The SBA also names the scores involved: FICO SBSS, Paydex, Intelliscore and the Small Business Credit Risk Score, which is worth knowing so that four different numbers do not surprise you later.
Once there is a file to look at, monitoring becomes worth considering, and I covered that in the Nav walkthrough.
Have the Whole Foundation Built For You
My done-for-you builds cover the store, the suppliers and the setup underneath them, so entity paperwork is not what delays your first dealer application.
Step 4: Make Every Detail Match Everywhere
This is unglamorous and it is the step that determines whether your applications sail through or get queried.
Your legal entity name, your business address, your taxpayer identification number and your business phone number are going to appear on dealer applications, W-9s, resale certificates, your D-U-N-S record, your payment processor onboarding, your bank account and your website footer. In my experience they need to be character-for-character identical across all of those, and applications get held up when they are not.
Decide the canonical version the day you form the entity: exactly how the name is punctuated, exactly how the address is formatted, which phone number is the business one. Write it down somewhere and copy from that file rather than retyping it each time.
The website side of this is worth doing in the same week, because your legal pages name the entity. I have written up how I generate privacy policies and terms in an afternoon.
What I Would Not Buy on Day One
Formation services all sell a menu and most of it is optional for a single store.
A paid EIN filing add-on, wherever you are offered one, for the reason above, unless the SSN or ITIN question applies to you.
Expedited or rush formation. Nothing about a first store genuinely requires the entity to exist two days sooner, and rush processing is the easiest way to convert impatience into a bill. The exception is a real supplier or processor deadline, in which case pay it.
Compliance and annual report services, at least initially. Find out from your state’s filing office what it actually requires of you and how often; paying someone to handle it is reasonable once you have revenue and no time. In month one you have time and no revenue, which is the opposite trade.
Business licence research packages. Useful in some regulated niches and irrelevant in most of the ones a first high-ticket store would pick.
That is my opinion rather than Bizee’s guidance, and the honest caveat is that it depends on your niche. A store selling something regulated has a genuinely different list.
What to Budget
| Line item | What to expect |
|---|---|
| Bizee formation service | Advertised at $0 plus state fees |
| State filing fee | Not included and unavoidable, varies by state |
| Registered agent, year one | One year included free with formation packages |
| Registered agent, year two onward | Bizee’s page did not publish this when I read it; confirm before filing |
| EIN | Free direct from the IRS, which issues it immediately online if approved |
| D-U-N-S number | No cost, up to 30 business days |
| Annual cost of owning an LLC | Bizee estimates usually at least $100 but rarely over $1,000, excluding taxes |
The two rows I could not fill in with a number are your state’s fee and anything that happens after the included registered agent year. Both are knowable in a few minutes by asking, and both belong in your budget before you compare service fees.
Where This Sits in the Bigger Picture
Forming the entity is the cheapest part of starting a store and the part that unlocks everything else. It is also not what makes a store succeed.
What makes a store succeed is selling something people want at a margin that survives shipping, and if you have not settled that, my high-ticket niches list is the place to start.
After the niche, suppliers are the genuine bottleneck, which is why I wrote a whole guide to finding high-ticket suppliers. The full sequencing of the boring foundational pieces sits in business formation for high-ticket dropshipping.
The Whole Thing, in Order
| Step | What you do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ask a CPA or lawyer about entity type and state before filing anything |
| 2 | Look up your state’s actual filing fee, since that is the real cost of a $0 service |
| 3 | Confirm the year-two registered agent renewal price before you commit |
| 4 | File the entity |
| 5 | Get the EIN direct from the IRS if you have an SSN or ITIN, inside its published hours |
| 6 | Open the business bank account, with the formation document and the EIN to hand |
| 7 | Request the free D-U-N-S number immediately, allowing up to 30 business days |
| 8 | Write down the canonical entity name, address and phone, then copy from that file forever |
| 9 | Put the entity on your legal pages, and save every document outside the service dashboard |
| 10 | Diarise the registered agent renewal and your state’s annual report deadline |
Steps 2, 3 and 10 are the ones that cost money if skipped, and none of them involve Bizee’s checkout.
Stop Selling as Yourself
Bizee advertises $0 plus state fees with a year of registered agent service included, and Bizee handles the paperwork and filing for you.
Six Mistakes to Avoid
Reading $0 as free. It is $0 plus state fees. The service fee is what is free; look up what your state charges.
Not asking about year two. One year of registered agent service is included. Find out what the renewal costs before you file, because that is the recurring number.
Paying for an EIN without knowing it is free. The IRS says you never have to pay a fee for one, and that if the application is approved it issues the EIN immediately online. Pay for the service only if the SSN or ITIN requirement is a genuine obstacle for you.
Waiting on the D-U-N-S number. No cost, up to 30 business days. Request it the week you form, not the week a supplier asks.
Letting the entity name drift. Different punctuation or address formatting across filings, applications and your D-U-N-S record is how records split and applications get queried.
Keeping documents only in the dashboard. Your formation certificate and EIN letter get requested for years. Keep copies somewhere you control.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Bizee really free?
Bizee advertises starting a business for $0 plus state fees. The service fee is what is free; the state’s filing fee is separate and unavoidable.
What is included?
Bizee’s page states that formation packages include one year of registered agent service for free, and that Bizee handles all the paperwork and filing for you.
What does it cost in year two?
Bizee’s pricing page did not publish a year-two renewal figure when I read it. Confirm it directly before you file, because it is the recurring cost.
What are the package prices?
The pricing page I read did not publish package names or exact prices. Check the live order flow for the current tiers.
What does an LLC cost to run each year?
Bizee’s page estimates the annual cost of owning an LLC as usually at least $100 but rarely over $1,000, not including federal or state taxes.
Do I need to pay for the EIN?
No. The IRS states you never have to pay a fee for an EIN and issues it immediately online if the application is approved.
Can I get an EIN without an SSN?
The IRS requires the responsible party’s SSN or ITIN for the online application, and says a third-party designee needs signed authorization. If you have neither, ask a professional about your specific situation.
How many EINs can I apply for?
The IRS states you can apply for only one EIN per responsible party per day.
Which state should I form in?
Not something I will advise on, and not something a filing service should decide. It depends on where you live and operate. Ask a CPA or lawyer. This article is not legal or tax advice.
What should I do the same week I form the entity?
Get the EIN, open the business bank account, request the free D-U-N-S number, and write down the canonical entity details you will reuse on every form afterwards.
Related Articles
- Bizee Review
- Bizee Pricing
- Bizee Alternatives
- CorpNet vs Bizee
- How to Set Up Nav for Business Credit
Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.
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