CorpNet’s cheapest LLC formation package is $99 plus a 3 percent fee. Bizee, LegalZoom and ZenBusiness all form an LLC for $0 plus state fees. If that gap is what sent you looking, you are asking the right question and probably measuring it the wrong way.
I run Ecommerce Paradise, and the formation fee is the least important number in this decision. It is paid once. The registered agent fee repeats every year forever, and over three years it decides the ranking completely.
So this compares seven CorpNet alternatives on three-year total cost rather than headline price, alongside what each one is genuinely better at. Prices verified against each vendor’s own pricing page in September 2026.
Form Your LLC for $0 Plus State Fees
Bizee includes a free first year of registered agent service, which works out at $298 over three years against CorpNet’s $517.
What CorpNet Costs, So the Comparison Means Something
From CorpNet’s own pricing page: Basic is $99, Deluxe is $219 and Complete is $269, all before state fees and all with a 3 percent convenience fee added at checkout. Registered agent service is $149 a year.
Basic includes 60 days of registered agent. Deluxe and Complete both include the first year, plus an EIN. Complete adds a custom operating agreement and a certified filed copy.
That first-year inclusion is why Deluxe at $219 is cheaper over three years than Basic at $99. The full arithmetic is in my CorpNet pricing breakdown.
The Seven Alternatives, on Three-Year Cost
Formation fee plus three years of registered agent, excluding state fees, which are the same wherever you file.
| Service | Formation | Registered agent | 3-year total | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bizee | $0 | $149, first year free | $298 | Cheapest credible option |
| Northwest | $39 | $125 | $414 | Privacy and included extras |
| MyCompanyWorks | $79 | Quoted at checkout | Depends on agent | Fast processing, no upsell maze |
| CorpNet Deluxe | $219 | $149, first year free | $517 | Support and multi-state filing |
| ZenBusiness | $0 | $199 | $597 | Guided setup for beginners |
| LegalZoom | $0 | $249 | $747 | Attorney access on Pro |
| LegalNature | Subscription model | Varies | Depends on plan | Ongoing document needs |
1. Bizee, the Cheapest Thing That Actually Works
Bizee forms the LLC for $0 plus state fees and includes a free first year of registered agent service with its packages. Over three years that is $298, which is the lowest credible number in this category.
The filing itself is competent. This is a high-volume operation that has been doing this for years, and a standard single-member LLC in a common state is routine work they will not get wrong.
Where it is weaker than CorpNet is support depth. You are dealing with a company built for volume, so if your filing hits an unusual state requirement you are more likely to be waiting on email than talking to someone who already knows the answer.
The upsell flow is also aggressive. Expect to decline several add-ons on the way to checkout, including an EIN charge for a form that is free from the IRS. Decline them. My Bizee review covers which ones are worth anything.
2. Northwest Registered Agent, If Your Address Is the Concern
Northwest charges $39 to form and $125 a year for registered agent service, a price its own page says has not changed in twenty years. Three-year total is $414.
The reason to pick it is privacy. Northwest uses its own address on your public filings rather than yours, which for a home-based store owner is the difference between your residential address being in a searchable state database or not.
The inclusion list is also the strongest here. The $125 comes with a free business address, mail scanning, a phone line, business email and a domain. You may not use all of it, and it is genuinely more included value than anyone else at a lower price.
It is $116 more than Bizee over three years. For a store owner working from home, buying your address off the public record is worth more than $116. See my Northwest review for how the address handling actually works.
3. MyCompanyWorks, If You Want It Done Quickly Without the Maze
MyCompanyWorks starts at $79 plus state fees, and what is included at that price is unusually complete: a personalised operating agreement, organisational minutes, next business day processing, compliance alerts and lifetime account access.
Compare that to CorpNet, where the operating agreement only appears on the $269 Complete package. Getting one at $79 is a meaningful difference for anyone forming with a business partner.
Registered agent pricing is not published on its formation page, so get that number before you commit, because it decides your three-year cost more than the $79 does.
The company is running a 25 percent promotion for its 25th anniversary at the time of writing. Promotions come and go, so check whether it still applies. My MyCompanyWorks review goes through the package contents.
Keep Your Home Address Off the Public Record
Northwest uses its own address on your filings, at $125 a year with a business address, mail scanning and phone line included.
4. ZenBusiness, If You Want Hand-Holding
ZenBusiness forms for $0 plus state fees on its entry tier, with Pro and Premium above it, and charges $199 a year for registered agent service. Three-year total is $597, which is more than CorpNet Deluxe.
That is the thing to notice. ZenBusiness looks cheaper because the formation is free, and it is the second most expensive option on this list once the agent renewals land.
What you get for it is the most guided experience in the category. The onboarding walks a first-time founder through decisions they do not know they need to make, and for someone genuinely intimidated by the process that is worth something.
Worth something, but probably not $299 more than Bizee over three years. Buy this if the guidance is the product you want, not because $0 caught your eye.
5. LegalZoom, If You Want Attorney Access
LegalZoom’s Basic is $0 plus state fees, Pro is $249 and Premium is $299, per its published LLC pricing. Registered agent service is $249 a year, the highest here, making the three-year total $747.
Pro includes a 30-day attorney consultation subscription, an operating agreement, an EIN and access to a legal document library. Premium adds six months of bookkeeping tools.
The attorney access is the genuine differentiator. If you have a question a formation service cannot answer, LegalZoom is the only option here that puts a lawyer on the other end as part of the package rather than as a separate engagement.
For a standard single-member ecommerce LLC, you will not need it, and you will pay $449 more than Bizee over three years for the option. See my LegalZoom review for where the attorney subscription actually helps.
6. LegalNature, If Documents Are the Ongoing Need
LegalNature is a different shape of product. It runs on a subscription for ongoing legal document access rather than a one-off formation fee, and formation is one thing it does among many.
That makes it the wrong comparison for someone who wants to form once and forget it, and the right one for someone who will be generating contracts, supplier agreements and policies regularly.
For a high-ticket store dealing with multiple supplier agreements and dealer contracts, that ongoing document need is real. Price it against the cost of buying documents individually elsewhere. My LegalNature review covers what the subscription includes.
7. Filing It Yourself, the Option Nobody Sells You
You can file Articles of Organization directly with your Secretary of State. It is a web form, it takes under half an hour in most states, and it costs the state fee and nothing else.
The EIN is free from the IRS afterwards and takes about fifteen minutes with a Social Security number. A single-member operating agreement can come from a free template.
What you cannot skip is the registered agent. Every state requires one with a physical in-state address available during business hours. You can be your own if you live there and accept your home address on the public record.
So the true floor is a registered agent at $125 to $149 a year plus the state fee. Everything above that is convenience, and for a lot of people that convenience is worth paying for. Just know that is what you are buying.
What Switching Actually Involves
If your LLC already exists and you are moving services rather than choosing one, the job is smaller than people expect and it splits into two separate decisions.
Changing your registered agent is a state filing, usually costing between $0 and $50 depending on the state, and it takes one form. Your new agent will normally prepare and file it for you as part of onboarding. Nothing about your LLC changes, only who receives service of process on your behalf.
Your formation service, on the other hand, is not something you switch. Once the LLC is formed, that job is finished. Any ongoing relationship you have with the company is really a registered agent subscription and possibly compliance filing, sold under the same brand.
That means the question is never “should I move from CorpNet to Bizee.” It is “who should be my registered agent from next renewal,” and the answer is whoever offers the price and address handling you want.
Time it for month eleven of your current term. Filing a change days before a renewal charge saves you a full year at a price you have decided against.
The Comparison Traps in This Category
Four things make formation services look cheaper or dearer than they are.
A $0 formation fee is a customer acquisition cost, recovered through the registered agent renewal. ZenBusiness at $199 a year and LegalZoom at $249 both end up above CorpNet Deluxe over three years despite the free filing. Always price the renewal.
Free first years hide the second year. Bizee and CorpNet both include a year of registered agent, which is genuinely valuable and also means your bill in month thirteen is not the bill you signed up for. Note the renewal rate before you buy, not after.
State fees are not part of any of this. They range from around $50 to $500 and you pay them regardless of which service you use, so leave them out when comparing and budget for them separately.
Package tables are built to make the middle tier look correct. That is usually deliberate, and it is often right for the wrong reason. With CorpNet the middle tier genuinely is the best value, because Deluxe includes the registered agent year that Basic does not. Check the arithmetic rather than trusting the highlighting.
Picking by the Reason You Left CorpNet
| Your problem with CorpNet | What to use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| $99 floor plus a 3 percent fee | Bizee | $0 formation, $298 over three years |
| Home address on public filings | Northwest | Uses its own address on your filings |
| Operating agreement costs $269 | MyCompanyWorks | Included from $79 |
| Want guidance, not just filing | ZenBusiness | Most hand-held onboarding here |
| Need an actual lawyer | LegalZoom | Attorney subscription on Pro |
| Ongoing contracts and documents | LegalNature | Subscription document library |
| Paying anyone at all | File it yourself | State fee plus an agent is the real floor |
The Three Upsells to Decline Everywhere
These appear on every service in this list, CorpNet included, and none are worth what is charged.
The EIN is free from the IRS. Services charge between $69 and $319 for it. Fifteen minutes online with a Social Security number and you have it. The exception is non-residents without an SSN, where the process runs through paper filing and paying someone is genuinely reasonable.
The corporate kit and seal is decorative. Nobody has asked to see an embossed seal in two decades. It exists to add a line to a package comparison table.
Expedited filing rarely helps. Your bottleneck is supplier approvals and getting a store live, not the fortnight the state takes. Pay for rush processing only against a specific deadline, like a dealer application that requires proof of formation by a date.
Why This Paperwork Matters More in High-Ticket
The usual argument for an LLC is liability protection, and it is true but overstated for a small store. The practical reason in this business is different.
Brand-authorized distributors will not approve you as a dealer without an EIN, a resale certificate and a registered business entity. A sole proprietorship with a personal name on the application gets declined, and that is the gate between you and the suppliers who make the high-ticket model work at all.
So the sequence is: form the entity, get the EIN, get the resale certificate, then start supplier outreach. Doing it in the other order wastes weeks, because the first serious distributor you contact will ask for documents you do not have.
The full walkthrough is in the business formation guide. The outreach that follows it is covered in the supplier guide.
One thing to get right before any of this: do not form an LLC before you know what you are selling. Some categories carry licensing requirements that change which state and structure make sense. If you are not there yet, the high-ticket niches list comes first.
Want the Entity, the Store and the Suppliers Handled Together?
We build high-ticket stores end to end, including the supplier outreach that requires all this paperwork in place first.
Which State Changes the Answer More Than the Service Does
Almost every formation comparison ignores this, and it moves the number more than the choice between two services.
Form in the state where you actually live and operate. The Wyoming and Delaware advice circulating in ecommerce groups is mostly aimed at companies raising outside investment. If you live in California and form in Wyoming, you will usually have to register as a foreign entity in California anyway, which means two sets of fees, two annual reports and two registered agents.
That mistake costs more than any service difference on this page. Two registered agents at $125 each is $250 a year, permanently, to solve a problem you did not have.
The exception is genuine non-residents with no US state of operation, where forming in Wyoming or Delaware is a reasonable default and the calculation is different.
State fees also vary far more than service fees. Filing costs range from around $50 to $500, and some states add annual franchise taxes on top. Look up your own state’s fee and annual report requirement before you get attached to a package price, because it may be the largest number in the whole exercise.
What None of These Services Do
Three things people assume are covered and are not.
None of them get you a business bank account. That is a separate application, it usually requires the EIN and the filed formation documents, and for non-residents it is reliably the hardest step in the whole process.
None of them get you a resale certificate. That is a state-level registration, separate from formation, and it is the document suppliers actually ask for when they are deciding whether to approve you as a dealer. Formation without it does not open supplier accounts.
None of them do your taxes. The compliance tools track annual report deadlines, not tax filings. An LLC with an EIN still needs a return, and a single-member LLC is taxed differently from a multi-member one. That is a conversation with an accountant, and it is worth having in year one rather than year two.
Knowing this in advance is the difference between a two-week setup and a two-month one, because each of these steps depends on the one before it.
The Verdict
For most people leaving CorpNet on price, Bizee is the switch. Same competent filing, $0 formation, free first year of registered agent, and $298 over three years against CorpNet’s $517.
If you work from home, pay the extra $116 and use Northwest instead. Keeping your residential address out of a public state database is worth more than the difference, and the included business address and mail scanning are genuinely useful.
Do not switch to ZenBusiness or LegalZoom to save money, because you will not. Their $0 formation fees are recovered through registered agent renewals of $199 and $249, putting both above CorpNet over three years.
And if CorpNet’s support is why you are there, stay. It is a well-run company with people who answer the phone and know filing rules in every state. That is worth a premium if you are forming in an unusual state or handling several entities. It is not worth a premium for a standard single-member LLC in Wyoming.
Related Articles
Northwest Registered Agent Review
Best LLC Formation Services for High-Ticket Dropshipping
Best LLC Formation Service for Privacy
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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