CorpNet is the only major LLC formation service with no free tier. Bizee, LegalZoom and ZenBusiness all start at $0 plus state fees. MyCompanyWorks starts at $79. CorpNet starts at $99, and then adds a 3 percent convenience fee at checkout.
I run Ecommerce Paradise, and forming the LLC is usually the first real bill a new store owner pays. It is worth understanding what that $99 buys and where CorpNet’s pricing actually beats the free options, because on a three-year view it does.
This is every CorpNet package, the fees that are not in the headline price, and the arithmetic that decides whether the premium is worth paying. Figures verified against CorpNet’s own pricing page in September 2026.
Form Your LLC With a Team That Answers the Phone
CorpNet Deluxe is $219 and includes your EIN plus a free first year of registered agent service, which most $0 competitors charge separately for.
Every CorpNet Package and Price
All figures from CorpNet’s published pricing page. Every price excludes state filing fees, which vary from around $50 to $500 depending on where you form.
| Package | Price | EIN | Operating agreement | Free registered agent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $99 | No | No | 60 days |
| Deluxe | $219 | Yes | No | 1 year |
| Complete | $269 | Yes | Yes | 1 year |
All three include a company name availability check, preparation and filing of your Articles of Organization, and a corporate compliance tool with deadline alerts.
Complete adds a certified filed copy of your formation documents, a custom operating agreement, a corporate kit and seal, online document access and lifetime customer support.
The Charges That Are Not in the Headline
Three things get added on top, and the third one surprises people.
State filing fees are separate and unavoidable on every service, not just this one. Wyoming is around $100, Delaware around $90, California $70 plus its franchise tax. Budget for this regardless of which company you use.
Expedited processing adds $150 to $250. Express and 24-hour rush are the two upgrades, and they are priced as much as the Basic package itself. Standard processing is fine for almost everyone forming a store, because you are not going to have suppliers approved and a site live within 24 hours anyway.
The 3 percent convenience fee is the one nobody mentions. On Deluxe at $219 that is another $6.57, taking you to $225.57 before state fees. It is not large, and it is the kind of charge that makes a company feel less straightforward than its competitors who simply quote a number.
Registered Agent, Where CorpNet Gets Interesting
CorpNet’s registered agent service is $149 a year. That sits above Northwest at $125, a price they say has not changed in twenty years. It comes in below ZenBusiness at $199.
The detail worth knowing is that CorpNet’s registered agent pricing drops on volume, down to $49 a year at 1,001 or more units. That is not a discount aimed at you. It is a channel price for accountants and attorneys who form companies on behalf of clients in bulk.
That tells you what CorpNet actually is. It is a formation company built around a professional partner channel, and the retail product you are looking at is the same service sold one at a time. The upside of that is genuine operational competence and staff who know filing rules in every state. The downside is a price floor set by a business that does not need to compete for the free-tier customer.
The Three-Year Cost, Which Reverses the Story
Comparing formation prices alone is misleading, because the formation fee is a one-off and the registered agent fee repeats every year. Over three years the ranking changes.
| Service | Formation | Registered agent | 3-year total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bizee | $0 | $149, first year free | $298 |
| CorpNet Deluxe | $219 | $149, first year free | $517 |
| Northwest | $39 | $125 | $414 |
| ZenBusiness | $0 | $199 | $597 |
| LegalZoom Basic | $0 | $249 | $747 |
| MyCompanyWorks | $79 | Quoted at checkout | Depends on agent price |
Read the CorpNet row carefully, because it is easy to get wrong. Deluxe at $219 includes the first year of registered agent, so your three-year cost is $219 plus two years at $149, which is $517. If you buy Basic instead, you only get 60 days of registered agent free, so the same three years is $99 plus three years at $149, which is $546.
That is the counterintuitive part. Basic at $99 is more expensive over three years than Deluxe at $219, because Deluxe includes a year of registered agent worth $149 and an EIN. Buying the cheapest CorpNet package is usually the wrong move.
Against the field, CorpNet still comes out mid-pack rather than cheap. Bizee at $298 and Northwest at $414 both beat it. ZenBusiness and LegalZoom both cost more.
Cheaper Over Three Years, With the Same Free First Year
Bizee forms your LLC for $0 plus state fees and includes a free year of registered agent service, coming to $298 over three years against CorpNet’s $517.
Which CorpNet Package to Buy
Skip Basic
Ninety-nine dollars sounds like the entry point and it is the worst value on the menu. No EIN, no operating agreement, and only 60 days of registered agent before the $149 annual charge starts. You will end up buying the EIN separately, at which point you have spent more than Deluxe.
An EIN is free from the IRS and takes about fifteen minutes online if you have a Social Security number. If you are comfortable doing that yourself, Basic becomes defensible. If you are not, it is a trap.
Deluxe at $219 Is the Real Entry Point
EIN included, first year of registered agent included. Against Basic it costs $120 more and delivers $149 of registered agent plus the EIN filing, so it is cheaper in real terms from day one.
This is the package to compare against everyone else, not Basic.
Complete at $269 If You Want the Operating Agreement
The $50 step from Deluxe buys a custom operating agreement, a certified filed copy, the kit and seal, and lifetime support.
The operating agreement is the only item there that matters, and it matters more than people think if you have a business partner. If you are a single-member LLC, free templates cover it and you are paying $50 for a document you could generate elsewhere. If there are two of you, having it drafted properly is worth the fifty dollars and then some.
What the Free Services Actually Charge You For
A $0 formation fee is real, and it is also a customer acquisition cost the company expects to recover. Knowing where they recover it is how you compare honestly.
Registered agent renewal is the main one. ZenBusiness recovers it at $199 a year and LegalZoom at $249, both above CorpNet’s $149. Over three years those renewals swamp the formation fee entirely, which is why a $0 headline can end up costing more than a $219 package.
The EIN is the second. Most services charge somewhere between $69 and $319 to file a form that is free from the IRS and takes fifteen minutes. CorpNet includes it from Deluxe upward, which is a genuine point in its favour against the $0 tiers that do not.
Operating agreements, compliance monitoring and annual report filing make up the rest. Every service sells these, the prices vary widely, and a single-member LLC in a simple state needs fewer of them than the upsell flow implies.
So the honest comparison is not $99 against $0. It is the three-year total including the registered agent renewal you will actually pay, which is the table above.
How This Compares to Doing It Yourself
Worth stating plainly, because no formation service will tell you.
You can file Articles of Organization directly with your Secretary of State. It is a web form, it costs the state fee and nothing else, and in most states it takes under half an hour. The EIN is free from the IRS afterwards. A single-member operating agreement can be generated from a free template.
Done that way, forming an LLC costs exactly the state fee. In Wyoming that is around $100 and in Delaware around $90.
What you do not get is a registered agent, and that is the part you genuinely cannot skip. Every state requires a registered agent with a physical address in the state, available during business hours. You can be your own if you live there and are willing to have your home address on the public record, which is the tradeoff most people would rather not make.
So the realistic floor is a registered agent at $125 to $149 a year plus the state fee, whichever route you take. The formation service fee on top is buying convenience and support, and whether that is worth $219 depends on how much the paperwork intimidates you.
For a store owner whose time is better spent on learning the high-ticket model than on state filing portals, paying someone is defensible. Just know what you are buying.
Where CorpNet Genuinely Earns the Premium
Two things, and neither shows up on a price comparison.
The support is real. CorpNet is staffed by people who have been filing in all fifty states for years, and they answer the phone. If you are forming in a state with unusual requirements, or you have a filing that gets rejected, the difference between a company that picks up and one that emails you back in three days is worth more than the price gap.
The compliance tool is included on every tier. Annual report deadlines vary wildly by state and missing one can administratively dissolve your LLC. Getting alerts by default rather than as a paid upsell is a genuine inclusion.
Against that, the honest counterweight is that Bizee and Northwest both do the filing competently too, and most formations are routine. You are paying for the case where something goes wrong, which for a standard single-member LLC in a common state is unlikely.
What You Should Not Pay Anyone For
Three upsells appear across every formation service, this one included.
The EIN is free directly from the IRS and takes about fifteen minutes with a Social Security number. Services charge $69 to $319 for it. That charge buys convenience and nothing else. If you are a non-resident without an SSN the calculation changes, because the process is genuinely harder and paying for it is reasonable.
The corporate kit and seal is decorative. Nobody has asked to see an embossed seal in twenty years. It exists because it looks like something in a package comparison table.
Expedited filing rarely helps. Your bottleneck is supplier approvals and getting a store live, not the two weeks the state takes. Pay the $150 rush fee only if you have a specific deadline, like a supplier application that requires proof of formation by a date.
Does an Ecommerce Store Need This at All
Worth answering honestly, because the answer is yes for most people reading this and the reason is not the one usually given.
The liability protection argument is real but overstated for a small store. The practical reason to form an LLC in high-ticket ecommerce is that suppliers ask for it. Brand-authorized distributors want an EIN, a resale certificate and a registered business before they approve you as a dealer, and a sole proprietorship with a personal name on the paperwork gets declined.
That is the sequence that matters. Form the entity, get the EIN, get the resale certificate, then approach suppliers. Doing it in the other order wastes weeks. I walk through the whole thing in the business formation guide for high-ticket dropshipping.
What you should not do is form an LLC before you know what you are selling. Pick the category first, because some niches have licensing requirements that change which state and structure make sense. The high-ticket niches list is the right starting point if you are not there yet.
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 to be in place first.
The Registered Agent Decision Is Bigger Than the Formation Decision
Most people spend an afternoon comparing formation packages and thirty seconds on the registered agent, which is backwards. The formation fee is paid once. The agent fee repeats every year for as long as the company exists.
Over five years, CorpNet’s $149 against Northwest’s $125 is a $120 difference on its own. Against ZenBusiness at $199 it is $250. Those gaps are larger than most of the formation package differences people agonise over.
What you are actually buying is a physical address in the state, someone reliably there during business hours, and prompt forwarding of anything served on you. Every legitimate service does that. The differences are price, whether they use their own address on public filings, and how quickly they scan and forward mail.
Northwest’s inclusion list is the strongest here, adding a free business address, mail scanning, a phone line and business email to the $125. Whether you use any of that is another question, but it is more included value than anyone else at a lower price.
The practical advice: take whichever free first year comes with your formation package, then reassess in month eleven. Switching agents is a routine filing in every state and nobody is locked in.
Forming as a Non-US Resident
If you are outside the US, this comparison changes and CorpNet’s premium becomes easier to justify.
The EIN is the reason. Without a Social Security number you cannot apply online, and the process runs through a paper or fax filing that routinely takes weeks. Paying a service to handle it stops being a convenience charge and becomes a genuine time saving.
You will also need a US address for the entity and, in practice, a US bank account, neither of which the formation fee covers. Budget for a registered agent that provides a usable business address, and expect the banking step to be the hardest part rather than the filing.
CorpNet handles non-resident formations and so do Northwest and Bizee. What matters more than which one you pick is choosing a service that will actually answer questions when a bank or supplier asks for a document you have never heard of.
Common Questions
Does CorpNet have a free LLC formation option?
No. Basic at $99 is the floor, and there is a 3 percent convenience fee on top. Bizee, LegalZoom and ZenBusiness all offer $0 formation plus state fees.
Why is Deluxe cheaper than Basic over three years?
Because Deluxe includes a free first year of registered agent worth $149, and Basic includes only 60 days. Deluxe costs $517 over three years and Basic costs $546.
Is the 3 percent fee avoidable?
Not as far as CorpNet’s pricing page indicates. Treat it as part of the price when you compare against services that do not charge one.
Can I switch registered agents later?
Yes, in every state, and it is a routine filing. Do not let a first-year-free offer lock you into an agent price you do not want in year two. Switching to Northwest at $125 after CorpNet’s free year is a legitimate move.
Which state should I form in?
Almost always the state you actually live and operate in. The Wyoming and Delaware advice circulating in ecommerce circles mostly applies to companies raising outside investment, and forming out of state usually means paying registration fees in two states rather than one.
The Verdict on Price
CorpNet is a well-run company with a price floor that does not suit the person most likely to be reading this. If you are forming your first LLC for a store that has not made money yet, paying $219 when Bizee will do the same filing for $0 plus state fees is hard to justify.
Buy CorpNet Deluxe if you value having someone competent to call, are forming in a state with unusual rules, or are handling several entities. Skip Basic entirely, because it is the worst value on the menu.
Buy Bizee if cost over three years is what matters, which for most new store owners it should be. Buy Northwest if privacy matters, because they use their own address on your public filings rather than yours.
Whichever you pick, get the entity formed before you start supplier outreach rather than after, and take the free EIN from the IRS instead of paying anyone for it.
Related Articles
Northwest Registered Agent Review
Best LLC Formation Services for High-Ticket Dropshipping
How to Find High-Ticket Suppliers
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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