ZenBusiness Review for 2022: Pros, Cons, & Pricing - NerdWallet (2023)

If you’re looking to incorporate your small business, you may have discovered that doing so isn’t necessarily the easiest or most straightforward endeavor. Thankfully, there are online legal services, like ZenBusiness, that can make the whole process a bit easier.

ZenBusiness makes straightforward legal filings easier and more affordable for small-business owners. With ZenBusiness, you can prepare and file your own business formation documents, avoiding the need to bring lawyers or other potentially costly professionals in to do the work for you.

If you’ve tried to go it alone in terms of carrying out one of the many legal steps required to start a business, you know how challenging it can be to make sure you’ve taken care of each and every task — especially when states vary in terms of business licenses, requirements and forms. Not only does this require steadfast attention to detail, but it also takes up a significant amount of time on your side (and can take a long time for the state to approve your documents).

Luckily, as an online business formation service, ZenBusiness makes it easier to keep track of these tasks, as well as many others that you are likely to encounter as your business grows. Although the features you receive with ZenBusiness will vary based on your pricing plan and location, some of its most noteworthy services include:

The ZenBusiness suite of services also includes add-on features, such as a complimentary assessment from a certified accountant to help set up bookkeeping, accounting and tax considerations within your first year of operation.

You can also acquire a business domain name from ZenBusiness, get quotes for business insurance from leading providers and weigh your options for the best business credit cards from within the platform itself.

ZenBusiness offers three service tiers, varying in terms of the number of features included (and, of course, price). Anyone can start off at a more basic (and less expensive) service tier and upgrade as necessary afterward, which prevents you from overpaying for features and services you may not need.

You can also opt-in for certain services at an additional cost, such as a business website and domain name, while remaining on a lower-priced plan.

ZenBusiness Starter

ZenBusiness Starter costs $49 when billed annually — excluding state-level fees (which depend on your state and business entity type) or additional costs from add-on services.

With this plan, you’ll be able to take advantage of the standard business filing service, which includes name availability search tools, standard filing speed, phone and email support and access to your documents through the ZenBusiness portal.

You’ll also get a complimentary year of registered agent support, which provides companies with a dedicated address for being served legal notices. Note that this service auto-renews at $119 per year once the first year of service is completed.

Plus, this service tier includes the production of operating agreements and bylaws, as well as a CPA assessment to help determine what kind of accounting and bookkeeping you may need for your business as it gets off the ground.

You can also incorporate a few a-la-carte options in this plan, such as expedited or rushed filing, employer ID number (EIN) registration and website hosting, among others. These add-on services, of course, will each have their own respective fees.

ZenBusiness Pro

In addition to the features of the Starter plan, ZenBusiness Pro steps up the offerings significantly by including expedited filing, banking resolution documents, employer ID number creation and compliance checks and reminders.

This plan costs $199 annually, plus state filing fees and any additional features you might add to your package. You can add rush filing for a $100 fee, as well as a business website and domain registration for $100 and $25 per year, respectively.

ZenBusiness Premium

ZenBusiness Premium includes every service the platform provides for a $299 annual membership (plus state filing fees).

This plan is a great option for business owners who want access to an all-inclusive legal service to handle all of the work that comes with starting a new business. This plan includes all of the filing basics and registered agent service, as well as assistance with setting up a website, email addresses and other ongoing forms that businesses need to file every year.

ZenBusiness A-La-Carte

ZenBusiness also offers a build-your-own package service, which allows you a greater amount of flexibility with the services you purchase.

To access this service, you’ll have to register for an account and provide ZenBusiness with a fair amount of personal information.

Although ZenBusiness hasn’t been around as long as some of its competitors, this online legal service has plenty of reviews (both positive and negative) across the internet. For starters, ZenBusiness has 4.7 out of 5 stars from Trustpilot and 4.8 out of 5 stars from Google.

Most positive ZenBusiness reviews cite how easy it is to navigate the platform and set up an LLC with minimal effort. ZenBusiness also gets praise for walking customers through the process, making it easier to wade through the otherwise challenging prospect of registering a business.

The main thread that connects most of the positive feedback centers around just how simple it is to use the platform — a positive attribute for any program designed to get people up and running with their business.

ZenBusiness reviews aren’t perfect, however. Some users have complained about the software guiding them through the process of setting up an LLC, only to need a limited liability partnership (LLP) based on where they live.

Others have expressed confusion about recurring charges, particularly around registered agent services they may not have canceled. According to some reviews, other competitors provide faster service.

Here are a few of the top pros for using the ZenBusiness platform.

On the other hand, ZenBusiness has a few drawbacks that are important to consider:

If you’re trying to decide if ZenBusiness is right for your business, you may want to consider one of the many ZenBusiness alternatives on the market before making a final decision. Fortunately, there is a variety to choose from.

LegalZoom

LegalZoom is perhaps the best-known player in this space and has the incumbent’s advantage as far as ZenBusiness alternatives go. This platform is an originator when it comes to offering basic legal services for small businesses.

With a platform as robust as LegalZoom, there’s likely to be a solution for any of your common legal needs, but expect to pay more than you might with a straightforward document filing service like ZenBusiness.

Swyft Filings

Swyft Filings provides many of the same services as ZenBusiness, as it is also a digital service provider designed to file all the forms needed to get a company registered and ready for operation. Swyft Filings includes all the same state filing capabilities as ZenBusiness, as well as some of the other add-ons like web hosting and employer identification number filing.

Note that Swyft Filings doesn’t include an option to purchase registered agent services, however. The entry-level option also costs $49, and the mid-priced tier is slightly less expensive than ZenBusiness, at $149 annually.

Incfile

Incfile is another solid option for an online business document filing system. This platform also costs $49 at the base level, and includes the same suite of tools that you’d get with ZenBusiness.

You can also get registered agent services with Incfile as you would with ZenBusiness. All in all, ZenBusiness gets an edge in terms of cost, as it comes out to be less expensive in most cases, depending on the services included.

A version of this article was first published on Fundera, a subsidiary of NerdWallet