Getting the right registered agent is a very important step for every business in the state of Vermont.
The right Vermont registered agent (also called a resident agent, registered office agent, or statutory agent) will protect your personal assets, responsibly handle critical legal documents (service of process) and keep your company in compliance with the Vermont Secretary of State.
The wrong Vermont registered agent will leave your personal data open to cyber attack, misplace your important documents, risk your company’s good standing with the state, and overcharge you for the trouble.
I've investigated 60+ registered agent services, assessed the top 12, and written in-depth reviews of the 3 best. Here are my picks for the best registered agent services in the state of Vermont:
1. Northwest Registered Agent — 9.13/10 (My Top Pick)
Northwest Registered Agent is my selection as the best registered agent service in the state of Vermont due to their trustworthiness, wide range of services, fantastic customer service, and competitive price.
Pros
Northwest Registered Agent makes it easy to stop worrying about your company’s regulatory concerns and start concentrating on the more enjoyable aspects of running your business entity in Vermont.
They are responsible enough to trust with your personal data, and they go above and beyond to fulfill all their required duties to keep you in compliance with the Vermont Secretary of State.
They keep your personal name and address off the public record through the issuance of a Vermont street address at which they will responsibly handle service of process, other legal notices, and communications from the state on behalf of your company.
Everything you receive is then very promptly forwarded via both the US Mail and electronically, as they scan and upload copies to your online portal.
They also offer compliance alerts to keep you informed of due dates for your annual report or other filings and they help keep you on track with a personalized filing calendar.
What truly separates Northwest Registered Agent from the other registered agent services in Vermont is their customer service.
While other companies try to cut costs by outsourcing or automating customer service, Northwest invests in service reps with real business world experience. Your call will often be answered by former accountants, lawyers, or entrepreneurs. When it comes to filing or regulatory issues, they’ve seen and heard it all. That experience can be invaluable should you find your business entity in a complicated legal or regulatory situation.
Despite offering one of the most comprehensive Vermont registered agent services and owning the best customer service team in the industry, Northwest Registered Agent offers an extremely competitive rate ($125 per year).
Cons
When dealing with state regulations and corporate filings, a great customer service team is a thorough customer service team, but sometimes that thoroughness can be a bit burdensome.
On one or two occasions with Northwest, what I hoped would be a simple question with a simple yes or no answer has turned into a longer conversation than I had time for.
I’ve been a little frustrated in these instances, but I’d rather have a Vermont registered agent service that makes sure to get things right than one that wastes my time and still gets things wrong.
Overall
When I’d finished my extensive research, Northwest Registered Agent was clearly the best Vermont registered agent service.
For a very competitive rate, they give you all the tools you need to stay in good standing with the Vermont Secretary of State, and should things somehow go sideways, their customer service team has the experience to very quickly help you right the ship.
If you want a registered agent service that you can trust to protect your personal assets and guide your business entity in Vermont through the most complicated of regulatory issues, go to Northwest Registered Agent.
2. Harbor Compliance — 7.92/10 (Best Budget Registered Agent)
Harbor Compliance won my budget category by offering a reliable, comprehensive service at a discount rate.
Pros
Harbor Compliance offers all the essentials you need to stay in compliance with the Vermont Secretary of State and keep your name and street address off the public record.
They provide a registered office that is open during business hours and are pretty prompt at forwarding any correspondence your business receives, be it service of process, other legal notices, or something from the state.
They are also pretty quick to scan and upload any incoming documents to your online account and they offer compliance alerts to prevent you from overlooking the due date for an annual report or other filings.
Their biggest advantage is their price ($99) which is quite reasonable considering that they offer a pretty full range of services.
Cons
Harbor Compliance does everything well but doesn’t do anything particularly great.
Harbor Compliance looks great when compared with other budget services, but when you compare them with Northwest Registered Agent, their service seems substandard. Their customer service department needs substantial improvements to compete with the best.
Overall
If your budget is your biggest priority and you don’t mind sacrificing great customer service, Harbor Compliance can save you $26 per year over Northwest Registered Agent.
Harbor Compliance is reliable and trustworthy and a good option for those who just want the basics.
Check out Harbor Compliance.
3. LegalZoom — 6.59/10 (Best Premium Service)
LegalZoom is a bona fide giant in the legal services industry that offers Vermont registered agent services with some nice perks, but at a premium price.
Pros
You’ve heard of LegalZoom. Everyone’s heard of LegalZoom. If you just started looking for a registered agent service, it is nice to come across a familiar name that you trust.
Despite their international reach, LegalZoom has a physical address in Vermont and will receive service of process, legal documents and act as your point of contact with the Vermont Secretary of State.
In addition to these fundamental services, LegalZoom offers some nice extras as part of their registered agent service, most notably an identity theft insurance policy that will cover up to $1 million worth of damages. That’s an unusual add-on for a registered office and can give you substantial peace of mind these days.
LegalZoom’s other big advantage is the incredible amount of online legal services they offer. If you’ve already used them for another purpose, you can simply sign up for their Vermont registered agent service using the same account.
Cons
LegalZoom is very expensive. They charge $299 per year, which is substantially more than Northwest Registered Agent, my top-rated service.
You can justify paying a little more due to the identity theft insurance, but not that much more. You could hire another registered agent service, buy identity theft insurance independently, and still save money.
LegalZoom’s size can also be a disadvantage. When they handle everything from amended birth certificates to last will and testaments, your questions about your business in the state of Vermont can get lost in the shuffle.
Overall
LegalZoom has a renowned name and a good reputation for a reason, but they use that fame to charge a hefty annual fee.
Their add-ons, like identity theft insurance, are nice but don’t make up for the enormous price difference between them and better resident agents.
If you have an unlimited budget and you prefer a big name to individualized service, check out LegalZoom here.
4. ZenBusiness
ZenBusiness is one of the top LLC formation companies in the country. For a while, they restricted their registered agent service to clients who had already used them to form their business entities, but they have recently opened the service up to everyone.
Since they are relatively new to the registered agent business, perhaps they can be forgiven for a few missteps. Although the service itself is very good, they have chosen to use a two-tiered pricing model, which means add-on services like compliance alerts cost extra.
Purchasing the same services that are included with the basic Northwest Registered Agent package (such as receiving service of process and LLC formation service) costs $149 once you’ve added on the extra layer of pricing. You can save some money and get better service with Northwest Registered Agent, but if ZenBusiness changes their pricing policy, they may compete for the top spot.
If you'd like to understand more about ZenBusiness and their services, please read my full ZenBusiness review.
5. IncFile
IncFile offers a good budget service that covers all the basics. They can be trusted to accept service of process and legal documents on behalf of your company, they are responsible enough to keep your personal information off the public record, and they make sure that your business stays in good standing with the Vermont Secretary of State.
On the downside, they don’t offer compliance alerts, and they fall in between Harbor Compliance and Northwest Registered Agent in terms of pricing. At $119, IncFile is more expensive than Harbor Compliance, which offers a more comprehensive budget service, and is just a few dollars less than Northwest and their substantially better customer service.
6. Rocket Lawyer
Rocket Lawyer is a younger, cheaper version of LegalZoom. They offer the same wide array of online legal services as their more famous cousin and can also give you a street address in Vermont and accept service of process on behalf of your business, along with the other essentials of a registered agent service required to keep a good standing with the Vermont Secretary of State.
Rocket Lawyer is substantially cheaper than LegalZoom ($149 vs $299) but they suffer the same disadvantages—impersonal customer service and lack of focus on the registered agent aspect of their business.
For a cheaper price, you can find a registered agent service that offers a more personalized service.
Read my full review of Rocket Lawyer and learn more about their services.
7. SunDoc Filings
SunDoc Filings charges more for less, which is pretty much the opposite of what you’re looking for. At $159 per year, you’d expect comprehensive service, but SunDoc doesn’t even offer compliance alerts.
8. InCorp
InCorp covers all the necessary essentials of a good budget Vermont registered agent service, but their online system leaves a lot to be desired.
They offer the same budget rate ($99) as Harbor Compliance and their coverage is just as comprehensive. An improved internet presence would move them higher up my list.
9. Swyft Filings
Swyft Filings is another in the multitude of Vermont resident agents that do the essentials and are trustworthy enough to handle service of process and other critical documents but don’t offer a great price. Swyft Filings doesn’t do anything to justify their $149 price tag.
If you'd like to learn more about their services, you can read my full Swyft Filings review.
10. CSC Global
CSC Global seems to be catering towards the crowd that thinks a high price ($299 per year) is automatically indicative of a great product. If you’ve ever purchased a watered-down soda at a movie theater, you know this isn’t true.
For such a high fee, CSC Global doesn’t even offer compliance alerts, and their customer service is substandard at best.
The one perk CSC Global offers is that they will cover the fee associated with your change of registered agent service, provided that you switch to CSC Global. In Vermont, that will save you $25, which you can give directly back to CSC Global since they charge more than double the price of Northwest Registered Agent.
11. Registered Agents Inc.
Registered Agents Inc. offers a very generic service to suit their very generic name. Nothing about their service stands out.
I might consider ranking them a little higher were it not for their price ($200), which doesn’t correlate at all with the mediocre quality of their registered agent service.
12. Jumpstart Filings
Jumpstart Filings has a more original name and a better price ($129) than the competitors directly ranked above them, but their service is somehow a bit worse.
They offer a Vermont office address that’s open during regular business hours, but little more than that.
Registered Agent Review Summary
I took a hard look at over 60 Vermont resident agents, found 12 that seemed worthy of further review, and rated them according to five key factors.
In the end, Northwest Registered Agent came out as the undeniable winner.
They cover all the basics and then go the extra mile to make sure that your personal assets are safe and that your business stays in good standing with the Vermont Secretary of State.
If any complications arise, they have the most experienced customer service team in the industry, one with the knowledge and patience to help you sort things out.
When you factor in their competitive price ($125 per year), they clearly offer the best value of any Vermont registered agent service.
If you want the best registered agent in the industry protecting your personal assets protected and guiding your business, go to Northwest Registered Agent.
Best Registered Agent Review Methodology
This is the criteria I used to determine the best registered agent.
Why You Should Trust Me
I know a lot of small business owners and not one of them has researched Vermont resident agents as much as I have.
When I started my first company, I didn’t give a second thought to who I would hire as my Vermont registered agent. I thought of resident agents as glorified PO Boxes and thought I would just select the cheapest option.
Once I thought about it a little more, I started to change my tune. It dawned on me that the most critical paperwork my company would receive would filter through my Vermont registered agent first.
Communications from the state of Vermont, service of process, and other legal notices would all be handled by my Vermont registered agent. Service of process is the procedure by which notice of initial legal action is served on an individual or business entity being served. Additionally, my registered agent would be the one protecting my personal data and assets by keeping my info off the public record.
Clearly, my registered agent in Vermont had to be someone I trusted. After all the hard work I’d put in establishing my company, I wasn’t going to trust it to just anybody. I decided I had to be really thorough to get this decision right.
I started with a simple Google search and found more than 60 companies that offered Vermont registered agent services. I went to each website and read as much as I could about each of them. I wanted to get a feel for the major players and see which resident agents offered which services.
Next, I went through page after page of online reviews, making notes about specific complaints. I then called the companies themselves to get a general sense of who the people were behind the companies and to follow up on complaints I had read.
At this point I’d put in a ton of hours, but I was encouraged by my conversations with other business owners. Many of them knew as little as I had about Vermont resident agents, which first gave me the idea for this website. Clearly, there was a need for someone to honestly evaluate resident agents.
Now that this website is rolling, I’ve helped thousands of business owners find their resident agents. I hope I can be of help to you too.
How I Selected the Best Registered Agent
I used a four-step process to select the best registered agent service in Vermont.
Stage 1: Reviews
After I was familiar with which companies offered Vermont registered agent service, I started looking through online reviews.
Online reviews aren’t always the best source for unbiased opinions, but if you read enough of them, you begin to notice certain themes.
I read the registered agent reviews on Facebook, TrustPilot, Google Business, and the Better Business Bureau, among others. Far and away the most common complaint was about the pricing system that certain resident agents use.
If you google Vermont registered agents, you’ll find a number of agents advertising a really low price (often in the range of $39–$59). In many cases, this price isn’t actually the annual price. Instead, it is a sign-up price and you’ll be charged substantially more over the course of the year.
More than anything, a registered agent in Vermont must be a company I can trust and if I can’t even trust you to disclose the actual price of your service, I am going to look elsewhere.
I eliminated almost 50 Vermont registered agents that use this bait-and-switch pricing scheme.
Stage 2: Website Analysis
I went through the websites from each of the 12 remaining Vermont resident agents in order to see exactly what they were offering with their registered agent package. Resident agents offer a surprising variety of services for what seems like such a simple business.
I carefully went through each website and then clarified any questions I had with a phone call in order to determine exactly which companies offered which services.
Stage 3: Speaking with Real Customers
I leaned heavily on my wide network of fellow business owners in order to talk to real customers about their experiences with their Vermont registered agent service.
As opposed to anonymous online reviews, I knew exactly who I was talking to and was able to ask very specific questions about which resident agents they had used and why.
Now that this website is live, I get feedback from even more real customers, which I am happy to include in my overall analysis.
Stage 4: Speaking with Their Sales Teams
As the last step, I went back directly to the sales teams of each Vermont registered agent. I wanted to evaluate their customer service for one thing, but I also wanted to get a good sense of the corporate culture at each company.
I tried to challenge the sales teams with specific critiques I had heard about their service to see how they’d respond.
Good Vermont registered agents are happy to receive customer feedback, open to suggestions, eager to improve their service, and quick to correct any mistakes. Other resident agents make it very difficult to actually get through to anyone and seem content to ignore your concerns.
Rating Factors
I rated my top 12 resident agents for your Vermont LLC according to five key factors.
Factor 1: Offerings
Altogether, my top 12 resident agents offer 24 distinct services.
They range from the basics, such as a registered office in Vermont that is open during normal business hours, to more rare add-on services, such as the identity theft insurance offered by LegalZoom. The agent must also be available during normal business hours to accept any service of process , notice, or demand pertaining to the entity and forward it to the appropriate individuals.
I made a simple spreadsheet with the 12 companies listed across the top and the 24 LLC services listed down the side. If a registered agent offered a particular service, I checked the corresponding box.
I then ranked the Vermont registered agents based on who offered the most services.
Factor 2: Value
If you operate a small business in Vermont, you know that you have to stretch your dollars as far as you can, especially when you are just getting started.
Your registered agent service in Vermont can cost anywhere from $99 to $299 per year, but the more expensive services aren’t necessarily the best services. In fact, my top two resident agents, Northwest Registered Agent and Harbor Compliance, are both on the cheap end of the spectrum.
In order to assess value, I ranked the 12 Vermont registered agents according to the quality and quantity of their services per dollar charged.
Factor 3: Ease of Sign-up
Once you’ve finally selected your registered agent in Vermont, nothing is more deflating than discovering that their sign-up process is insanely, unnecessarily complicated.
I was really surprised by the hoops some registered agents in Vermont make you jump through before you can become their client.
It can be maddening. I signed up for all 12 services and ranked them according to how close my blood actually came to boiling.
Factor 4: Ease of Use
After I was signed up, I also spent a significant amount of time on each agent’s website. I tried to accomplish a few simple tasks, such as changing my office address, setting up annual report reminders (if they were offered), and finding an email address for an actual person at the company.
It was no surprise that many of the same Vermont registered agents who struggled in my sign-up assessment also had clunky, disorganized websites.
Once again I used the blood-boiling barometer to rank the agents.
Factor 5: Customer Service
If you’re lucky, you may never need your registered agent’s customer service team, but they can be a tremendous asset should you find your company in difficult legal or regulatory situations.
I called the customer service teams at all 12 Vermont registered agents and rated them according to how long they kept me on hold, how quick and accurate they were with their answers, and how courteous they were.
The Best Vermont Registered Agent Results Summary
I examined more than 60 resident agents, and deeply investigated the 12 best. These 3 were the best of the best.
Best Overall Registered Agent — Northwest Registered Agent (9.13/10)
Northwest Registered Agent ranked at or near the top of the five factors I assessed, and are my overwhelming choice for the best overall registered agent.
They offer a very comprehensive registered agent service package designed to keep your personal data and assets safe and ensure your ongoing compliance with the state of Vermont.
From the basics, like a registered office open during normal business hours, to extras like compliance alerts, Northwest Registered Agent gives you all the tools you need to keep your business on the right track.
They also employ the most experienced customer service team in the industry available during normal business hours (9 a.m.–5 p.m.). If you run into any regulatory issues, filing questions, or if you're confused about service of process, your call to Northwest will be answered by former lawyers, accountants, and small business owners. They have the knowledge and patience to talk you through just about any challenge your business may face.
At $125 per year, they are also one of the best-priced registered agent services within the state of Vermont.
It's worth mentioning that there are over 3,000 positive Northwest Registered Agent reviews online, so it's not just me who's had a positive experience with them.
If you want your business protected and guided by the best overall registered agent in Vermont, head to Northwest Registered Agent.
Best Budget Registered Agent — Harbor Compliance (7.92/10)
Harbor Compliance is a hair cheaper than Northwest Registered Agent and doesn’t offer the same quality of service, but they are a reliable option for the extremely budget-conscious business owner.
Harbor Compliance doesn’t do anything great, but they do just about everything well. They can be trusted to protect your personal data and are responsible enough to receive service of process and other legal documents on behalf of your company so that you are in good standing with the Vermont Secretary of State. At times, you can tell they are a budget service when you talk to their customer service team, but for the most part, they get the job done.
There's a lot more to Harbor Compliance's service than I tell you about here. Read my full Harbor Compliance review for more details on their service and offerings.
If you want to save $26 per year and don’t need outstanding customer service, check out Harbor Compliance.
Best Premium Registered Agent — LegalZoom (6.59/10)
LegalZoom is an international company with a big name and a big price tag. For $299, one of the highest rates in the industry, they give you the basics and beyond.
Despite their global reach, LegalZoom offers a local Vermont street address where they are available to receive service of process notices and communication from the state on behalf of your company.
They also offer fee reimbursement if you switch to their registered agent service and identity theft insurance as part of their registered agent package.
These are both valuable add-ons, but don’t entirely justify LegalZoom’s price, which is more than double that of Northwest Registered Agent.
If you don’t mind a big price and want to forgo better customer service in order to hire a big name, check out LegalZoom.
In Conclusion
Choosing a registered agent might not seem like such an important decision until you consider the fact that your Vermont registered agent will be responsible for handling all of your company’s most important paperwork.
Hiring the wrong registered agent in Vermont could put not only your business in jeopardy, but also your own personal assets.
Your registered agent must be a company you can trust.
I examined more than 60 Vermont registered agents, narrowed the field down to 12 and reviewed them through a four-stage process that evaluated five different factors.
After all my work, Northwest Registered Agent emerged as my pick for the best registered agent in Vermont.
They offer all of the basics, plus some valuable extras, to make sure your business remains on the right track.
As part of their standard registered agent package, they offer the following services:
- A Vermont street address where they accept service of process and state-issued notices on behalf of your company
- Prompt mail-forwarding
- Scanning and uploading of all your incoming documents
- Assistance with your Articles of Organization or other formation documents for your LLC or other business entity
- Compliance alerts so you don’t miss key deadlines
- An individualized filing calendar to keep you on top of upcoming filings
In support of all those services is the best customer service team of any registered agent I’ve come across. They are so helpful, I’ve come to think of them as almost a de facto board of directors.
For all that, they offer one of the best prices ($125) of any registered agent I reviewed.
Changing registered agents in Vermont is a simple and inexpensive process. You can either file online or file a Change of Registered Agent form with the Vermont Secretary of State. The form is $25 to file by mail or online. The change of registered agent by mail takes about a week for the Secretary of State to process.
If you value your business enough to only entrust it to the best, make Northwest Registered Agent your registered agent today.
