Free for a Year, Then a Price Nobody Prints

The obvious conflict, stated first: CA Registered Agent.org publishes this page and competes with the company it discusses. What follows is built on something Inc Authority does not say anywhere on its site, not on any claim of ours you would have to accept unverified.

A Free Year Is a Real Benefit

Take an Inc Authority formation package and registered agent service comes at $0 for the first twelve months. We went hunting specifically for the fine print underneath that: a setup charge, a shortened term, a clawback if you leave early. None of it is there. For a California founder watching every dollar in the first year, twelve free months of something the state obliges you to carry is worth having, and we would take it too.

The Renewal Is Not Anywhere We Looked

Here is where it turns. Inc Authority does not state publicly what agent service costs after those first twelve months elapse. We went through the frequently asked questions, then the premium package listings, then the homepage itself, and the number appears in none of them. Not in a footnote, not behind an expandable panel, not in the terms.

That absence is structural rather than cosmetic. Agent service is not a one-time purchase you make and forget; it repeats for as long as your entity holds its charter, which in California means for as long as the Secretary of State carries the entity as active.

We are not going to estimate the figure either. Inventing a competitor's renewal would demolish the one thing this page asserts, namely that a published price beats an unpublished one. The point survives without a number: every other service in this comparison prints a renewal, and the renewal is what a company actually pays over its lifetime. A figure that only surfaces at checkout, or when somebody reads it to you over the telephone, surfaces after the free year has finished doing its persuading.

Ours Sits on the Pricing Page

Ninety-nine dollars for year one, and the identical figure every year afterward, published in advance rather than at the end of a checkout flow. Whatever a process server leaves with us in California is scanned before that day ends and delivered electronically, with the original held on file. Our California address goes into the agent field of your record so yours does not have to. Biennial statement reminders are part of the service. One further line exists in the price list, $15 an item to have non-process correspondence scanned, and it sits beside the annual figure where anyone can find it.

On a page arguing for printed prices, here is another one: BetterLegal prints $90, below our $99. We sit among the lowest published California rates, which is a smaller claim than cheapest and a true one.

Recording a New Agent in California, Step by Step

Whatever you eventually learn about year two, California makes acting on it cheap and quick. The state publishes no dedicated change of agent form, so ignore any instruction to find one, and follow this instead.

1. Line up the replacement. California accepts either an individual resident of the state or a corporation holding a Corp. Code § 1505 certificate, at a California street address staffed during business hours. Your own entity cannot take the job, since a business entity is barred from acting as its own agent.
2. Open your record at bizfileOnline. Filings run through the Secretary of State's Business Programs Division online.
3. File an updated Statement of Information listing the new agent. Form LLC-12 covers limited liability companies; corporations use their own version of the statement. That document carries the incoming agent's agreement to serve, which is why no separate consent form exists.
4. Pay nothing, in most cases. A statement lodged outside your scheduled filing periods solely to record the change carries no fee. Only when the swap travels alongside your scheduled biennial statement does the ordinary $20 apply.
5. Confirm, then close the old account. Check the state's business search for the new agent before you cancel anything.

Run in that order, the appointment hands over cleanly and your entity never appears on the record without an agent beside its name. Our California change of agent page expands on each step.

Order Here Read how nine services price the same statutory job in our California rankings.