

Ask News.YC:  Best Online Incorporation Service? - bmaier

What has anyone used, what have your experiences been?  What are the best? LegalZoom? Active Filings? The Delaware Company? Something else?  <p>I just need a quick Delaware LLC setup.
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cstejerean
I've used the Company Corporation in the past. I haven't used any other
services so I can't compare but it was a pain free easy setup. Paid a small
fee online, everything arrived in the mail a few days later and the deal was
pretty much done.

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rrival
I've been very happy with them as well. Corporate.com.

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zach
Well, you can always look at what others have done.

For example, I had no idea what DNS hosting service to use, so I looked up
which one ycombinator.com used and went with that (EasyDNS). Not scientific,
but what the hey.

Similarly, you can look up any company registered in California here and find
out who they use: <http://kepler.sos.ca.gov/list.html>

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falsestprophet
Do it yourself. Seriously. Any online incorporation service is going to give
you the same caliber boilerplate document that you can find online for free.

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bmaier
The benefit that I see in these services is the free year of registered agent
service and the other side features. I would do it myself if I thought I could
find comparable prices on the individual elements if I did it myself.

Its not for a startup, I just need an entity to test some projects out and
have some liability protection. If I was doing a startup I'd go with a lawyer
no question..

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testapplication
If you aren't doing it to make money, and are just doing it for the liability
protection, in court that liability protection would be found to not apply to
your non-corporation posing as corporation.

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bmaier
to clarify, it would be to make money. Just a small bootstrapped development
house where I can try a lot of ideas and have them either succeed or fail
quickly.

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rwebb
Most law firms use CT or CSC. The important part of incorporating is not just
being recognized by a state, but everything else that goes along with it when
you do it properly (bylaws, ownership, etc.). If you are at the point where
you need to incorporate, you need to do this other stuff too and should
probably talk to a lawyer that works with small companies regularly.

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donna
we did most of ourself;
[http://www.nolo.com/resource.cfm/catID/BAAE1B67-F54A-41B4-91...](http://www.nolo.com/resource.cfm/catID/BAAE1B67-F54A-41B4-91943A51F56C3F79/111/182/245/)
then paid our lawyer to go over it. It was really successful process.

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rms
You can get most of the Nolo books on eMule for free.

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paulgb
Would it be considered ironic to steal legal documents?

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rms
Only in the Alanis Morissette way

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paulgb
I was thinking about it a bit more, and I would consider it ironic (real
irony, not Alanis Morissette irony). A legal document binds someone to legal
obligations, so breaking other legal obligations to get the document has to
somehow be ironic.

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henryw
I really like LegalZoom. They have a very good and professional online
application process vs some of the other services.

