LegalZoom Wants $249 a Year for a Michigan Street Address

We are the competition, and that is worth saying before anything else. Michigan Registered Agent.co charges $99 a year for the exact service this page is comparing against LegalZoom's, so nothing here is neutral. What is solid regardless: the $249 belongs to LegalZoom, taken from their own published pricing in July 2026.

The Name Carries Weight

Almost everyone has heard of LegalZoom, and that is a real advantage for a company selling legal services to people who buy them once every few years. One account can hold your formation documents, a trademark filing, an estate plan, and your agent service together. Fewer vendors means fewer passwords and one place to call. Some owners will pay a premium for that and be perfectly happy with the trade. Nothing wrong with it.

Automatic Renewal at Full Price

LegalZoom prices registered agent service at $249 a year. Flat rate, automatic renewal, and no first-year discount that our July 2026 check could find. Credit for the flatness: there is no cheap opening year that quietly doubles later, which is more than several competitors can say. The issue is the size of the number and the fact that keeping it is the default. Automatic renewal means nobody has to decide to spend $249 next year. It happens unless you interrupt it.

Michigan's Job Description Is Two Sentences Long

The state spells the role out in MCL 450.4207, and Michigan calls it a resident agent rather than a registered agent. An individual qualifies by living in Michigan with a business office or residence at the same place as the registered office on your filing. A company qualifies if it is authorized to do business here and has an office at that address. That is the whole bar.

Read it again and notice what is missing. The statute does not ask for national advertising, a household name, or a legal marketplace bolted onto the service. It asks for a real Michigan address with a real person behind it. LegalZoom clears that bar. So does a $99 provider. Michigan does not grade the seat on what you paid for it.

Seven hundred fifty dollars, for a duty the statute describes in identical terms both ways.

Our Version of the Same Job

$99 a year, and the renewal invoice says $99 too. What gets served on us is scanned that day and posted to your portal with an email attached. Your home address never appears on the state record because ours does. Compliance reminders come before the February 15 deadline. Want regular business mail scanned as well? That runs $15 for each piece, and the figure sits on this page instead of surfacing later in an invoice.

The cheapest agent in Michigan is not us. BetterLegal publishes $90 a year, nine dollars under our rate, and you would find that out eventually anyway. Ours is among the lowest flat annual prices in the state, it includes same-day handling, and it does not move at renewal. That is the offer.

How to Replace LegalZoom as Your Michigan Resident Agent

The paperwork is the CSCL/CD-520 change certificate, filed with Michigan's licensing and regulatory department, LARA. The state fee is $5. You can send it electronically or on paper, and one certificate can move the agent, move the registered office, or do both at once.

What the form wants is short: your entity name, the incoming resident agent, and the Michigan registered office address that will be on the record going forward. No amendment to your Articles of Organization, no board resolution, no supporting exhibits.

Order of operations: hire, file, confirm, then cancel. Run it backwards and there is a stretch where your public record names an agent you have stopped paying, which is a bad position to be in on the day somebody serves a lawsuit. LegalZoom stays on the record until LARA processes the certificate, so the old coverage overlaps the new by design. Our change of agent page has the full walkthrough.

One more scheduling note. Since the $249 renews on its own, work backward from your anniversary date and file with weeks in hand rather than days.

Order Here

Common questions about switching mid-year live in our FAQ.