Ask News.YC: Best Online Incorporation Service? | Hacker News Reader

Ask News.YC: Best Online Incorporation Service?

6 pointsbmaier14 comments

What has anyone used, what have your experiences been? What are the best? LegalZoom? Active Filings? The Delaware Company? Something else?

I just need a quick Delaware LLC setup.

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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.

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

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

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.

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..

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.

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.

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.

we did most of ourself; http://www.nolo.com/resource.cfm/catID/BAAE1B67-F54A-41B4-91... then paid our lawyer to go over it. It was really successful process.

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

Would it be considered ironic to steal legal documents?

Only in the Alanis Morissette way

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.

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

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