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Start a Registered Agent Service

People search: “registered agent service business” (2K+ per month)

Be the legally required registered agent for LLCs and corporations, receiving official mail and service of process for a recurring annual fee, the compliance-moat business in its purest form.

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Difficulty

Intermediate

Startup cost

$500 to $2,000

Time to first $

30 to 90 days

Revenue potential

Medium

Profit margin

80 to 95 percent

Viability

7.2 / 10

Search demand

Medium (2K+ per month)

Where it runs

Local

Best for: Reliability-obsessed operators who love quiet recurring revenue

The opening

Why this idea is overlooked

Every one of the millions of LLCs and corporations formed each year is legally required to maintain a registered agent forever, making this one of the purest recurring-revenue compliance businesses that exists; the statutory requirements (a physical address, business-hours availability, state registration for commercial agents) are exactly the moat that keeps it from being a race to zero.

The roadmap

How to start, step by step

1
Meet the statutory requirements exactly
A registered agent needs a physical street address in the state (no PO boxes) staffed during business hours to receive service of process, and many states require commercial registered agents to file a formal registration or listing with the state. These requirements are the barrier that makes the annuity defensible; meet them completely before taking client one.
2
Set up the operational spine
A commercial address (office or compliant coworking arrangement, verified against your state's rules), same-day mail scanning and upload, and an alert system for the documents that matter most: lawsuits and state notices, where a missed delivery can cost a client a default judgment. Errors-and-omissions insurance is essential; the whole product is not missing things.
3
Price the recurring annuity
Registered agent service commonly sells for $50 to $150 per entity per year against a few dollars of marginal cost per client, and clients stay as long as their entity exists. Two hundred entities is quiet meaningful revenue; two thousand is a real company, same office.
4
Bundle the compliance calendar
Annual report reminders and filings, good-standing monitoring, and document storage turn a $99 agent into a $200-plus compliance relationship. The agent role makes you the natural home for every state deadline the client fears.
5
Grow through the formation pipeline
Business formation services, accountants, attorneys, and formation-focused creators all need a reliable agent to recommend, and wholesale partner pricing makes recommending you easy. Every formation season compounds the book, and churn only happens when businesses die.
6
Expand state by state deliberately
Each new state requires its own address and registration, so expand where your client demand actually points (neighboring states, then the popular formation states). Multi-state coverage is what wins the bigger clients: firms and services managing entities everywhere.

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Your first move

Meet your state's registered agent requirements including commercial agent registration where required, build the mail-scanning and alert operation, and grow through formation partners who need an agent to recommend.

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