LegalZoom vs IncFile, which should you choose for legal problems happening to your business?
No matter how big your business is, it will always require professional legal service. At the time being, to minify expenses and increase the convenience for clients, legal companies have a tendency to provide online services to help you solve legal problems.
In this article, we will give you an insight into the two leading online law firms LegalZoom vs IncFile. You will know the type and quality of services they have to offer, their assessment, as well as their benefits and drawbacks.
Nevertheless, do not be afraid that we would leave you alone and struggling with this pile of information. Instead, we would give you detailed information on when and how to work with LegalZoom and IncFile.
We have to ensure that you will be able to know which is better or more suitable for you – LegalZoom or IncFile.
And here we go!
IncFile vs LegalZoom – Which Will Win?
Content Summary
What Is LegalZoom vs IncFile?
Both of them are online legal technology Limited Liability Company (LLC). Their services, such as setting up a company, filing business taxes, and many other legal services will cost small businesses a little fixed sum.
These online legal services providers offer affordable prices so that they are a very suitable choice for new and small businesses. Instead of hiring a legal experts from the traditional law firms and paying a rate of around 250 to 1000 USD per hour, you can save a lot of money with the same type of service on the Internet platform.
However, knowing which in these two excellent firms is better for your business will require you to understand your business and its legal necessities.
Unless you are fully aware of the sort of legal service you are seeking, create a requirements checklist for your business before reading the following contents.
Without further ado, it is time to take a closer look at LegalZoom and IncFile.
LegalZoom
LegalZoom Logo
LegalZoom Overview
Since 2001, LegalZoom has supported well more than 4 million businesses and clients with their legal necessities and matters. They serve as a one-stop legal agent to respond with small business needs. As a client, you can hire them for:
- Completing the paperwork of a business foundation.
- Protecting copyright and registering a patent of invention.
- Registering your trademark.
- Drafting and creating legal documents.
- Review of legal documents.
- Lawyer consultation.
- Prepare real estate documents.
LegalZoom Services
There are four main categories of their services:
Business Formation
This service is what you need when founding a new business. Up to now, LegalZoom has helped more than one million businesses to be born!
There will be following sub-categories in this first main category:
- Supporting customers to create a Limited Liability Company (LLC) in a quick and convenient process at a reasonable cost.
- Offering incorporation services:
- Assisting customers to launch a C corporation or an S corporation.
- Giving information on distributing shares to investors, stocks assignment, and many other considerations.
- Providing an all-inclusive legal service pack to found a Nonprofit, which allows you to get donor support as the first step.
- Helping with your brand name – LegalZoom lets customers assign a Doing Business As (DBA) name and build their own business brand from scratch. Beside, LegalZoom also perform other related services such as entity name availability check for free, and entity name reservation services.
- Giving clients effective support on getting a federal tax ID, which is officially known as Employer Identification Number (EIN), and providing all the necessary information regarding your EIN.
This tax ID is essential for most businesses as it is compulsory in business banking and helps to protect your business against identity theft.
Intellectual property protection
This service will guarantee all of your intellectual property rights.
But you are not sure about what kind of security you will need? Do not worry. LegalZoom will give you useful advice.
They can help you with the following protection services:
- Trademark registration – LegalZoom will guide clients to find the name, logo, or slogan they want to trademark. If there is any validity, users can register for exclusive rights to that brand name, logo, or slogan.
- Copyright registration – With this service, you can have the right over protecting your creative products against any infringement coming from your rivals.
- Provisional patent application – LegalZoom guides customers to file for a temporary patent, which establishes early legal protectorship for their inventions with an earlier filing date.
- Utility Patent – LegalZoom assists clients in registering a patent to stop their competitors from utilizing, trading, or faking their inventions. You will be able to get your completed utility patent application complying with the USPTO. Besides, you will also get advice from a USPTO-registered patent attorney or agent and receive technical drawings of your invention by a professional illustrator.
- Design Patent – This service helps customers to get the file for a patent which determines who can create, utilize, or trade their design.
Along with your design protection, you can also get professional guidance and preparation as well as technical illustrations of your design that meet USPTO requirements.
Personal legal services
Get useful advice to solve your personal legal problems.
Apart from legal business service, LegalZoom also caters to your personal legal necessities. And, here are some of their personal legal services:
- Marriage and divorce – Use this service if you want to
- Change your or your child’s name.
- Identify whether the assets you and your spouse are having are individual or shared property.
- Complete an uncontested divorce.
- Estate planning services – this is a broad field involving a variety of services such as:
- Last will and testament:
- Assign someone to handle your work and guarantee that your heirs get their rightful inheritance.
- Decide who can have your possessions. Clarify how you want to give your property to your beneficiaries.
- Determine who you would like to raise your kids. Nominate the legal guardians for your children when you and your wife/husband can not be there.
- Other estate management.
- Living will (Advanced Health Care Directive):
- Make your own choices for life support – Provide instructions about the care you do or don’t want at the end of your life.
- Obviate misunderstanding and arguments – Because all of your decisions are in words, nobody can go against your wishes legally.
- Use a health care power of attorney – You can also choose somebody to speak on your behalf regarding health care issues.
- Healthcare power of attorney: appoint a person to be your representative in case you can not determine matters on your health care.
- Financial power of attorney:
- Select a representative of you to determine critical issues.
- A power of attorney is a much more economical and easier replacement to guardianship procedures and avoid trials.
- As planned, your finances will always be under your control, and mitigate as much unexpected elements as possible.
- Living trust:
- It is the best way to remove probate. Save more money for your family by avoiding prolonged and pricey court procedures.
- Your private and economic issues remain personal. What you had, who you borrowed, and who will be your heir are unpublicized.
- Get your problems solved by professional lawyers. Avoid the courts by assigning a trustee to be responsible for your finances following your guides.
- Pet protection agreement:
- Designate the guardian of your pets so that the judge can determine who will take care of your pets.
- Leave a sum of money for the caring of your pet – Ensure that the new caretaker can afford for food, a vet, or other fees.
- Give instructions on protecting any of your current and future pets.
- Real estate services will support clients with real estate planning and management. You can draft not only a residential lease agreement but also a property deed effortlessly.
- Immigration and Work – When it comes to working or living abroad, the process of getting a Green card or finding an appropriate Work visa is complicated. In addition, you may need some immigration attorney consultation as well.
Then, LegalZoom will do all of those for you.
Attorney Advice
This prepaid service gives clients legal advice through a 30-minute phone consultation with an expert lawyer.
There are two plans for you to subscribe: the first is personal legal advisory, and the second is business legal advisory.
You just need to pay a monthly fee and create a schedule. Do not need to worry about any extra expenses or having to queue.
LegalZoom: Advantages and Disadvantages
No matter how famous it is, LegalZoom will still have not only benefits but also drawbacks.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| Provide a wide range of both personal and business legal services | Customer service gets a lot of bad reviews. |
| Allow any time plan cancellation and a prorated refund | Business formation service is expensive. |
| 60-day money-back guarantee | Some services are not available for one-time legal help. |
| Excellent legal advisory plan | |
| Free bankruptcy evaluation | |
| Free business name validity check | |
| Free immigration lawyer advisory |
LegalZoom Pricing
Let see how much does LegalZoom cost you with their service.
IncFile
IncFile logo
IncFile Overview
Founded in 2004, IncFile is an online legal services firm which helps small businesses to solve their legal requirements. Their services are adaptive to the law of the state where the companies are operating.
With IncFile, clients can get helped with:
- Business entity foundation.
- Filing taxes.
- Filing compliance documents.
IncFile Services
Like LegalZoom, IncFile’s services system also has four main categories with a number of sub-services.
Business Formation
IncFile advises clients who are unsure about their desired type of business. After the customers have made a decision, they help them to fulfill their wishes. The details are as below:
- Giving customers advice on their decision and the procedure of creating a Limited Liability Company (LLC).
- Assisting you in establishing an S- Corporation or a C- Corporation.
- Supporting you to launch your nonprofit quickly at ease.
Company Changes Services
As your business evolves, there will be many changes happening.
This can involve services such as:
- Amendment – Making changes to membership, company’s name or address, the number of authorized shares issued or stated business activities.
- Corporate dissolution – Handling the paperwork regarding your company dissolution and other procedures for removing information/responsibilities.
- If you want to make an extension on your activities to a new country, IncFile will assist you to get the necessary foreign qualification.
- Drafting and submitting for a Doing Business As (DBA) or a brand name to protect your business name.
Business Compliance Services
To comply with the state, you will have many things to do.
Assure your business always remains in good standing with:
- Preparing and filing annual LLC or Corporate report required by your secretary of state.
- Ordering a registered agent service. You can have a resident or statutory agent to handle your important legal works and documents.
- Getting a certificate of good standing with all of the necessary procedures and documents completed legally by IncFile.
- Business license research package will consist of permits and tax registration, and any business licenses needed for business activities at the places you indicated.
Internal Revenue Service Filings
IRS Filing is compulsory to any businesses.
IncFile will do research to make sure that the desired region is suitable for their client’s services. Next, they will support customers to order and file their Federal Employment Identification Number (EIN) (also known as a Tax ID number) and Business tax returns.
By doing so, they reduce your burden, lessen errors, and avoid adverse consequences.
IncFile: Advantages and Disadvantages
Of course, IncFile also has their own pros and cons.
Like LegalZoom or any other online legal firms, IncFile also has some certain benefits and drawbacks.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| Good expense for business formationHave tax filing servicesDiscount for filing business and personal taxNotify compliance deadlinesFree 12-month registered agent service with business formationExcellent customer service | No attorney advisory nor intellectual property protection service |
IncFile Pricing
| Category | Services | Price |
| Business Formation(Excluding state fees) | LLCS- CorporationC- CorporationNonprofit | 49 – 299 USD49 – 299 USD49 – 299 USD49 – 299 USD |
| Company Changes Services(Excluding state fees) | AmendmentCorporate DissolutionForeign qualificationDBA/ Fictitious business name | 99 USD149 USD149 USD99 USD |
| Business Compliance Services(Excluding state fees) | Annual ReportRegistered AgentCertificate of Good StandingBusiness license research package | 88 USD119 USD49 USD99 USD |
| IRS Filings | EINBusiness tax returnPersonal tax return | 70 USD599 USD299 USD |
Unfortunately, IncFile provides no separate free service to their customers.
Detailed Comparison: LegalZoom VS IncFile
Let’s compare IncFile vs LegalZoom to find out who is the winner.
Number of Services Comparison
During your job, you may not want to work with too many different companies, and a company that can provide all you need is great.
| Services | Does LegalZoom provide? | Does IncFile provide? |
| New business foundation – LLC, Corporation and Nonprofit | Yes | Yes |
| EIN and Business license | Yes | Yes |
| Registered agent | Yes | Yes |
| Prepare and file tax return | No | Yes |
| File for trademark, copyright or patent | Yes | No |
| Business compliance services | Yes | Yes |
| Custom legal forms | Yes | No |
| Personal legal services – power of attorney, wills and estate planning | Yes | No |
| Talk with an attorney | Yes | No |
In terms of service variety, we can easily see that LegalZoom is doing better than IncFile.
Both LegalZoom and IncFile provide the business foundation and compliance services, EIN and Business License, and registered agent service.
Nevertheless, only LegalZoom provides services in the field of intellectual property rights and protection, legal form customization, and personal legal services. LegalZoom also allows their customers to talk with lawyers frequently, which is often in high demand. Meanwhile, IncFile lacks all of these important services.
IncFile only wins LegalZoom at one point – prepare and file a tax return for not only businesses but also individuals.
Price Comparison
Price sometimes is as important as quality!
| Service | LegalZoom | IncFile |
| LLC | 79 USD | 49 – 299 USD |
| Nonprofit | 99 – 359 USD | 49 – 299 USD |
| EIN | 79 USD | 70 USD |
| Registered agent | 159 USD | 119 USD |
| Annual report | 55 USD | 88 USD |
Looking at the cost of the same services these two companies share, we can see that the prices LegalZoom offers are often higher than IncFile.
As it stated in the terms of use, LegalZoom allows their clients to have a 60-day money-back guarantee, anytime cancellation, and a prorated chargeback. However, some clients complained that LegalZoom is a bit lacking in terms of handling the refund procedure.
Besides, the high price of LegalZoom’s service always involves the compulsory and essential operating agreements that the state requires. Meanwhile, IncFile is free from the above mentioned issues.
To sum up, if you want to be loyal with better but more expensive services, you can choose LegalZoom. Vice versa, IncFile is cheaper but your satisfaction level may be lower.
Speed of services
In terms of business, time is money. Therefore, speedity is critical.
In terms of speed, IncFile is obviously the winner.
When performing the same short procedures, IncFile is often only faster than LegalZoom a bit. Nonetheless, with the long process of forming a new business entity, you can see very clearly in the below illustrations that LegalZoom is remarkably slower than IncFile.
Meanwhile IncFile will response immediately on the next business day, it usually takes LegalZoom around a half to one month to handle a new business establishment. However, if you want things to be done faster, you can choose to an additional fee.
| Company | Time to process new business filings |
| IncFile | Next Business day |
| LegalZoom | 10 to 30 Business days |
Experience
In the field of law, experience is quite essential.
In this aspect, LegalZoom overwhelms and crushes IncFile! Entering the 19th years of experience, LegalZoom has helped more than 4 million businesses since 2001.
Meanwhile, the number of businesses helped by IncFile is just around 1/16 in comparison with LegalZoom. It is a disappointing number to IncFile as it was founded only three years after LegalZoom.
| LegalZoom | IncFile |
| Founded in 2001Supported more than 4 million businesses | Founded in 2004Supported more than 250,000 businesses |
Ease of Use
Make sure that you can use it before paying for it!
Both LegalZoom and IncFile are easy to use. As online companies, they all design and optimize their websites very well. Users can find everything they need and what these companies can offer them in detail on their websites.
As a bonus, they also provide order tracking feature. Thus, you can relax and supervise your order status and updates in real-time without effort.
However, I can give out a small conclusion that the layout of LegalZoom is simpler with brief and easy-to-track information. On the other hand, the layout of IncFile can be a bit more complicated at first glance, but it gives users more information.
Customer Reviews
Customer Reviews are an important factor to consider before you use any service.
When referring to customer reviews, it is natural that there will always be conflicting and controversial information flows about these two companies. This is especially confusing in the case of LegalZoom, which has millions of users.
With millions of reviews, LegalZoom has received all kinds of positive, negative, and neutral reviews. In which, the majority of complaints are about poor customer service quality. Although the amount of good review takes the majority, a small proportion of a few thousands of generic and negative comments can cause confusion to the overview of LegalZoom quality.
On the contrary, although IncFile has a much lower review count than LegalZoom, its positive review rate is dramatically higher with a negligible quantity of bad reviews. Furthermore, a lot of clients also complimented their customer support, response time and speed.
Cases of Using LegalZoom vs IncFile?
After gathering all the needed information, now you know the use cases of IncFile vs LegalZoom.
Both LegalZoom and IncFile are excellent online legal service platforms, but each of them still has their own pros and cons as listed above.
Thus, customers need to consider their needs before making the right choice. And you will need to read the following analyses for that very purpose.
When will you need LegalZoom?
LegalZoom will be the perfect choice for you in the following cases:
- You need legal help on a regular basis. (Because LegalZoom provides monthly and annual plans, as well as frequent attorney consultations.)
- You want to draft legal forms such as a custom contract.
- Your business involves intellectual property and copyright protection. For example, you are working in creativity and invention fields and usually need to file for copyright, trademark, and patent.
- Your work often requires a variety of legal services. (Since LegalZoom is famous for being a one-stop station for legal services.)
- Your concern is mainly about the company’s experience. (LegalZoom is the oldest firm and has assisted most businesses in this field.)
When will you need IncFile?
I recommend using IncFile in the below cases:
- You need fast responses and counseling on the business foundation and compliance.
- Your legal needs are often one-time and seldom.
- Your business meets troubles with business tax returns issues.
- You need to save your budget as much as possible.
- You care about reviews of clients more than the experience of the company.
What are their similarities?
LegalZoom and IncFile may have many differences as I have pointed and scattered throughout the comparison part. But anyway, they share a few similarities as follows.
- Affordable – Compared to offline legal services such as hiring a personal lawyer for some hours, their pricings save you a great deal. This is especially great for beginners, and whoever does not have much budget for legal issues.
- Efficient – The price does not always match the quality (in a good way). These online service firms cost you less but still provide you much! Not only the quantity but also the quality of the service are great.
- Great professional experience – Their staff are all experts and experienced in the legal fields. Registered agents are also available in a number of states, so you do not have to worry about their validity.
- Provision of necessary educational resource – there are sufficient information and knowledge covering most topics you need. (For example the necessity and requirements of a file; what you need to do in specific cases; how a process works, etc.)
- Guidance from choosing to use their services – Their staff are very dedicated and enthusiastic. You will never have to struggle with choices and paperwork. Instead, there are always support and specific instructions when you select and use any kind of service.
Final Words on IncFile VS LegalZoom
In conclusion, IncFile and LegalZoom are both excellent, economical, and effective online legal services platforms. However, I think choosing the one that meets your business (or personal) legal necessities won’t be too difficult for you after reading the above article thoroughly.
Now that you have collected all of the necessary information, it is time to make a wise choice.
Thanks for reading!
