Iowa Registered Agent
All corporations and LLCs in Iowa are required by law to have a local registered agent to stay in good standing. With professional Registered Agent Service through Northwest, we’ll handle the compliance stuff for you, so you can run your business without distraction. Want more? Northwest is the only registered agent that can provide your business services from domains to DBAs easily, and all in-house. We provide your business with a local address at our office in Des Moines where all your state paperwork can go—and we’ll forward that legal mail to wherever you’re located. Our guide below goes over Iowa's requirements for a registered agent, how to change your registered agent, and why hiring a professional service is usually your best bet.
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- Same-Day Scans, Instant Notifications
- Privacy by Default®
- Business Address
- Instant Domain, Website, Email & Business Phone
What Is an Iowa Registered Agent?
Your Iowa registered agent is the person or business that is tasked with accepting important legal mail, including potential lawsuits, on your business’s behalf. You can hire a registered agent service to do this job, appoint another individual, or do it yourself. Iowa law requires all registered businesses to maintain a registered agent.
The legal requirements for your Iowa registered agent are listed in Iowa Code § 489.108. Basically, your registered agent must:
- Maintain physical address in Iowa, no P.O. Boxes.
- Be open during normal business hours.
- Accept important legal documents on your business’ behalf—and get them to you, immediately.
The registered agent for an Iowa business should do more than just receive mail. At Northwest, we go above and beyond the minimum to ensure top speed, security, privacy and support.
Hire or designate an agent first and then do your business registration filing with the Secretary of State. The state won’t allow you to form an LLC or corporation without a registered agent.
When you hire Northwest as your registered agent in Iowa, you’ll find all the forms and instructions you need to complete your filing instantly after you place an order.
Anyone forming an Iowa limited liability company or a corporation in Iowa needs a registered agent, because:
- State law requires all registered businesses to appoint one.
- The Secretary of State will reject your business filing if you don’t appoint a registered agent.
- A registered agent gives the public and the state a reliable way to contact your business.
You can be your own business’s registered agent in Iowa. But due to the requirements, many business owners choose hiring a registered agent service instead. Why? Because while being your own registered agent costs nothing, the name and address of a registered agent in Iowa becomes part of the public record. Plus, a registered agent must be maintain regular business hours at their office address to accept service of process.
- Perform an Iowa business name search.
- Use the name of the company you’re trying to look up.
- Look at the Iowa registered agent’s name and registered office address.
If you want to legally notify a business through their registered agent, simply send a letter as certified mail to the registered agent at their registered office address.
Serving a registered agent is legal proof that you were notified of an event. It doesn’t matter if the company sees the documents or even gets them from their registered agent. You were notified if your registered agent signs for the documents; it’s a serious responsibility.
- A process server, the county sheriff, or any third party comes to the registered office and hands the agent the documents (service of process), which the agent signs for.
- The process server then gives an affidavit (a receipt of service) to the court as confirmation that they served the agent.
Note: If you’ve hired Northwest, you’ll receive your documents well before the server hands in their affidavit to the court—because we scanned them to your online account within minute of having been served.
How Do I Change a Registered Agent in Iowa?
The process to change your registered agent is pretty straightforward in Iowa. Start by filing a Statement of Change of Registered Office and/or Registered Agent form with Iowa’s Secretary of State. Or hire us, and let us do it for you.
Why Northwest Is the Best Registered Agent in Iowa
At Northwest, we do business the right way. We’re dedicated to getting you your docs fast, protecting your privacy and offering you support. Here’s how:
- Same-Day scans, instant notifications: We accept and scan your docs at our local office the day we receive them. We notify you instantly, and reach out to you if essential mail goes unread.
- Privacy by Default®: We automatically minimize the exposure of and access to your personal data. If we can put our address on a public doc instead of yours, we do. If we don’t have to list your personal info, we don’t. We have tough privacy policies to keep your data safe and private. And we never sell your data.
- Free limited mail forwarding: Of course we’ll get you your state and legal mail. That’s our job. But what if we get some of your regular business mail? It happens a lot—clients and businesses trying to connect with you via your registered agent. We scan five documents per year for FREE. We can also scan additional mail at a per document rate of $15.
- Corporate Guides®: Have questions? We have answers. Our guides are business experts whose sole job is to provide phone and email support for all your toughest business questions.
As the nation’s top choice for starting businesses easily and affordably, we also offer in-house services to build your business’s online identity:
- Domain name: Pick a domain name for your business with your choice of extension (like .com and .net).
- Website: We provide a pre-built business website for you to customize using an open source platform, so it’s yours to own whether hosted by us or anyone you choose.
- Business email address: Create up to 10 business email addresses. For branding ease, they’ll all end in your chosen domain name.
- Phone number: Keep your personal line private by establishing a business phone number for client communications.
- Web hosting: Our web hosting service includes SSL security at no additional cost.
We scan all documents locally from our office in downtown Des Moines, IA.
We scan everything in real time at our local office. No mail gets forwarded to big processing centers or left to stack up for weeks.
- No, that’s not what we do, but we’ll try to help you if at all possible. Call us!
- The postal service might not deliver your mail to us if you don’t have a lease at our office.
- If we happen to get mail for you, however, we’ll scan it to you in real time.
Yes. We’re the only national registered agent that allows our clients to list our address for everything when you’re doing a filing, helping you to keep you private address off public records.
How to Order Iowa Registered Agent Service
You sign up online, clicking on one of the buttons or links that says HIRE US.
We collect the first year’s fee for Registered Agent Service up front.
For new businesses, we’ll become your registered agent in Iowa once your business registration filing with the Iowa Secretary of State is complete.
About a year later, we’ll send you an invoice for another year of Iowa Registered Agent Service. If you want to keep using us, great; if you don’t, you can easily cancel.
It’s easy to add registered agent services in other states when your business expands, because we have offices in every state. We don’t farm out work (or your info) to other companies—wherever you are, WE are your registered agent.
We make your account a real go-to resource for you, not just for Registered Agent Service or paying a bill, but for keeping up with all Iowa corporate compliance requirements.
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