Ohio Registered Agent

Yes, you can be your own registered agent in Ohio. However, after considering the registered agent requirements most business owners elect to hire a registered agent service instead. Why? While being your own registered agent will cost you $0, an Ohio registered agent’s name and address becomes part of the public record.  Additionally, the registered agent is required to be available to accept service of process during normal business hours five days a week.

We accept and scan all of our Ohio clients’ documents on-site at our registered office in North Canton, OH.

Definitely! We’re the only national registered agent service that allows our clients to list our address for everything when you’re doing a filing to keep your private address off public records.

We understand that businesses and clients sometimes reach out to you through your registered agent. That’s why we give you five FREE scans of regular business mail a year. That’s in addition to your legal and Secretary of State mail, which is included with registered agent service.

You should hire us first and then form your Ohio LLC or corporation because the Ohio Secretary of State will reject your business registration filing if you don’t list your OH registered agent. You’ll find all the forms and instructions you need to complete your filing instantly after you place an order.

Service on your registered agent is legal proof that you were notified. Regardless of whether you actually receive the documents your Ohio registered agent signs for, once they accept the documents, you’re considered notified. This is a serious responsibility that we do not take lightly. This is how it works:

• A process server, the county sheriff, or any third party will walk into our office and hand us the documents, which we sign for. This delivery is known as service of process.
• The process server then gives an affidavit (a receipt of service) to the court as confirmation that they served us.

Note: If you’ve hired Northwest, you’ve received your documents long before the process server hands in their affidavit to the court—because we scanned them to your online account within minutes of having been served.

You can do an Ohio business name search to find a company’s registered agent.

• Type in the company name you are trying to look up.
• Look at the OH registered agent name and registered office street address.

NOTE: If you want to legally notify someone through their Ohio registered agent service, just send a certified letter directly to the registered agent name and registered office address.

In Ohio, to resign as a registered agent, you need to submit a Statutory Agent Update Form to the Ohio Secretary of State’s Business Services Division. For a more detailed walk-through, you can refer to our guide on how to resign as a registered agent in Ohio.

The cost of a registered agent in Ohio will depend on who you use. Our registered agent service is $125/year, and that price has stayed the same for decades. If you decide to be your own registered agent, you won’t pay anything. However, you will have to list your private information on state paperwork that becomes part of the public record.