West Virginia Registered Agent
West Virginia requires all registered businesses in the state to have a West Virginia registered agent. You can act as your own registered agent, or you can hire someone to do it for you. Want more? Northwest is the only registered agent that can provide your business with elite services like domains, websites, DBAs, phone service, and more.
Learn why you should use a professional registered agent like Northwest, and what your West Virginia registered agent can do for you. Or hire us and get the best registered agent service and a free domain name for the first year—a perfect combo for a growing business.
When You Want More
$125 a Year Every Year
Here’s what clients get with Northwest Registered Agent Service:
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Use Our Address, Not Yours
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Same-Day Digital Scans of Business Mail
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One Year of Free Domain Registration
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90 Day Trial of Website, Phone & Email Services
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Ask Our On Call Business Experts Anything
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Same Price Every Year, No Upsells
What Is a West Virginia Registered Agent?
A registered agent in West Virginia is a person or company that is designated to receive legal mail (like service of process) on behalf of your business. Registered agents exist to provide an official and reliable way to contact your business.
If your business is ever served with a lawsuit, the process server will deliver the paperwork directly to your registered agent. At that point, your business is legally considered “served.” The registered agent should then forward you your mail, quickly and securely.
Per West Virginia law (WV Code § 31B-1-108 and WV Code § 31D-5-501), all state-registered businesses are required to have a West Virginia registered agent. At a minimum, your registered agent must list a physical address on the public record and be present at that address during business hours. But ideally, your registered agent should do a lot more.
Legal Requirements for West Virginia Registered Agents
Whether your business is a West Virginia LLC, West Virginia corporation, or some other legal business registered with West Virginia’s Secretary of State, the registered agent requirements are the same. Registered agents in West Virginia must:
- Be a state resident or a person authorized to transact business in the state.
- Accept legal documents (service of process) during normal business hours.
How Do I Change My Registered Agent in West Virginia?
There are two ways to change your registered agent in West Virginia.
- Hire us and we’ll complete the change of agent form for you for free.
- Do it yourself and file a Statement of Change form with the West Virginia SOS. There is a $15 fee to file this form.
Why Northwest Is the Best Registered Agent in West Virginia
Our West Virginia Registered Agent Service includes the tools you need to keep your business running without a hitch. When you hire Northwest as your registered agent, you get:
- Same-Day scans: We scan your legal docs the same day we receive them and reach out if your essential mail goes unread.
- Privacy by Default®: We list our business address on public docs to keep your personal info safe. And unlike those other guys, we never sell your data.
- Corporate Guides®: Have questions? We have answers. Our guides are business experts whose sole job is to provide support for all your 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.
How to Order West Virginia Registered Agent Service
You sign up online, clicking on one of the buttons or links that says HIRE US.
We collect the first year of the registered agent service fee up front.
For new businesses, we’ll become your West Virginia Registered Agent Service once your business registration filing with the state is complete.
About a year later, we’ll send you an invoice for another year of West Virginia Registered Agent Service. If you want to keep using us, great; if you don’t, you can easily cancel.
With offices in every state, we make it easy to add registered agent services anywhere in the country. 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 West Virginia Registered Agent Service or paying a bill but for keeping up with state corporate compliance.
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West Virginia Registered Agent FAQs
It’s all about due process. The reason businesses like LLCs and corporations have a registered agent is to make sure that every business in West Virginia can be served legal documents in the state.
Yes, you can be your own registered agent in West Virginia. However, after considering the registered agent requirements most business owners elect to hire a registered agent service instead. Why? Well although being your own registered agent will cost you $0, a West Virginia 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 5 days a week.
We accept and scan all of our West Virginia clients’ documents on-site at our registered office in Hinton, WV.
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 don’t want ALL of your business mail. It’s not what we do. And it wouldn’t serve you well. You wouldn’t have unique address or suite number. Any mail we receive on your behalf would come to to Northwest Registered Agent, care of you.
But we understand that businesses and clients sometimes reach out to you through your registered agent. Through us. That’s why we give you five FREE scans of regular business mail a year. You can request any additional documents to be forwarded at a per document rate of $15.
Service on your registered agent is legal proof that you were notified. Regardless of whether you actually receive the documents your West Virginia registered agent signs for, once they accept the documents, you’ve been 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 (service of process), which we sign for.
- 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 a West Virginia business name search on the state’s website.
- Type in the company name you are trying to look up.
- Look at the WV registered agent name and registered office street address.
If you want to legally notify someone through their registered agent service, just send a certified letter directly to the registered agent name and registered office address.
In West Virginia, to resign as a registered agent, you need to submit a Statement of Resignation of Registered Agent (with $15 for processing) to the West Virginia Secretary of State. For a more detailed walkthrough, you can refer to our guide on how to resign as a registered agent in West Virginia.