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Northwest Registered Agent offers a variety of free LLC operating agreement templates. However, we can save you $225 on LLC formation services compared to Northwest.
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Every limited liability company (LLC) should have an operating agreement. Whether you own a single-member LLC or you have several co-owners, your LLC’s operating agreement will describe details about the company’s ownership, management, and operations.
Our preferred option is using an operating agreement service. Many of the best LLC formation services also offer operating agreements, making this process more convenient than creating your own and much more affordable than hiring a lawyer to draft it.
Northwest is a popular company for basic operating agreement templates due to its free pricing model and personalized customer support. Let’s dig into the details of this service to find out if it’s the right one for you.
Some companies (like Northwest Registered Agent) offer operating agreement templates that you can fill out yourself. Meanwhile, some competitors provide full-service LLC operating agreement services, presenting each customer with a complete, fully customized document, usually at a much higher price point.
If you still need to form your LLC as well, there are several reputable companies that bundle company formation and operating agreement services together into money-saving bundles. That said, Northwest only offers operating agreement templates, but it’s a popular service for basic operating agreements. Read on to find out why.
Northwest Registered Agent’s operating agreement template (and its Northwest registered agent service) is frequently used by entrepreneurs for several reasons. Let’s start with a quick look at some pros and cons before we move into our more detailed analysis.
The first step when using Northwest Registered Agent’s LLC operating agreement service is to choose which of its many different templates you want to build from. With Northwest, you can select a state-specific operating agreement template, which is a feature not many competitors offer for free.
Northwest Registered Agent also has single-member, multi-member, and manager-managed operating agreement templates for each individual state. That means you can start with a single-member Maine LLC operating agreement template, one for a manager-managed Hawaii LLC, and all points in between. Northwest also offers some highly specialized templates, such as those for Wyoming close LLCs.
Many competing companies with operating agreement templates will only split them up by single-member and multi-member (and some of them don’t even do that much). We like how Northwest allows you to start the process of creating your operating agreement with a template that’s already customized with two crucial pieces of information.
Northwest was founded in 1998 out of Spokane, Washington. They’ve found a niche in being a medium-sized business and boast a motto of “We’re Just Not Annoying.” Their primary goal is to simplify business formation and registered agent services while being transparent with their customers.
Since its founding, Northwest has helped form around 2 million businesses, which is a higher volume of customers than many other LegalZoom alternatives. They share on their site that they’re currently working with upwards of 200 new LLCs and corporations each day. While there aren’t too many reviews online for the company (around 800), most of the ones we found were positive and aligned with the mission and values promised by Northwest.
Northwest offers phone and email support. You can fill out a form on their site to send an email. While it took nearly 24 hours to receive an email back, the response was detailed, and the rep went beyond simply answering our question and checking off an email response.
We also called them. The representative who answered the phone took the time to ask for details so that he could give us the most accurate answer. Whereas some competitors in this industry outsource their customer support to large, anonymous call centers, we appreciate Northwest’s commitment to providing personalized customer service.
The entire point of using an operating agreement service is to make the process more convenient than it is to create your own, while also saving you money over hiring an attorney to create it. Thankfully, Northwest Registered Agent’s operating agreement template has an intuitive user interface that makes it simple to create the document you need. All you need to do is select your desired template and follow Northwest Registered Agent’s step-by-step instructions.
Northwest Registered Agent’s LLC operating agreement service has a few different routes to choose your template. Our preferred option begins with selecting your state from the drop-down menu about ⅓ of the way down the operating agreement service page. After you select your state, scroll down toward the bottom of the resulting page and choose either single-member, multi-member, or manager-managed (some states, like Wyoming, also have additional templates for more specialized LLCs).
If you’d rather, you can also select a generic operating agreement (or a non-state-specific version of the single-member, multi-member, or manager-managed templates) instead, using the links at the top of the operating agreement service page. Either way, you’ll then be able to download a .pdf file of your chosen operating agreement template and fill it in with your company’s details. That’s all there is to it!
Compared to some companies in this industry that have thousands of reviews available online, we only found a few hundred for Northwest Registered Agent. That said, while the volume of reviews isn’t as high as some competitors, it’s tough to complain about the quality of feedback this company receives.
On Google, we found around 800 reviews for Northwest with an average rating score of 4.7 out of 5. We discovered that its customers like the customer support they receive and the lack of pushy sales tactics. There are annual report services with larger volumes of customer feedback (for instance, we have 12,000+ positive customer reviews available online), but not many with a higher quality of reviews than Northwest Registered Agent.
Overall, Northwest Registered Agent is a viable option for basic LLC operating agreement templates. We appreciate this company’s free pricing model, and the customized templates by state and management style are helpful. If you want to take a look at Northwest Registered Agent’s competitors for LLC operating agreement templates, or you want to check out full-service options or combo packs with business formation service, our guide to the best LLC operating agreement services has the information you seek.
Disclaimer: The content on this page is for information purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, or accounting advice. If you have specific questions about any of these topics, seek the counsel of a licensed professional.
Written by Team ZenBusiness
ZenBusiness has helped people start, run, and grow over 700,000 dream companies. The editorial team at ZenBusiness has over 20 years of collective small business publishing experience and is composed of business formation experts who are dedicated to empowering and educating entrepreneurs about owning a company.
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