Missouri Registered Agent
Missouri requires any corporation or LLC doing business in the state to have a registered agent for compliance purposes. Hiring a professional Missouri Registered Agent Service like Northwest means having someone to take care of all that extra red tape for you, so you can spend your time on things that really matter, like the day-to-day running of your business.
When you hire Northwest, you get a real Missouri address for your company’s legal mail—which we can forward to wherever you need it to go. Want more? Northwest is the only registered agent that can provide your business services from domains to DBAs easily, and all in-house.
When You Want More
$125 a Year Every Year
Northwest is the choice of professionals for registered agent service.
- Same-Day Scans, Instant Notifications
- Privacy by Default®
- Business Address & Free Mail Forwarding
- Instant Domain, Website, Email & Business Phone
What Is a Missouri Registered Agent?
A Missouri registered agent is a person or company that you choose to receive legal mail (like service of process) on behalf of your business. Registered agents provide the public with an official and reliable way to contact your business.
If your business gets served with a lawsuit, a 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 Missouri Law 351.370, whether your business is a limited liability company (LLC), C-corp, or S-corp, the state of Missouri requires the same from a registered agent:
- Must be a state resident or a company that provides registered agent services.
- Must maintain a registered office (a physical address in Missouri).
- Must be available to accept legal documents (service of process) during normal business hours.
Note: In order to accept the appointment of service, a registered agent in Missouri must either sign the appointing document or submit a written statement to the Secretary of State acknowledging the appointment.
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 more.
How Do I Change My Missouri Registered Agent?
Changing your registered agent is a straightforward process:
- You’ll file a Change of Agent form with the Missouri Secretary of State.
- If you place an order with us, the form will be available instantly. We’ll even pay and file the change of agent filing for you.
- It’s a simple change, but for more info, see our guide on how to change your registered agent in Missouri.
Why Northwest Is the Best Registered Agent in Missouri
Our Missouri 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 Missouri 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 Missouri Registered Agent Service up front.
For new businesses, once your business registration filing with the Missouri Secretary of State is complete, we’ll become your Missouri registered agent.
About a year later, we’ll send an invoice for another year of Missouri 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 if your business expands. 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 Missouri Registered Agent Service or paying a bill but for keeping up with corporate paperwork formalities like the Missouri Annual Report corporations must file.
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Missouri Registered Agent FAQs
- If your business is web-based or doesn’t have a physical presence within Missouri, the business still needs a registered agent located inside state lines.
- Some Missouri business owners hire registered agent services because their business doesn’t keep regular business hours in which service of process or official mail can be delivered.
- Privacy. Many business owners don’t want their home or business address listed on public record as a point of contact, so they hire a registered agent.
- Avoiding distractions. Listing an employee or family member as your registered agent could be a mistake, if you don’t want them knowing the intimate details of lawsuits your business might be entangled in. Worse, just having a process server hand them a document is proof that you got it, whether they actually get it to you in a timely manner or not. You could miss a court deadline before realizing it.
- If you don’t want the added responsibility of tracking mail and notices from the Missouri Secretary of State, you can hire a registered agent to track the important paperwork for you. Having an online account to help maintain your business is often worth the nominal registered agent fee.
Yes, you can be your own registered agent in Missouri. However, the requirements mean most business owners prefer to hire a registered agent service instead. Why? Being your own registered agent might be free, but a Missouri registered agent’s name and address becomes part of the public record. Plus, a 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 Missouri clients’ documents on-site at our registered office in Harrisonville, MO.
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 a unique address or suite number. Any mail we receive on your behalf would come 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.
Definitely! If you own a corporation (including a nonprofit) in Missouri, you’ll need to file your Missouri Annual Report each year. As part of our Registered Agent Service, we’ll not only send you a reminder, but we’ll give you the form you need to file and instructions on how to file it.
You should hire us first and then form your LLC or corporation because the Missouri Secretary of State will reject your business registration filing if you don’t. 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 Missouri 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 Missouri business name search.
- Type in the name of the company you’re searching for.
- In the results, you’ll find the registered agent’s name and registered office street address.
If you want to legally notify a business through their Missouri registered agent service, just send a certified letter directly to the registered agent name and registered office address.
In Missouri, to resign as a registered agent, you need to submit two copies of the Statement of Resignation of Registered Agent form to the Missouri Secretary of State’s Corporations Division. For a more detailed walkthrough, you can refer to our guide on how to resign as a registered agent in Missouri.