South Carolina Registered Agent
When you choose Northwest as your South Carolina Registered Agent, you get instant service, Privacy by Default®, and a business address. And if you want more, you can get a domain name, website, email, and phone number for free.
Want to learn more about what a registered agent does in South Carolina? We'll explain the South Carolina Secretary of State’s requirements, what your registered agent should do for you, and how to change your registered agent in South Carolina.
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 Domain, Website, Email & Business Phone
What Is a South Carolina Registered Agent?
A South Carolina registered agent is a person or company that you designate 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, South Carolina’s state statutes (Title 33 Section 33-5-101), registered agents are legally required in South Carolina. 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 South Carolina Registered Agent?
There are two ways to change your registered agent in South Carolina.
- Hire us and we’ll complete the change of agent form for you for free.
- Do it yourself and file a Notice of Change of Registered Agent form with the South Carolina Secretary of State. There is a $10 fee to file this form.
Why Northwest Is the Best Registered Agent in South Carolina
Our South Carolina 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.
And if you want more? Add free trials of any of these options at checkout:
- Domain Name: Choose a domain name from a list of popular extensions (like .com and .net).
- Website: We provide a pre-built business website, customizable using an open source platform.
- Business Email Address: Create up to 10 business email addresses of your choosing. They’ll end in your domain name for branding ease.
- Phone Number: Keep your personal line private by using a business phone number for client communications.
How to Order South Carolina 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 South Carolina registered agent service once your business registration filing with the South Carolina Secretary of State is complete.
About a year later, we’ll send you an invoice for another year of South Carolina 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 South Carolina registered agent service or paying a bill but for keeping up with South Carolina corporate compliance.
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South Carolina Registered Agent FAQs
- To become a legitimate, registered South Carolina business, the state requires that you appoint a registered agent in South Carolina.
- The South Carolina Secretary of State will reject your filing if you don’t appoint a South Carolina registered agent.
- The reason for this requirement is that the state and the public need a way to legally serve your business in South Carolina.
Yes, you can be your own registered agent in South Carolina. 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 South Carolina 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 South Carolina clients’ documents from our office here in Charleston, SC.
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 5 FREE scans of regular business mail a year. You can request any additional documents to be forwarded at a per document rate of $15.
A process server will deliver a summons form (basically instructions for responding to the lawsuit) and a complaint form (this describes who is suing, the reasoning behind the lawsuit, and what the person or entity suing want from the lawsuit—typically this is an amount of money) to a South Carolina registered agent’s address. The registered agent will sign the process server’s documents acknowledging receipt of the lawsuit. If you’ve hired us, within minutes of receiving service of process, we’ll upload the document to your account and you’ll instantly receive an email prompting you to log into your account.
You can do a South Carolina business name search on the state’s website to find any company’s registered agent of record.
- Type in the company name you are trying to look up.
- Look at the SC registered agent name and registered office street address.
NOTE: If you want to legally notify a SC business through their registered agent service, just send a certified letter directly to their registered agent name and registered office address.
In South Carolina, to resign as a registered agent, you need to submit two copies of the Resignation of Agent for Service of Process form to the South Carolina SOS. For a more detailed walkthrough, you can refer to our guide on how to resign as a registered agent in South Carolina.