Colorado Registered Agents: Get the Lay of the Land
The great state of Colorado has plenty of registered agent choices (in addition to being your own registered agent). This page provides a high-level view of what a registered agent is, what they do, and how to select a good one. We also go over our favorite Colorado registered agents and why you should think twice before deciding to be your own registered agent.
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What is a Colorado Registered Agent?
A Colorado registered agent can be a person or entity designated to receive a company’s official and legal correspondences as well as any service of process. CRS 7-90-102 (55), (56) and (56.5), and section 7-90- 701 outline what is expected of a registered agent:
Individuals acting as registered agents:
- Must be 18 years or older.
- Must have their primary residence in Colorado (the residence must not be listed as a PO box).
Entities acting as registered agents:
- Must be usual place of business in Colorado with a physical address.
- Foreign entities must have authority to transact business in Colorado.
Additionally, all LLCs and corporations are required to have a Colorado registered agent. Failure to appoint and maintain a registered agent can result in fines for the business—and in some cases, its owners too.
Business Entities That Require a Colorado Registered Agent
All Colorado LLCs, corporations, and nonprofits are required by the Secretary of State to have a registered agent. Formation documents for these entities that do not have a Colorado registered agent listed will be rejected by the Secretary of State.
Businesses That Don’t
Generally speaking sole proprietorships and general partnerships do not need a registered agent; however, these business entities have less liability protections and can endanger your personal assets. If you are considering a sole proprietorship simply because you want to avoid paperwork and hiring a registered agent, consider the long-term consequences of tying your personal assets to your business.
Why You Should Hire a Professional Colorado Registered Agent
There are lots of good reasons to hire a professional Colorado Registered Agent. A good registered agent has intimate knowledge of state statutes. They will know how to protect your privacy and personal information. Also, a Colorado registered agent knows how to keep your company compliant and how to form and expand businesses.
Hire a Colorado Registered Agent Who Knows Colorado Statutes
You can be your own registered agent, but we highly recommend hiring a professional instead. Why? A Colorado registered agent is an expert in dealing with the Colorado Secretary of State, which can sometimes be tedious. But buyer beware—not everyone who says they can be your registered agent will do a good job. Law offices and CPAs often offer registered agent service as a way to fatten up their bottom line. You’ll end up paying law office and CPA prices and you’ll never be their top priority. We recommend finding a Colorado registered agent whose focus is providing registered agent services. They will be more reasonably priced and have intimate knowledge of how the registered agent business works in Colorado. And, if the registered agent is any good, they’ll know all the best ways to protect your personal information.
Hire a Colorado Registered Agent Who Protects Your Personal Information
Colorado Revised Statue 7-90-701 requires all LLC and corporation owners to name a registered agent on their company formation papers. If you decide to be your own Colorado registered agent, it’ll be your name, address, and personal information listed in public record. If you hire a Colorado registered agent who know what they are doing, they will list their name and address on the formation documents. Your information will be protected.
What does your identity being protected do for you? For starters, you’ll deal with 90% less junk mail. Registered agents are accustomed to receiving tons of junk mail and they are experts at throwing it out.
Even more crucially, a registered agent will keep your address away from people who might have bad motives—upset customers, stalkers, or someone who wants to make a big deal out of serving papers in your place of business. Hopefully, you’ll never have to deal with any of these behaviors, but if you do, you’ll be glad you have the security and privacy protection provided by a registered agent.
Hire a Colorado Registered Agent Who Knows Business Compliance
Keeping your company compliant in the state of Colorado means filing an annual report with the Secretary of State called the Periodic Report. Periodic reports are filed on a rolling deadline determined by your company’s formation date. Every year many business owners either file the report incorrectly or simply forget. The consequences can be severe. On the less severe side is a $50 penalty. Even more consequential is the dissolution of company by the state, which can set off a chain of events that is one headache after another. Our advice is to find a Colorado registered agent who offers business compliance. Even if it is a few more dollars, it is well worth the price.
Periodic Report
The Periodic Report is a filing that confirms and updates basic business information with the Colorado Secretary of State. According to 7-90-501, C.R.S., the Periodic Report is due to the Secretary of State by the end of the anniversary month in which a business was originally formed. If a business is delinquent, it could be assessed a $50 in addition to the initial filing cost. Ultimately a delinquent business could be dissolved by the state.
Hire a Colorado Registered Agent Who Can Form Businesses
Registered agents are essential for business upkeep and compliance, which means they should know a thing our two about how businesses are formed. A good, reliable full-service Colorado registered agent will know how to form LLCs, corporations, and nonprofits. When we research Colorado registered agents, we like to go to their “order services” page and make sure they offer business formation for LLCs, corporations, and nonprofits. If they only offer one of those services—or if they don’t offer business formation at all—keep looking.
What if you only want to form an LLC? Does it matter if the Colorado registered agent doesn’t offer corporation formation? In our opinion, yes, it matters a great deal. Many businesses change as they grow. An LLC might be the right choice initially. As a business grows, you might consider taking on investors, which means converting it to a corporation. You won’t want to go through the hassle of converting the business and finding a new agent who can do that. Our advice is to find the agent who best prepares you and your business for future success.
What to Look for in a Colorado Registered Agent
When we research Colorado registered agents we look for someone who knows Colorado. We want someone who is in-state or has people dedicated to knowing all the ins and outs of doing business in Colorado. We like to see Colorado registered agents who have been established in the state for at least a decade. When you hire a registered agent you want someone seasoned, not an amateur. When we research registered agents, we look for services like:
- same-day mail scanning
- comprehensive privacy protections
- knowledgeable customer service representatives
- business compliance services
How Much Should a Colorado Registered Agent Cost?
Pricing for registered agent services can run the gamut and it’s really important to read the fine print when you’re signing up with one. Lots of big, national registered agent services will advertise a low introductory rate and then jack up their prices in the second year. Or, they add a termination fee in their contract so you end up paying out the nose when you decide to part ways. That said, a fair price for registered agent services in the Mile High state is $40 to $150/yr. Again, when you find a deal that sounds great, make sure you read over their “terms and conditions” page.
Also, make sure you read the privacy policy. An unfortunate reality of the registered agent service industry is that many agents fatten up their bottom line by selling their clients’ data—a practice we find unacceptable. A good Colorado registered agent will protect their clients’ information, not sell it! When we recommend our favorite Colorado registered agents, we read the fine print and only recommend services that protect your privacy.
Can I be My Own Registered Agent?
Yes, you can be your own Colorado registered agent although we do not recommend it. Sure, you will save a few dollars, but you’ll also have more dates to keep track of and, most importantly, you’ll compromise your privacy.
What does it take to be your own Colorado registered agent?
A registered agent can be either an individual or an entity.
An individual:
- Must be over the age of 18.
- Must have his or her primary residence in Colorado (i.e., they must live in Colorado).
An entity:
- Must have a usual place of business in Colorado.
- Foreign (outside of Colorado) entities must also have authority to transact business in Colorado.
- May serve as its own registered agent.
Additionally:
- The registered agent must consent (agree) to be the registered agent.
- The Secretary of State cannot be appointed as a registered agent.
- You may appoint only one individual or entity to act as a registered agent for your entity.
For more information, see C.R.S. 7-90-102 (55), (56) and (56.5), and 7-90- 701.
Colorado Registered Agents We Recommend
As a growing state with lots of businesses, Colorado has plenty of choices for registered agent services from the mom-and-pop offices, to legal firm side hustles, to full-service agents. Choosing the best one could take weeks. Luckily, we’ve weeded through the pile of choices, combing through each one’s terms of service and privacy policy. We’ve read the Google reviews and looked up Better Business Bureau complaints. When we recommend an agent, you can rest assured they are the real deal.
Here’s our tops picks for Colorado registered agents:
Best Colorado Registered Agent Overall
If you can get past all the ski slang on their website, Colorado Registered Agent offers premium registered agent service, a full slate of business formation services, and the best privacy protection in the Mile High State. They are the perfect registered agent service for your business at any stage. With add-ons like DBAs, compliance, and foreign registration they can tailor their service to your company’s needs. Best of all, when you call them, you will be connected with a live local human in Colorado—no automated phone trees or being put on hold and transferred. We can’t underscore enough how great of a benefit it is to be connected immediately with someone who will help solve a problem no matter how long it takes.
Best Budget Colorado Registered Agent
Once again, Colorado Registered Agent tops the list. Get this: their registered agent service is $35/year. You might wonder how they can do it and what hidden fees are lurking under that stellar price point. There aren’t any! We looked. Colorado Registered Agent has tons of clients so they make their profit on volume of sales as well as existing clients trusting them with additional services like foreign registration or compliance. In our opinion, Colorado Registered Agent is doing things right: they have an amazing price point and do their job so well it becomes a no-brainer to stick with them as your business grows.
Best Colorado Registered Agent for White Glove Service
Northwest Registered Agent is hard to beat. Admittedly, their price point for registered agent service is much higher than Colorado Registered Agent; however, they have a smorgasbord of services and offices all over the United States. Their company is staffed entirely by experts who know about business formation, compliance, and expansion in all fifty states. They have add-ons like digital mail forwarding that help with the logistics of growing a business—especially across multiple states. If you have big dreams, it might be worth the extra money to go with the best in the business.
Frequently Asked Questions
There are three basic ways to switch registered agents. The simplest option is to have the registered agent you want to switch to do the paperwork for you. Most registered agents charge about $50 (Colorado Registered Agent once again comes in with the best price: $35). When you hire a Colorado registered agent to file the Statement of Change, you’ll know it’s done correctly the first time.
Your second option is to file the Statement of Change yourself and pay the filing fee. (It’s worth noting that many Colorado registered agents will sometimes offer to file the Statement of Change gratis in exchange for signing up with them. It doesn’t hurt to check.)
The last option is to file the change on the Periodic Report. It’s our least favorite option because oftentimes business owners will have lapse of registered agent services when they go this route. (For example, they are dissatisfied with registered agent and cancel their service in February. Their Periodic Report isn’t due until, let’s say July. In order to save the time and money of filing a Statement of Change, they forgo the legal requirement of having a registered agent for five months.)
Failure to maintain a registered agent in Colorado can lead to four really bad things:
1. You will not get important documents. Not receiving documents for your business is a big deal. You could have lapses in compliance. But even worse, you could miss a service of process. Missing a service of process means that someone filing even a frivolous lawsuit against your business could win their case by default.
2. You will lose good standing with the state of Colorado. Losing your good standing means jeopardizing your company’s ability to expand into and do business with other states. Also, if you lose good standing, your chances of finding investors will plummet.
3. You will be fined. The fines start at $50 and go up depending on your local jurisdictions and how long you’ve been without a Colorado registered agent.
4. Your business status will be changed to delinquent. When someone looks up your business with the state of Colorado, the word “delinquent” will appear next to it. Customers don’t want to see that. And investors don’t want to see that. In order to return to the good graces of the state, you (or your registered agent!) will need to file a Statement Curing Delinquency.
Colorado registered agents can do a lot more than provide your business with a mailing address. When we recommend our favorite Colorado registered agents, two extras we like to see are mail scanning/unloading and templates for legal documents.
Mail scanning and uploading
The best part about most professional Colorado registered agents who offer mail services is that you never actually deal with physical mail. A good Colorado registered agent (like Colorado Registered Agents) will scan in your mail and upload it to a secure online portal. They throw away all the junk mail so you never have your mailbox stuffed with nonsense solicitations. All you’ll need to do is log on to your account and retrieve the important documents. If you’re looking for the best upgrade in the registered agent business, this one takes the cake.
Templates
The first time you craft an operating agreement, you’ll thank your lucky stars to have a registered agent with ready-to-download trustworthy templates. If you Google “Colorado operating agreement,” you might get a perfectly good template—or you might get something riddled with shoddy language that wouldn’t pass muster. Good registered agent services will have a full bank of templates for their clients. It’s a benefit that cuts down on time and stress.
Not necessarily. Plenty of Colorado registered agents don’t own real estate. We admit we are biased toward agents who own an office because it means they are physically located in the state and have local ties. We like agents who are residents of the state where they do business. That said, the main thing you want to check when scouting out a Colorado registered agent is a physical address. If you see a P.O. box, they should not be considered legitimate and you should keep searching.
1. You’re 18 years old.
2. You have a physical Wyoming address (not a PO box).
3. You are willing to be available to receive legal documents and service of process during all normal business hours.
If you meet these requirements, all you have to do is provide your name and physical address on the registered agent portion of your formation documents. Alternatively, you can file a Consent to Registered Agent form and file it with the Wyoming Secretary of State. But think carefully before you decide to go this route. Once your name and address are listed in public record, it’s nearly impossible have them removed.