Naming a Florida Registered Agent is a statutory requirement for all Florida Corporations and LLCs. Registered Agents must be available during regular business hours to receive and forward legal documents, such as lawsuits. Many Florida LLCs choose to use IncNow® as their Registered Agent to ensure legal notices are properly received and handled.

To start an LLC in Florida, you must name a “Florida Registered Agent”. This address can be viewed through sunbiz.org, which is the Florida Secretary of State’s official website. This statutory agent allows your LLC to be reached if a lawsuit needs to be served in Florida. This is a legal address for limited purposes. This is not the “Principal Business Address”. It is a “physical presence” in the state of incorporation for the purpose of “Service of Process”. This is the primary role of the Registered Agent. Individual residents of Florida are generally not well-suited to act in this capacity. Although it is possible to use a residential address for an agent, it is not ideal to list your residence as the address on file with the state. You may ask, “Why?”, and the answer is because that person would need to be generally available during business hours in case your company is sued. Additionally, having a publicly listed residential address is undesirable for many professions. For example, landlords usually do not want tenants to have access to their home address. Therefore, it is best to use a Florida Registered Agent.

A Florida Registered Agent must be a business address that should provide services between the Secretary of State and the customer, such as filing amendments and obtaining Good Standing certificates and communicating the need to pay the annual maintenance fees and filings with the Florida Secretary of State. This is the second expectation businesses have of an agent, to provide services to the Florida Corporations and LLCs for which it serves as agent.

The reason to keep updated the correct address of the contact person for your Florida company is because of what can go wrong if your company is sued and you are not provided with notice of the lawsuit. The Registered Agent receives and forwards lawsuits (called “Service of Process”) to the contact person it has on record at its “last known address”. Failure to respond to a lawsuit (also known as “Service of Process” in the form of a “summons” and “complaint”) in a timely manner will result in a judgment by default and financial liability or more against the company. Therefore, it is important to choose your Registered Agent on the basis of reliability in addition to low cost.

The role of the Registered Agent in Florida often starts at the moment of incorporation, when a Florida statutory agent is named. The agent office is often the same as the incorporation service you have chosen for the formation process. The role of an incorporation service and the role of an agent are different. The incorporation service is merely the conduit that gets the company started. Conversely, the Registered Agent has the ongoing role for the life of the company, or until a new agent is appointed.

You have the opportunity to name a Florida Registered Agent in new company Florida Articles of Organization and Articles of Incorporation during the incorporation process or you can later change the Registered Agent for your company after formation, simply by filling out a postcard annual report.

Most incorporation services have low fees to incorporate, mainly to be named the Agent. IncNow has both low incorporation fees and low annual Registered Agent fees. Therefore, when finding value in a quality Registered Agent, it is important to look at start-up cost and maintenance cost and that is where IncNow excels.

IncNow would like to be your Florida Registered Agent. If named at the time of incorporating, typically one of the attorneys who manage the business will sign your Articles of Incorporation as the incorporator. If you have any questions about changing Registered Agent to IncNow or have questions about agent services, please give us a call or email.

Our Florida Registered Agent Address is as follows:

Agents and Corporations, Inc.
539 Fifth Avenue South, Suite 330
Naples, Florida 34102

If you self-file, please provide us with your name, address, phone number, e-mail, company name, and payment prior to filing. Otherwise, we will not consent to serve as agent. Agent consent is a required part of the incorporation process and the sunbiz.org website warns that entering your agent’s e-signature without permission is a crime.

We look forward to assisting you.

Already have a Registered Agent? Change your Registered Agent to Agents and Corporations, Inc.