What does a registered agent actually do?

A registered agent is the person or company officially designated to receive legal documents, lawsuits, subpoenas, state notices, for your LLC or corporation. Every state requires one, listed publicly in your formation documents, with a physical street address in the state and availability during business hours.

Yes, you can be your own

In every state, you can serve as your own registered agent if you have an in-state street address and you're reliably there during business hours. For a home-based single-owner business that rarely gets sued, that genuinely works, and costs nothing. Honest answer, freely given.

When a service earns its fee

Three situations change the math. Privacy: the agent's address is public record, using your home address puts it in every data broker's dataset, and being served a lawsuit in front of customers is a bad day. Reliability: miss a service of process because you were on vacation and a default judgment can follow. Multi-state: if you register in states where you have no address, an agent service is required, not optional.

A good service receives documents at its address, scans them the same day they arrive, and gets them to your inbox immediately, the forwarding speed is the entire product. National providers typically charge $100–$300 per year; compare on forwarding speed, not brand size.