ZenBusiness Review

Friday, July 11th

2025 Business Startup Service Reviews

ZenBusiness

• Offers three plans for business formation, ranging from $0 to $349 (plus state fees)
• Provides business services for starting, managing, and growing your business
• As a Public Benefit Corporation, focuses on making a positive impact and supporting underrepresented groups
• Provides advice on taxes and accounting, including small business tax tips
• Customer support available on weekends
• Has a 60-day refund policy (excluding state or third-party fees)
• Maintains an "A+” BBB rating and many positive reviews

ZenBusiness is a comprehensive business services platform offering all the necessary tools and services for starting, managing, and expanding your business. As a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), they're committed to empowering everyone (including moms, neurodivergent people, and those affected by layoffs) to create meaningful work, regardless of their background or personal circumstances.

Responsibility, sustainability, and public benefit

ZenBusiness isn't just about profit; they genuinely care about making a difference. They're a Public Benefit Corporation which means they're committed to helping everyone, including you, succeed. They've given more than $300,000 in grants to small businesses and worked with organizations like Kiva to help entrepreneurs who struggle to get credit. They've also helped people with disabilities, ex-prisoners, and underrepresented groups start their own businesses. They even help kids learn entrepreneurial skills. With ZenBusiness, you could be the next success story.

Get your business off the ground

ZenBusiness offers two main categories of services for businesses: "Plan & Start” and "Run & Grow”. Under "Plan & Start”, they assist with forming your business entity such as LLC, S-Corp, C-Corp, and DBA. They help with creating operating agreements and getting an EIN number. Also, they offer branding, banking, finance, and business planning services.

Grow your business

Under "Run & Grow”, ZenBusiness helps businesses stay compliant with registered agent services, annual reports, business license reports, and beneficial ownership filings. They provide advice on taxes and accounting, including small business tax tips. They'll even teach you how to grow your business by obtaining more funding, opening new locations, and acquiring more businesses. If you're not aware of all the resources available to you as a new business owner, ZenBusiness is an excellent place to start.

Starter Plan with 2-3 week filing time

For business formation, ZenBusiness offers three plans: Starter, Pro, and Premium. They'll show you the top features of each plan, but a comprehensive breakdown of everything included is not available. Here's a look at the cost for each package:

• Starter Plan: $0 plus state fees. Filing time: 2-3 weeks. Features: Standard filing speed, 1 free year of worry-free compliance (renews at $199), 100% accuracy guarantee.
• Pro Plan: $199/year plus state fees. Filing time: 1-5 days. Additional features: EIN, Operating Agreement.
• Premium Plan: $349/year plus state fees. Filing time: 1-5 days. Additional features: Business documents, domain name and email, business website builder.

ZenBusiness add-ons add up fast

As you go through the sign-up process for business formation, ZenBusiness will try to upsell you on their other services. For example, $99 gets you an EIN as an add-on to the Starter plan, which is more expensive than some competitors offer (and it's free through the IRS). You can also bundle your EIN with Business Documents for $149, or purchase just the Documents separately for $99. This grants you access to ZenBusiness' library of adaptable templates for business agreements in areas like web design, employment, graphic design, and more. If you're trying to save money, it's a good idea to do some research before choosing a business startup service to get an idea of which things you're comfortable doing by yourself.

60-day refunds

If you're unhappy with the services you receive, ZenBusiness offers you a full refund within 60 days of purchase, excluding state or third-party fees. However, filing fees can't be refunded once paperwork has been submitted to the government on your behalf. Also, fees paid to third-party service providers, like accounting and registered agent services, are non-refundable.

Customer support available on the weekend

ZenBusiness provides chat and phone support from Monday to Friday (8am-8pm CT) and on Sunday (9am-6pm CT). Most customers find the customer service representatives knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful.

Potentially predatory billing practices

ZenBusiness has an "A+” rating from the Better Business Bureau and 4.7 stars from over 15,000 reviews on Trustpilot. However, customer reviews of ZenBusiness reveal that while many customers were satisfied with the initial service, they experienced issues with ongoing billing even after cancellation of services. In one case, a customer was charged $398 despite canceling their subscription, with the issue escalating to collections. While such complaints have been marked as resolved on the Better Business Bureau page and the resolutions as satisfactory to those customers, this seems to be a recurring issue, and it may make you think twice about ZenBusiness.

Best for newbies who aren't on a tight budget

ZenBusiness might be a good choice if you're new to starting a business and want step-by-step guidance in simple language. The other side of that coin? If you're already familiar with the process, you might find their approach to be simultaneously oversimplified and opaque. Unlike some of their competitors, ZenBusiness doesn't really let you see under the hood, like when it comes to what's included in each plan. That makes it harder for you to compare their costs to competitors, and easier for them to upsell you.