South Carolina Asks for a Designated Office Forever. Inc Authority Prices Twelve Months of It.

South Carolina Registered Agent.co is the competition, charges $99 a year, and wrote this page to win your account. Everything said below about Inc Authority is confined to what the company published, and to what it left unpublished, as of a July 2026 review of its public website. We have filled in no blanks with guesses.

The Free Year Is Genuinely Free

Order formation from Inc Authority and year one of the agent appointment carries no charge at all. That is a real offer and it does a real job: a South Carolina LLC needs an agent from the day it exists, Inc Authority holds the appointment, and no invoice arrives for a year. Anyone watching startup costs closely has a sound reason to accept it.

Our objection is not to the offer. It is to the shape of what comes after it.

An Obligation Without an End Date, Sold in One-Year Pieces

Here is the mismatch worth thinking about.

South Carolina does not ask a company to keep a designated office and an agent for a while, or for a starting period, or until the business finds its feet. It asks continuously. The designated office is an in-state address the company maintains for as long as it is registered, and it is not required to be a place where you actually work, which is exactly why a service address satisfies it. The agent appointment sits beside it under the same standing requirement. Neither has a term, a renewal cycle set by the state, or a natural end.

So an offer that covers twelve months of a permanent obligation is, by construction, an offer that leaves most of the obligation unpriced. That would be unremarkable if the price for the remainder were printed somewhere. It is not.

Where the Number Should Be

The company is not generally reticent about money. It advertises a free formation package prominently and sells paid upgrades alongside it, so pricing is plainly something Inc Authority is comfortable putting in public.

The single figure we could not find a printed value for is the cost of registered agent service in the second year. Not stated, not given as a range, not marked as starting at anything. Where a renewal rate would sit, there is nothing.

No number is going into that space from us. Making one up would reproduce the exact problem being described here. The most that can be said responsibly is an observation about the trade rather than about this company: prices that no website displays are usually first heard at a checkout screen or from a person on a phone. Treat that as a pattern, not as a fact about Inc Authority.

Both of Ours, In Public

Ninety-nine dollars for year one. Ninety-nine dollars for year eleven. The reason we keep printing both is that printing both is the entire argument.

That covers an address of ours occupying the agent and designated office entries in your public record, imaging of service of process within the business day it reaches us with an alert sent as it posts, the same handling for anything the Secretary of State sends, and a document history you can open at any hour. Ordinary business mail is $15 an item and optional. There is no other charge.

We would be overstating things to say nobody charges less. BetterLegal's published $90 does. Among the lower South Carolina rates, printed in full for every year rather than only the first, is the accurate version of our claim.

Filing Inc Authority Out in South Carolina

The mechanics, completely, so the switch does not feel like an unknown.

One filing. South Carolina records a change of designated office, a change of agent, or a change to a registered agent's address through a single notice submitted to the Secretary of State. One document handles whichever of the three applies to you.

Ten dollars. That is the statutory fee for the change, and it is the same whether the notice arrives by post or electronically.

Two ways in. Download and mail the paper version, or complete the change through the Secretary of State's online business filing system. Neither route requires your outgoing provider to agree, sign, or release anything.

What it wants. Your entity's name, the designated office and agent currently on file, and the name plus South Carolina street address of the agent taking over.

The order, which matters. Appoint before you cancel. The notice is built around naming a successor and gives you no way to record an empty appointment, which follows directly from the state expecting the position to be filled every day the company is registered. Enrol with us, we complete the notice with our details, you file it and pay the ten dollars, you check the state's business search for the new entry, and the Inc Authority arrangement gets closed out once that appears.

When to do it. During the free year is fine and arguably best. Ten dollars now removes the unpriced year from your future entirely, rather than leaving you to negotiate it later from a weaker position.

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