Texas Registered Agent Service for Your Company

Texas law says each filing entity "shall designate and continuously maintain" a registered agent and a registered office in the state (Business Organizations Code § 5.201). The word that matters there is continuously. The agent is not something you set up at formation and forget, and it applies to LLCs, corporations, limited partnerships, limited liability partnerships and nonprofits alike.

The job itself is narrow. Section 5.206 puts the agent's only duties as receiving or accepting, and forwarding to the entity, any process, notice or demand that is served on or received by the agent. That is all. The agent does not run your business, file your reports or advise you about a lawsuit. If someone sues your company, the papers can be served on the agent.

One thing the agent does not necessarily handle is franchise tax mail. Form 205, the Certificate of Formation for an LLC, asks separately for an initial mailing address where state franchise tax correspondence should be sent. That address can differ from the agent's, so a company can use a commercial agent for legal papers and have Comptroller mail go to a different address.

The Form 205 instructions give two options. Option A is a domestic entity, or a foreign entity registered to do business in Texas. Option B is an individual who is a resident of the state. The same instructions are blunt about one limit: the company cannot act as its own registered agent. Naming "Your Company LLC" as the agent of Your Company LLC does not work.

The instructions state no minimum age for an individual agent. They say "an individual resident of the state" and stop there. If you have read elsewhere that the agent must be 18 or older, that line is not in the Secretary of State's own instructions, so do not treat it as a Texas rule.

A business entity can serve only if it is registered in Texas. Commercial agent companies fit under option A.

The registered office must be a street address where service of process can be personally served on the agent during normal business hours. Texas adds that the address may not be solely a mailbox service or a telephone answering service. A P.O. box does not meet the street address rule. The agent also has to keep a business office at that same address.

Consent works differently from what many owners expect. Texas does not make you file a signed consent. Instead, naming a person as agent on a filing is an affirmation that the person has consented to serve (§ 5.2011), and a copy of the consent does not have to be submitted (§ 5.207). In plain terms, you are vouching for it when you sign. Do not list a friend or relative without asking first.

You name the agent in Article 2 of Form 205, which costs $300 to file with the Secretary of State. The agent and office address become part of the public record when the filing is approved. The same requirement applies to an out-of-state company that registers to do business in Texas.

Any Texas resident with a Texas street address can serve as the agent for their own LLC, and it costs nothing. That works well when you keep a fixed office and are reliably there during normal business hours.

It gets harder when you are on job sites, travel often, run the company from your home or want the home address kept off a public record. The registered office is part of the public record, so a home address used there is public. And because Texas expects the agent to be reachable at the registered office during normal business hours, a process server who arrives while you are out finds nobody to accept the papers.

A registered agent service puts its own Texas address on the record instead of yours. You can still list your own mailing address for franchise tax correspondence on Form 205, so the Comptroller keeps writing to you while legal papers go to the agent.

To change the agent or the registered office of a Texas entity, the filing is Form 401, the Statement of Change of Registered Office/Agent. The Secretary of State fee is $15. The form has to recite that the registered office and the agent's business address are the same street address (§ 5.202). You can file it online through SOSPortal, which replaced SOSDirect and SOSUpload on September 29, 2026, or on paper by mail. A card payment in SOSPortal adds a convenience fee of $0.25 plus 2.25%.

Moving to Mainstay means we prepare and file the Form 401 for you. The state's fee passes through at cost, and we do not add anything to it.

Keep your old agent in place until the new filing is approved. Until then the state's record still shows the old agent, and papers will keep going there.

An agent who wants out files Form 402, the Statement of Resignation of Registered Agent, with no fee. First the agent has to give your company written notice. Then the agent notifies the Secretary of State within 10 days, and the appointment ends on the 31st day after the Secretary of State receives that notice (§ 5.204). So you do get a window of about a month, but only if you read the notice and act on it.

If a company fails to appoint or maintain a registered agent, or the agent cannot with reasonable diligence be found at the registered office, the Secretary of State becomes the company's agent for service of process (§ 5.251). Service on the Secretary of State is made in duplicate under § 5.252. That backstop is not a plan. It means papers can be served on the state rather than on an agent you chose. The Form 205 instructions add that failure to maintain an agent may result in the involuntary termination of the LLC.

The cure is to file Form 401 with a new agent before the 31 days run out.

Registered agent service from Mainstay is $149 a year, and it renews at $149. That covers your registered agent and compliance reminders. It does not cover filing your Public Information Report, which is due to the Comptroller on May 15, or the franchise tax report if your revenue is above the state's no-tax-due threshold. For a new company, the $199 formation package includes the agent and adds formation, your EIN application and the yearly filing, so it is the better value and the agent is never bought twice.

Your Texas registered office on the public record becomes Mainstay's Texas address. Anything served on your company is scanned and uploaded the same business day, at no fee. The first three government mailings each year are scanned free, and beyond those a per-piece scan or shipping fee applies. No tier includes free physical forwarding.

Mainstay is a filing and agent service, not a law firm. How to answer a lawsuit is a question for your attorney, and our part is scanning and uploading the papers the same business day.