Illinois gives you 60 days after your agent resigns — then you are not in good standing

What Illinois actually requires

805 ILCS 180/1-35 is Illinois’s LLC registered-agent rule. Each limited liability company and each foreign limited liability company shall continuously maintain in this State a registered agent and registered office. The agent must be an individual resident of this State, or another person authorized to transact business in this State. Florida files a written acceptance. Arizona waits on a signed acceptance. Illinois does not. We print that contrast once. We do not invent a fourth rule.

805 ILCS 180/1-35(c) is resignation. The agent files written notice with the Secretary of State and mails a copy to the company at its principal office. That copy must be mailed at least 10 days before the filing. The effective date shall not be sooner than 30 days after the date of filing. 805 ILCS 180/1-35(d) is the clock that follows: a new registered agent must be placed on record within 60 days after that notice of resignation.

805 ILCS 180/50-15 is what happens if you miss it. Miss the 60-day window after the resigning agent’s notice, and the Secretary of State shall declare the company delinquent and not in good standing. The same section also marks a company delinquent if it fails to file its annual report and pay the fee before the first day of the anniversary month. After the first day of the second month after the anniversary month, the penalty is $100, plus $100 for each year or fraction thereof beginning with the second year of delinquency. That runs until the company returns to good standing or is reinstated. Until the delinquency is satisfied, the Secretary of State shall not file additional papers for that company. On inquiry, the office may show the company as not in good standing.

805 ILCS 180/1-36 is how an LLC changes the agent or the office. The filing needs the then-current street, including street and number or rural route number, the new street if it changes, and a statement that the address of the registered office and the address of the business office of the registered agent, as changed, will be identical. The change is effective when the Secretary of State files it. Form LLC-1.36/1.37 repeats that a P.O. Box alone is unacceptable. The form notes also say the LLC may not act as its own registered agent. A business entity acting as agent must be registered with the Secretary of State.

The Secretary of State LLC formation instructions are the page that names the mail path. All correspondence initiated by the Secretary of State’s office will be mailed to the registered agent at the registered office address. The registered office must be located in Illinois. It must have a street or road address, or a rural route and box number. A P.O. Box alone is unacceptable. The registered office must be identical to the business office address of the registered agent. A street address is a place a person can walk up to, like 123 Main Street. We do not treat a P.O. Box as that Illinois street.

805 ILCS 180/1-50 is how an LLC is served. Serve the registered agent, or serve the Secretary of State in the cases the statute lists. Those cases include a company that fails to appoint or maintain a registered agent in this State, and an agent who cannot with reasonable diligence be found at the registered office. Service on the Secretary of State is a fallback. It is not the everyday job.

805 ILCS 5/5.05 is the corporation pair. Each domestic corporation and each foreign corporation with authority here shall continuously maintain in this State a registered office and a registered agent. The agent may be an individual resident in this State whose business office is identical with that registered office, or an authorized entity with a business office identical with that registered office. The address, including street and number or rural route number, of the initial registered office goes on the articles. 805 ILCS 5/5.10 is the corporation change. It also requires the registered office and the agent’s business office, as changed, to be identical.

Illinois also files an annual report. That report is not the registered-agent job. 805 ILCS 180/50-1 says the report, with the fees, shall be delivered to the Secretary of State within 60 days immediately preceding the first day of the anniversary month. 805 ILCS 180/50-10 prices that LLC annual report at $75, plus $50 for each series with a certificate of designation in effect on the last day of the third month preceding the anniversary month, plus a penalty if delinquent. The same fee table prices a statement of change of registered office or registered agent at $25. Articles of organization are $150 for a standard LLC. Reinstatement is $200. Filing any other document is $5 on that table.

The official LLC publications and forms table prices Form LLC-1.36/1.37 at $25, plus $50 to expedite. Form LLC-1.35, Resignation of Registered Agent, is $5, plus $50 to expedite. The online LLC agent-change page matches those dollars: $25 for a non-expedited filing, reviewed within 10 days; $75 for expedited service, which is the $25 filing fee plus the $50 expedited fee, reviewed within 24 hours excluding weekends and holidays. Expedited service on that page is paid by credit card. The forms table says requests for expedited service must be made in person, not by mail, at the Department’s Springfield or Chicago office. We quote both official pages. We do not invent a third clock.

The Illinois Business Entity Search is the live lookup. The Business Search / Certificate of Good Standing page is the Secretary of State landing for that database. Confirm the live name and street before you treat a marketing city as current. Headquarters is not the registered office. The Secretary of State’s Springfield Business Services desk at 501 S. Second St is not a vendor suite. The Capitol contact at 213 State Capitol is not a vendor suite. A Chicago Secretary of State desk is not a vendor suite either.

Cited prices, retrieved September 6, 2026

We print what the company’s official registered-agent page said on the retrieval date. No company publishes a different Illinois registered-agent price from the national card, except where we note an Illinois-page renewal line. We do not invent a renewal.

• Northwest Registered Agent: official page: “$125 Per Year.” Same price in year two on the national card. Five or more states is $100 a year per state. Retrieved September 6, 2026 from northwestregisteredagent.com/registered-agent and the Illinois product page. The older /illinois-registered-agent URL redirects to that page. First year free only if you form through them; we do not treat that bundle as the standalone price.
• Bizee: official registered-agent page: free first year with formation; standalone $149/year; year two $149/year. Retrieved September 6, 2026 from bizee.com/business-management/registered-agent.
• LegalZoom: official overview: “Get registered agent services for $249/year.” Product card: $249/year. Footnote: auto-renews at the purchase rate; “The renewal rate is subject to change.” Retrieved September 6, 2026 from legalzoom.com/…/registered-agent-overview.html. The Illinois registered-agent article URL returned 404 the same day. We do not invent a street from a missing page.
• ZenBusiness: official Illinois page: “Starts at $99 + IL state fees” for the first year. Renews at $199/year, subject to change. That Illinois page was last updated August 31, 2026. The same national page says they currently do not offer registered-agent service to PLLCs or nonprofits. That is their national exclusion, not an Illinois statute. Retrieved September 6, 2026 from zenbusiness.com/registered-agent and the Illinois product page.

A change of agent is a separate Secretary of State filing. We cite 805 ILCS 180/50-10, the official forms table, and the online agent-change page, retrieved September 6, 2026, not company blogs. The change filing is $25. Expedited service adds $50, for $75 online. Resignation is $5 on the forms table. The LLC annual report is $75. Reinstatement is $200.

Who publishes an Illinois street

A city is not a registered office. We print only the streets the companies publish for registered-agent use. We do not invent the rest. Confirm the live name and street on the Illinois Business Entity Search before you file. Headquarters is not the registered office. The Secretary of State’s Springfield and Chicago contacts are not vendor suites.

• Northwest. The Illinois FAQ answers “Where is Northwest’s registered office in Illinois?” with “All of our Illinois clients’ documents are accepted and scanned on-site at our registered office in Springfield, IL.” The office-locations page lists Springfield, IL 62704, Sangamon County, and says they leave the street off this list. No street is published. Same-day local scans are vendor-claimed. We have not been to a Springfield office.
• Bizee. Claims owned offices in all 50 states. The official registered-agent page names no Illinois street. The contact page lists 17350 State Highway 249, Suite 220, Houston, TX 77064 as headquarters. That address is not an Illinois registered-agent street.
• LegalZoom. The official registered-agent overview does not publish an Illinois street. The Illinois registered-agent article URL returned 404 on September 6, 2026. We do not invent a suite. We do not treat a LegalZoom virtual-mail street as the registered-agent street.
• ZenBusiness. The Illinois product page does not publish a street or suite. A separate office page prints a vendor-claimed street: 1 West Old State Capitol Plaza, Suite 805, Springfield, IL 62701, Sangamon County. Hours on that office page, also vendor-claimed: Monday–Friday 8 a.m.–5 p.m. EST. Closed Saturday and Sunday. Those are ZenBusiness hours, not Secretary of State hours. “0.8 miles from the Illinois State Capitol” is company copy. The product page also shows Secretary of State contacts at 213 State Capitol, Springfield, IL 62756, and 115 S. LaSalle St., Ste. 300, Chicago, IL 60603. Those lines are Secretary of State contacts, not ZenBusiness’s registered office. We do not treat the Capitol or LaSalle line as their street. The Secretary of State’s Business Services mailing desk on official forms is 501 S. Second St. That is not a vendor suite either. We have not been to that office.

If you are your own agent, the street on the public record is often your home. If you hire a commercial registered agent, the agent line is that organization’s name and its Illinois street. Northwest names Springfield and a 62704 ZIP, with no street. ZenBusiness’s office page prints a vendor-claimed Springfield suite. Bizee and LegalZoom publish no Illinois street. We label every city and suite vendor-claimed. We have not been to those offices. Use the Business Entity Search.

In-state office and the 60-day clock

Illinois wants an in-state person or authorized company, a street that matches the agent’s business office, and a new agent on record within 60 days if the old one resigns. Illinois does not run a Nevada-style ten-company commercial-agent register, and it does not post a Florida-style 10–noon / 2–4 clock. Northwest claims Springfield, ZIP 62704, and no street. LegalZoom’s official overview names no Illinois street. ZenBusiness’s office page prints a vendor-claimed Springfield suite and weekday hours they publish as EST. Those hours are theirs, not the Secretary of State’s. The Capitol and LaSalle lines on their product page are the Secretary of State. Bizee names no Illinois street. Process Score has not been to those offices. We do not treat a company 9-to-5 line as 805 ILCS 180/1-35.

Service of process, not marketing mail

We grade scan-and-forward of service of process and official notices:

• Bizee: notifications by text and email; court papers mailed via FedEx with tracking; portal upload by employees.
• Northwest: “We scan every document you receive right where you receive it—in our office.” The Illinois page adds local Springfield scans. Their mail-forwarding extras are a different product. We do not grade those extras as a mailbox.
• LegalZoom: upload, email, and a postcard for urgent legal mail; they say they shred junk mail. Junk-mail shredding is not the job we score.
• ZenBusiness: scan and upload to a dashboard; email; overnight the original for urgent legal notices. Their own FAQ says you cannot use the agent address as your business address. Their national product currently excludes PLLCs and nonprofits; that is their exclusion, not an Illinois statute.

Home-address privacy

A commercial organizational agent is how most Illinois owners keep a home off the agent line. The Secretary of State still publishes whatever other addresses you put on articles or an annual report. Privacy of the agent line is not privacy of every field. Confirm the live line on the Business Entity Search.

Scorecards

What this page does not do

• It does not rank mailbox networks or virtual offices.
• It does not publish combined star ratings or a fake 4.8.
• It does not treat a company 9-to-5 line as 805 ILCS 180/1-35.
• It does not treat the 60-day resignation clock as optional. After that, Illinois can show the company as not in good standing.
• It does not treat a Houston headquarters as an Illinois street.
• It does not treat 213 State Capitol or 115 S. LaSalle St. as a ZenBusiness suite. Those contacts are the Secretary of State, not ZenBusiness.
• It does not treat 501 S. Second St as a vendor suite. That contact is the Secretary of State.
• It does not invent an Illinois-only price a company did not print.
• It does not treat the annual report as the registered-agent job.

Choosing among being the agent yourself, asking a lawyer, or hiring a commercial agent: DIY vs lawyer vs commercial. California’s scorecard is a different statute: California scorecard. Texas keeps the written consent with the company: Texas scorecard. Florida files the acceptance and posts a 10–noon / 2–4 clock: Florida scorecard. Delaware bans a virtual-only agent and sets the commercial bar above 50: Delaware scorecard. New York starts with the Secretary of State already on the agent line: New York scorecard. Nevada makes a commercial agent register at ten companies: Nevada scorecard. Wyoming bans UPS stores and virtual addresses as the registered office: Wyoming scorecard. Arizona makes the statutory-agent appointment wait on a signed acceptance: Arizona scorecard.