About Prolify
Formation is the easy part. We built the company around what comes after it.
Prolify forms US companies for founders who live outside the United States, then runs the filings, deadlines and records that follow. Formation takes days. The obligations it creates last as long as the company does, and that second part is the product.
Why this exists. The filing was never the hard part.
Most of this market sells the filing and stops. You get articles of organization, an EIN, and a folder of PDFs, then discover the rest of it yourself: which bank will actually open for someone living where you live, what a foreign-owned single-member LLC owes the IRS every year, and which state deadline quietly dissolved your company while you were shipping product.
A company that took two days to form still owes a state annual report, a franchise tax, and a federal return that most owners first hear about from a penalty letter. Prolify is built around that second half.
Who Prolify is built for. Four situations, one operating layer.
Founders outside the US
You want a US company without a US address, an SSN, or a flight. Formation, EIN and the filings that follow.
Companies opening a US arm
A customer, a first US hire or an investor needs a US entity. Your counsel keeps the parent and the tax position.
Entities that fell behind
The agent lapsed, the annual report slipped, the federal return was never filed. Prolify takes the company over and brings it current.
Operators, not incorporators
You already know formation is easy. What you want handled is the calendar, the books and the filings that run for years afterward.
What Prolify does, and what it does not. In the same table.
Several of these are guidance and coordination rather than execution. That distinction is the thing you are actually choosing between when you compare services, so it belongs next to the claim instead of in the small print.
| Area | What Prolify does | What it does not do |
|---|---|---|
| Formation | Files your entity in Delaware, Wyoming, New Mexico or Florida, with a registered agent and a US business address. | Does not incorporate outside those four states, and does not advise on which country should hold the entity. |
| EIN | Prepares the application and the line 7b position a non-resident owner needs, then tracks it to the letter. | Does not control IRS turnaround. Fax is the route without an SSN, and the wait is realistically one to three weeks. |
| Banking | Tells you which routes accept someone resident in your country, and prepares the document set the application asks for. | Does not open, submit or route the account for you. No provider lets a third party do that, and any service implying otherwise is describing document prep. |
| Compliance | Tracks the state annual report, the franchise tax, and the federal Form 5472 cycle on Growth and above. | Does not sign or file a tax return. |
| Bookkeeping | Sets up the chart of accounts and the categories a foreign-owned LLC needs, including the owner transfers that turn out to be reportable. | Does not keep your books month to month. That is partner coordination on Elite, not a Prolify service. |
Formation states
How this site is written. Enforced by the build, not by intent.
This site makes claims about tax rules, filing deadlines and who a bank will accept. Those claims are worth exactly as much as their sourcing, so the rules below are enforced by the build rather than by good intentions.
- →Every number, fee, deadline and country list carries the primary source it came from and the date somebody read it. Most provider policy pages publish no last-updated date of their own, so the retrieval date is the only honest one available.
- →A page that states a tax rule or a filing deadline quotes the instruction it comes from, so you can check it against the agency rather than against us.
- →Where a fact cannot be verified, the gap gets published. An unknown cell stays unknown rather than being filled from memory or inference.
- →A visible date changes only when the content behind it changed. Re-dating a page nobody touched is a lie about freshness.
- →Where a competitor is the better answer for you, the page says which one and why.
The full version lives at /editorial-policy, and everything we have gotten wrong and fixed is listed at /corrections.
What it costs. Both numbers, not just the first.
Formation starts at $397 (first year, plus the state's own filing fee), across Starter, Growth, Elite. Ongoing operations run from $39 a month. The renewal year is the number most of this market leaves off its pricing page, so it is on ours.
Questions people ask. Answered in the open.
How is this different from a filing service?
A filing service sells you the incorporation and stops. The work that decides whether the company survives happens afterward: the state annual report, the franchise tax, the federal return a foreign-owned LLC owes every year, and the books that make that return possible. Prolify is built around the second part.
Do you guarantee I will get a US bank account?
No. Approval depends on where you live, what you sell and which provider you apply to, and none of those are Prolify's to decide. What you get is the document set the application asks for and an honest read on which routes accept someone in your country.
Can you file my US tax return?
Prolify tracks what you owe and when. It does not sign or file returns itself. Anyone telling you their software files a foreign-owned LLC's Form 5472 without a preparer is describing something else.
Which states can you form in?
Delaware, Wyoming, New Mexico and Florida. If the right answer for you is a state Prolify does not file in, that is worth knowing before you buy rather than after.
Is a US company even the right move for me?
Often, and not always. If you live somewhere with a strong local entity option and no US customers, a US LLC can add filings without adding anything else. The guides on this site argue that case where it applies instead of pretending the answer is always yes.
Start with the guide, not the checkout. It argues against the sale where the sale is wrong.
If a US company is not the right move for you, the guides on this site say so. Read one before you buy anything.