My First Ontario Corporation!

In Ontario, there are two approved vendors that handle them online. You can fill them out by hand (or a fillable PDF form), but then you have to pay more. Finally, the government gives you a discount for saving their time. I can't stand how you always have to pay extra to pay a ticket online rather than snail mail. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

So, I chose amongst the two vendors. I couldn't find any reviews online, so let this be one.

The two approved vendors are:
Cyberbahn - CAD$355 for an Ontario numbered corporation (plus GST on the $55 portion)
Oncorp - CAD$400 all in for an Ontario numbered corporation
I had thought there were three, but it appears that there are now two. Please leave a comment if you know of others that directly deal with the government. The third is ESC Corp. I have no experience with them, but they have the least worst name out of the three and they left a comment here recognizing how much I think Cyberbahn sucks, so ESC gets points in my book.

Anyone else just takes sends the forms to them for some extra cash. They may or may not provide extra value for these extra expenses. Filling out the forms themselves is rather simple, but what to put in them will depend on your own situation.  I used some of the information on this site to help me out: https://www.incorporationontario.ca/fontbnumber.html, but the information on it may not be good for you, you'll have to find/pay for your own advice from a competent advisor.

There are plenty of lawyers, paralegals and others that will do the paperwork for you. Whether you require this or not is a decision for you to make, and not one I'm making for you here.

If you ever want to change your Articles of Incorporation, it'll cost ya $150 for an Ontario corporation.

I decided to do a numbered corporation since I don't feel the need for anything fancy, and don't need to get sued for having a similar name to someone else. If I need to, I can later register a "Trade Name" for the business and do the whole NUANS search thing.

My experience with Cyberbahn for a Numbered Ontario Corporation:

• Don't expect any handholding regarding what to put in for your Articles, that's legal advice and you won't get that from them, nor should you expect it.
• They're owned by Thomson-Reuters, which I only learned of after the fact.
• Their name sucks
• They make you pay up-front, not after you get to look at or complete the forms. This is a red flag. Not that they're going to scam you out of the money, it just made me wonder how much their online systems were going to suck. The answer: a lot.
• The step-by-step process isn't that bad, just remember: They don't save your work after each step. I think you just have to do it all at once. It saves it before you finally submit it though, so you can then leave the process and re-continue later. Perhaps you can click "Save to Database" in the middle of the process, but I'm not sure.
• When you Save to Database, and then login later, good luck finding your form to continue again. I thought it had just lost it all, and finally managed to find the forms to fill it out. After filling it all out again, before submitting it, it asked for my credit card information again. Wait a minute, didn't I already pre-pay?
• It turns out that to continue your form, you have to click on this bone-headed button called "Entrepreneur", and then find your online form under the "To Do" menu. Ugh, seriously?
• Feel free to call their 1-800 number, they answered right away and were able to walk me through how to continue my previously paid for form. I asked, and they said that they were working on re-designing it, I sure hope so.
• It does get the job done (or at least it seems to have so far)

A Federal corporation only costs $200, and $20/year for the annual return. This might be a better deal if you think your corporation might not last long ;) I've heard that outside of Ontario, even if you file for a federal corporation, you'll still have to register it provincially and pay up. I'm in Ontario, so I don't know, but something for you to research if you're considering a provincial corporation outside Ontario.

After Incorporating: What Next?

Next up: Getting a corporate bank account (on the cheap)
Good reading: Review of 800 Toll Free Number Provider (on the cheap!)