Fair enough. The way I see it is that I’m avoiding charges per trade with a broker like HL and getting a much better user experience than I would elsewhere. For me, the £9.99 is fine based on what the different order types will save or make me and the fee-free ISA. However, there will hopefully be some sexy features added to tempt others. In time - as the Plus offering becomes more robust - perhaps all the shares originally in the free tier will move back.
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As I specifically said, I’m getting a much better user experience than I would elsewhere. Clearly, that’s something that appeals to me and you know I’ve tried and left least at least one other company because of poor design or user experience.
Businesses need to make money to prosper and I have no issues at all with Plus. Despite what you claim, you seem to want people to move away from Freetrade.
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Are you talking about 212? Because as I understand that’s the only service that runs with no cost to the customer.
What would you suggest instead? Not attacking or anything just curious to see how you think Freetrade should make money. Would you consider 9.99 if it included sipps?
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Might be thinking out loud and longshot but one perk I thought would be good for Plus users to have is some sort of reward system not that different to the refer a friend for share scheme FT has at the moment. As in, for example end of the year, the user gets credit to choose one free share, or one is given to them as a reward for paying into the system and supporting the Plus scheme?? (and a way for the free share to go into the ISA account instead of the standard one)
No visible cost to the customer - let’s highlight that.
If a business stays afloat and is not charging anything for their service, something feels sketchy. After all they are not a charity organisation. They must make their money somehow, they are probably not transparent about it.
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They lend you’re shares out for one, this is one of the things they’re doing to offer the free at cost of use service.
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That should cover only a tiny fraction of the costs and will never sustain a service. Their revenue model is still and will be for the foreseeable future luring people into cfds.
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FT have said countless times they are competing with the older established brokers. When they have the whole FTSE and AIM how does it compare to those? Would it convert their existing users with a few more features?
In 2018 Degiro made 90% of its revenue from trading fees* which leaves just 10% to be from interest on cash balances and stock lending.
Agree 212 will have to monetise (they said they plan to) and not just by CFD cross sales. Interactive brokers is their middleman who’ll take a cut, their trading costs will be higher than if they had direct market access.
*Stat from a Bux investment deck in April 2020
Very comprehensive list, quite a few things I didnt even think of to be honest! Totally agree, right now Im paying for Plus and really my only reason to was to “unlock” two stocks it closed off to me that I already had invested in.
For what we’re paying per month (sucks that you cant even pay for it annual, as I myself hate having loads being taken out per month) we really arent getting a lot of the simple things you mentioned above being provided.
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You’re not actually paying at the moment though. Plus is free at this point in time. You could just buy your stocks now and then cancel without having paid anything.
True, but even then the whole sign up, buy then cancel process is a bit of a hassle to do whenever you want to top up or in future they’ll surely pay wall off something else i’d want to get.
I have no issue with premium services if they deliver, but as its been mentioned right now, bar accessing pay walled stocks and limit orders, its nothing special, and defo not worth £10 if and when they do activate it.
Disappointed with the all Plus thing. I have been two years with freetrade and never consider to change broker; also, I invested in the last crowdfunding.
Seeing the stock that I regularly invest in going behind a paid wall does not feel good. I am gonna be actively looking for another platform to invest. I am grateful to freetrade but I do not like the direction is going.
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Those who complain - or critique - the loudest often think their views count more, or that they represent the majority. I hope you don’t fall into that trap. It’s unlikely that any of us (relatively) few people on this message board represent the views of hundreds of thousands of people using Freetrade. I don’t mean to sound rude towards you. I’m simply saying that it’s easy to forget that those posting here represent a tiny minority of the user base.
I agree that Plus is missing a lot of things, but that’s based on our assumptions. We really don’t know what the full list of features will be on day one or what will be added soon afterwards.
Personally, I feel that Freetrade and Plus should target the low-hanging fruit first. That is to say that they started with a free offering that looks good and functions well. That already makes them a viable alternative to HL for many, many people. Whether they be new or experienced investors. They need to make money and adding features to a subscription is the obvious way to do that. I don’t believe that adding a base set of features for £3 or £5 a month and then doubling or tripling the price later is the way to go. Having different tiers could be confusing, especially for newer investors. As long as features are consistently added to Plus, the value proposition will improve over time. You may not believe that what’s listed on the Plus page is worth £10 a month for now, but I think they’ll iterate over time and the value will improve. I think that things like finance education, portfolio analysis and such will come in time, once the basics are fully covered.
I don’t mean this to sound insulting, but I think you’re also likely a more demanding user. Those who are new to investing might well accept £10 monthly if it’s something new to them and they see the likes of HL charging nearly that for a single trade. Plus, they might well conflate the subscription with the cost of their new hobby/saving/investing in this way. That is to say they might think “if I’m investing £200 a month, £10 more isn’t much”. Their inexperience will mean that new features for that same money seem like bonuses and “oh, cool I can now do X” and them not realising that the likes of HL have been offering X for years. I’m somewhat in that camp myself and willing to pay for Plus to help the company prosper because I think they’re doing cool things. I’m not experienced enough in this area to know what all the features are that a broker should have. I’m very much in the camp - as can be seen from previous posts here - that if £9.99 a month means I get different order types and they can save me money I’d otherwise lose/help me make more per trade, that’s fine. I’ll be increasingly happy as new features are added and it feels like a more complete offering.
Sorry if this is a bit rambly. I think you make good points, but I think many of these issues will be resolved in time and the funding from Plus will help them ramp up/invest more in their team and build things more quickly.
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I agree that yes a lot of these things will probably come in time, that the company needs funding to support the features, staff etc, but typically when a provider has multi tier services on offer at varying prices, they tend to actually have what you pay more for ready to be utilised. In this case you cant blame those of us on here who invest to be a little miffed that we arent getting value for our money.
Also and not insulting you or anything but to say we on this forum who are the small minority making a lot of noise in comparison to the thousands who use FT and dont use this forum is a little disingenuous. Many of the features, ideas and even stocks that have made their way on to the platform were discussed, suggested and even voted on this forum by the people who contribute here on nearly a daily basis.
So while we may sound like we’re doing nothing but complain, we are actually taking more of an active interest in Freetrade than the many thousands of users who dont by interacting with the devs, the marketing team, teaching newbies how to use it, or about stocks info in general ( I myself have benefitted from advice from the folks on here).
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It’s all about value perception - do people think Plus is of value to them for that price?
Right now, I probably won’t get Plus because pretty much all the stocks I want to invest in (bar a few) are available for free and I don’t think I will make much use of the other features, so £10 does not represent value to me. That’s not to say that I won’t get it in the future when other features have been added, ones which I will use.
I do however have an ISA with Freetrade and if their SIPP price is competitive, I will get that too.
My sister on the other hand, (who I introduced to Freetrade and who has never been on this forum) says she will get Plus because she will use a lot of those features and she thinks £10 a month is cheap as chips, compared to the brokers she’s used in the past.
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Completely agree with this, we’re active in the forum because we want Freetrade to be a success and are concern that the Plus account, in its current state, won’t support that.
Just because a user isn’t commenting in here about Plus doesn’t mean they’re happy about it.
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It also doesn’t mean they’re unhappy. Typically, the loudest are a small minority and don’t represent the majority. Whether they be supportive or complaining about something. I’m not saying that anyone’s views are invalid, I’m simply saying that a tiny percentage of users won’t accurately represent the views of hundreds of thousands. They may or may not be unhappy with Plus and the only real way to have a vague clue is how it performs for Freetrade.
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How do you think it should make money?