Speaking from experience the roadmap should be seen as an ambition not a guarantee.
Criticise and scrutinise it too much and there wonât be a roadmap. Youâll end up like the Monzo community with absolutely no idea whatâs on the horizon.
7 Likes
Separately or in 1-go, theyâre late and there is no update. Not delivering on ETAs without communication is bad. Publishing/communicating ETAs creates expectations and managing the latter is part of proper communication/PR, quite crucial for startups being as out in the open as :freetrade:
I work on IT projects and missing ETAs is quite common, but not communicating on the missed ETAs is a big no-no. There is no excuse for this.
2 Likes
Iâve always seen it as a target. Sometimes they hit bullseye and sometimes further away. Itâs fantastic to see what they are aiming at and as Codf said itâs quite uncommon and if people start holding them to ransom over it theyâll just remove it altogether.
They arenât working for you. This is not a project commissioned by anyone, nor are the targets set by anyone. Iâd be disappointed if I was the core team. Itâs like nothing is good enough for some people who want everything yesterday and when they get it, the question is what about tomorrow then.
Plenty of time!
10 Likes
Really this just reads as super entitled to me, got to be honest. Itâs proper keyboard warrior stuff.
Ambitions are ambitious by their nature. These arenât ETAs itâs just a shred of visibility. Hereâs how it ends when roadmaps disappear.
Staff stop visiting the forum because of salty posters, staff get attacked on Social Media for not visiting the forum. Obviously not by the decent folk but thereâs plenty out there that arenât decent folk and can be strung along by negative sentiment. Eventually the community becomes a hole in the ground we all shout into.
I lived it as part of the Coral Crew for Monzo, I got targeted by a lynch mob when stuff went wrong on my personal social media channels. I didnât even work for Monzo.
9 Likes
Itâs not âsuper entitledâ, itâs just âbasic entitledâ. itâs the basics of âprojects management & expectations management & investor/user communicationâ. On projects with ETAs, people giving you an ETA and missing it have to give you a new one, usually even before it is missed, + an explanation.
1 Like
Eventually this doesnât work either, it doesnât sate the beast. Again Monzo is a good model for seeing this in action. See Monzo+, see cheque imaging, see cash deposits, see merchant enrichment, see chat support, see phone support, see investor update emails.
Especially as the business grows and staff get busier it becomes near impossible to keep expectations in check and grounded in reality. No-one, even Monzo, a company founded in community, can afford the sort of engagements members desire.
In theory your model is 100% correct, however when tested against these factors, it just doesnât scale.
2 Likes
I am not an investor myself at Freetrade but I guess the frustration may have come from mostly investors not users. For an user, the company has the liberty to miss and even be silent on missing a roadmap target. Whereas for an investor, if the company misses a target, it should explain why. Think about if Tesla misses its delivery target, it should at least give some explanation. Just my 2 cents.
3 Likes
Without wanting to be overly pedantic, isnât the give away in the first letter of ETA? Donât want to have to spell it out, but, yes it does not stand for hard deadline.
I get the frustration, whether weâre investors or clients, itâs always appreciated when weâre looped in to progress or lack thereof but the dynamics of this business; product, market, competition, position as a growing start up, means a) :freetrade: has to prioritise b) they arenât always going to get it right for everyone but do cut them a little slack.
13 Likes
Just checked the road map and saw Reits in Isa within the active development section, i know where iâm opening my next isa! 
4 Likes
Not really sure where to write this, but there are three things that really bug me and they should be pretty easy to implement.
First one is that you cannot see your individual stock holdings as % of your portfolio. You can see by sector, you can see by asset class, but not by the stocks themselves.
Second is that you cannot see your purchase price in USD. It was in USD when first started, but then it moved to GBP and it has been staying like this. Very odd to me and quite impractical for US shares.
Third one is that I just really want to see my graph takeaway the sum add-ons, so it doesnât look like a ladder. Not really sure how hard is that to implement, but donât think it would be harder than a lot of things you managed to ship so far.
Not saying that to whine, but more of a constructive feedback. Itâs not that even those functions are in any way essential, but it would be a nice little addition in the future.
5 Likes
Also see this thread: Small tweak suggestions
I am both an investor and user. Hence, I am chomping at the bit to open a :freetrade: SIPP then transfer in my old one for which I am paying crazily âincumbentâ fee level. Also, I am quite frustrated with overly enthusiastic communication/PR monopolising all the attention on back end infrastructure, mostly for the future benefits of :freetrade: engineers and devs, because letâs face it, nothing much has changed for users or investors.
Indeed, free instant tradesâŠfor âinvestorsâ, whom :freetrade: say is the main target market, but saving ÂŁ1/trade is no game changer for investors on 3-4 trades/year and was not going to be a major earner anyway in light of competitive offers and pressures from Revolut and RobinHood. Markets access, products, functionalities and account types now matter the most for :freetrade:. Consequently, the better the âmarkets access, products, functionalities and account typesâ, the more clients will join/trade/invest and the bigger the top line will be for :freetrade:. Thus, both usersâ and investorsâ goals are aligned here and differentiating/opposing theirs goals misses the point as both will be satisfied through the same means:
- markets access (which exchanges we have access too)
- products (number of stocks, other instruments, non-listed primary equity issuance from Seedrs/Crowdcube, etc.)
- account types (SIPP, all types of ISAs)
- functionalities (limit orders, stop loss orders, multi-currency accounts, brokerage/crowdfunding accounts aggregator + integration with all share certificates in 1 place, integration with SeedLegals ,etc.)
Now you might say, nothing has come yet from the âplatformâ but much will and you âainât seen nothing yetâ. Indeed, I ainât as on the roadmap except missed ETAs, I can see no change, no new features, no communication whatsoever. Letâs wait and see what big ârevealâ we might get on 18th March âFreetrade 2020 and beyondâ. I suspect no one at :freetrade: will say anything until then because of what they have chosen to announce that will make me come back on this thread and make amends. I canât wait
7 Likes
Blessed be this attitude and spirit 
3 Likes
Timescales on roadmaps from established companies should be treated with extreme caution let alone start-ups. Unforeseen operational issues blow them out the water every time.
1 Like
Question to FreeTrade
Order Cost Preview - Before confirming buy or sell orders, are there plans to upgrade the service to show actual live previews of the cost to the investor, before confirming?
This is an important question to find an answer to before I begin to start using the service. Thank you.
9 Likes
Feel free to vote for this idea here: [Feature Request đ§] Order Confirmation Screen
2 Likes
This does not need a vote, over 100,000 users will want to know the price they are buying or selling for.
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Not for me - the market doesnât freeze while youâre making up your mind so I want the best price available at time of purchase - not an old price ( from say ) 15 seconds ago.
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Yeah Iâm not particularly bothered about this either to be honest.
Iâve voted for it all the same.