Most of my aim shares are plus, which I think hurts those small companies as the new or small investor canāt access them through the free account.
Iāve no problem ft making money and love much of it, but I feel that barrier targets the small caps.
Totally agree 
The point is more about the business needs to be viable and people seem to want FT to work in a way that would make it unviable 
Fair enough, but FT would go bankrupt without the Plus option as it is. Nothing in the world is really FREE but FT do a great balance for the vast majority in making it as close to free as possible whilst making actual trades not expensive.
Also, FT is not a charity for the small caps so not really sure why that would be a consideration and small caps would be more aiming to the people who would not be worried about Ā£7 a month (ISA must be considered) for Plus membership.
It would be nice if it was free but not realistic
Given my chosen id, itās fair to say that I donāt have a lot of money invested here. I started out with around Ā£900 - all that I could really justify - a little while after the pandemic crash. Iāve thrown Ā£500 each at a couple of IPOs elsewhere and could now invest Ā£2,000 or so and Ā£100 monthly comfortably. So I donāt have a lot of money to throw around.
Despite the above, I feel like Plus offers good value. If :freetrade: is your primary investment platform and you donāt see yourself switching anytime soon. Others offer more without upfront fees, but will perhaps change their FX fee at fairly short notice 
I feel that limit orders alone make Plus good value.
Assuming Ā£500 of shares that average Ā£1 each, a 20 pence increase per share is Ā£100. The price you get when selling can vary quite significantly in seconds on some stocks. Perhaps youāll āloseā 10 pence a share if you chose the wrong time to hit the sell button with a market order. Thatās Ā£50 gone. This of course also applies for a varied portfolio and prices trending upwards on some of the shares that you hold. Trying to take advantage of a volatile price on a given day or week may lose you a lot per share. A limit order will allow you take advantage if trading conditions are right. Plus is Ā£10 monthly and includes the ISA youāre likely paying for anyway.
Iād guess that most here have more than Ā£500 invested in total. I can see why those who only want to trade without fees and have Ā£100 or less invested wouldnāt want to pay for Plus. Iād also argue that those who want to invest a lump sum every so often and for the long-term donāt necessarily care about short-term price differences. For them, Plus likely isnāt worthwhile, either.
We should also keep in mind that things will change. The 3% on up to Ā£4K cash held was a nice surprise and removes the Plus fee for many. Other features will be coming to Plus. Iād be surprised if all the shares in the European expansion are available to those without Plus. I can already imagine the posts complaining about certain types of shares on one countryās exchange being Plus only. Despite the fact that some UK shares are Plus only.
This seems the weirdest statement in the whole conversation. If you donāt think itās worth it, donāt pay for it.
As other have said, and I myself was unaware of originally, FT only makes its money from the monthly subscription fees, such as Plus, ISA and SIPP. With every service in life, the company prices a product according to where they feel they can make a profit, and you choose if you want those features enough to justify the cost. In this case, if you expect you can earn more than Ā£10 a month by trading the stocks available in plus, you should pay for it. If not, donāt.
As Iāve said before, I donāt even use any of the features of Plus other than the interest. For me, that alone is more than enough to make it better value than the Ā£3 a month fee for the ISA. Obviously FT gets something back in the interest they can earn on my Ā£4000, or increased subscription numbers for better success at funding rounds, or whatever it is. But for me, Plus is a simple value proposition.
Perhaps a better way of thinking about your question is asking why Sky doesnāt let you purchase individual channels. When I was a subscriber for Ā£30+ a month, I only watched Sky Atlantic. By the logic of just paying for what I needed, surely they should have had a package just for me at 50p a month because I didnāt watch the other 100s available?
I think the Ā£3pm isa fee is very reasonable. Iāve only started investing in shares this March. I had a Halifax share account but the Ā£11.95 fee each time was very expensive! I would not have been able to buy and sell shares reasonably any other way presently, (T212 not taking new customers).
Iām not sure whatās weird about it. I said I question it. When I have the answer to that question that will determine whether or not I continue my subscription. For now, I can justify it because I am investing in companies who are probably locked behind the paywall. But once that money is in and Iām happy with my investments then I may go months without using a single Plus feature. I suppose I could unsubscribe at that point because the ability to sell is still available.
Yes, and Free Trade makes Ā£0 from people who feel the service is too expensive for how often they would use it. Having a Ā£5 service (for example) with less functionality may well convert some of those Ā£0s into Ā£5s.
Your Sky example was terrible. Sky are well known for having lots of different packages with different sets of channels or different services. Movies package, sports package, entertainment package, 4k package, multi room package etc. Youāre not forced to subscribe to everything or nothing. Sure you canāt subscribe to individual channels but Iām not sure people want to subscribe to individual stocks.
Sure the 3% interest is nice but Ā£4000 is a lot of money to some people. It wouldnāt make sense for me to hold that much in cash in my account. Plus why not earn more by investing it?
At the end of the day Free Trade are welcome to do whatever they want with their subscriptions, but you donāt need to defend it for them because having different levels of subscription might actually earn them more money overall. Maybe they are/have even considered it. Would be silly not to. Itās not exactly an alien concept for online services.
TBF the Sky package is a great analogy as they have different packages yes but if you want sports and not movies etc the savings are rubbish. Sometimes it is just no saving unless you get a bigger package. This is similar to the ISA or SIPP savings when with Plus. I canāt get sky sports on its own at a decent price so end up with a bigger package
Having said that though you are correct as Sky wouldnāt let you have anything for free
I see what youāre saying, but they are still making 0.45% of non-sterling FX conversion fees and will earn some miniscule amount on the interest of everyoneās spare cash.
But this dilemma is one every company faces. Sure, having a Ā£5 price point will probably convert some of the free people into paying Ā£5, but it could also convert many Ā£10 people into paying Ā£5 too. And it makes the pricing model more complicated. One advantage of lumping everything together is that it makes the value proposition seem better. If you paid for what you wanted, you probably would just decide you didnāt need most of the features, if you get everything for one price, youāll probably try the other things and find you like them too and itāll reinforce your idea that you made the right choice.
And back on Sky, in fact I cancelled my basic HD subscription because I considered it poor value for money (Ā£30+) when I only really wanted to watch one channel. My example wasnāt entirely fictitious! If the basic package wasnāt so expensive, I would have continued with it.
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