Introducing the new Freetrade web platform beta 💻

[clloyd (Chris Lloyd)]

Hi everyone,

Today, we’re rolling out the beta version of our web interface, Freetrade Web, for Plus members to test

With this initial release, Plus members are now able to view their portfolio in their preferred browser and provide feedback to help build the future of Freetrade Web.

This is just a minimum viable product (or MVP). We’re definitely not stopping here!

To give you a taste of what’s coming next, our vision is to develop the perfect platform for research and execution of your investments. Our top priorities are to ship features that help you in the discovery of new investments, building on what we have in the app, and adding unique web focused features where feasible.

But we want to build this in public, working with the community of engaged Plus members to understand what features are must-haves. So reply below to let us know what you’d like to see next, or provide feedback within Freetrade Web itself.

If you’ve got Plus, head to web.freetrade.io to log in and view your portfolio. When you enter your email address, we’ll send you a magic link. Click on this link in your desktop browser to access Freetrade Web.

Not a Plus member? Upgrade now to try Freetrade Web. We are also exploring ways to bring Freetrade Web to more subscribers in future.

When you invest your capital is at risk, the value of your investments can go down as well as up and you may get back less than what you invest. Past performance isn’t a reliable indicator of future returns.

[johngt (John)]

Awesome news!

[Cameron]

I know it’s an MVP but this is quite disappointing, it feels like an emulation/replication of the mobile app rather than a native desktop web app.

The design feels like it fundamentally fails to appreciate the differences between the platforms resulting in poor UX. There’s good reason why other apps on my phone look nothing like their corresponding web apps and that’s because there are big differences in how users interact with them.

• Different screen real estate/form factor to make use of
• Different input method/interactions (touch vs KB/M)
• Different usage (i.e. different user flows, behaviours etc…)

It’ll be interesting to see how it evolves, but I worry this doesn’t represent a bottoms up approach and that rather than starting from the underlying object model/APIs the team have instead started from the existing mobile app.

[Cameron]

Also the performance feels poor - new page loads can be very slow. This is exacerbated by the fact the user needs to refresh often and the page doesn’t load dynamically so you need to wait for all stocks to load before anything renders.

Generally it just doesn’t feel like a proper SPA which I think most users are used to.

[zaccharles]

It’s a start. I hope to see more soon.

How will changes to the website be communited? Updates aren’t as obvious as they are in an app store (though Freetrade seem to have stopped writing anything meaningful in the description). Perhaps some sort of changelog?

[J4ipod94]

Good to see more progress!
I’d really like the ability to access my transaction data through the webapp

[Moonshot]

Great to see the MVP. I think for those who are looking for a less ‘research’ based platform, ie more experienced users, it would be great to consider a more ‘advanced’ mode for the web app that displays more technical charts and tools. Would love to see this as an option to enable those users to use FreeTrade in a more agile way than those starting out or who are using the platform on a less-frequent basis. Alternatively, a short-term solution may be a way to export our data through an API to enable us to use other stock analysis platforms.

[clloyd (Chris Lloyd)]

Thanks for all the feedback!

@zaccharles With the web we’re going to be focusing on quick iteration and continuous delivery, when we deliver a larger user facing change this will definitely merit a forum or blog post, but for the smaller changes these won’t be batched into releases, instead being released multiple times a day. We’ll have a chat internally about how we can surface these periodically e.g. in a changelog like you suggested.

@Cameron Really sorry to hear that you’re disappointed with this first version, this is an early version of the Web product and we do know it’s limited. We’re focused on iterating quickly and markedly improve both the features of the product, and aspects like performance. We’re hoping that by showing the Web in an early state, gathering feedback and using that to shape the product roadmap we can deliver value to users much sooner.

@J4ipod94 Me too! Thanks for the feedback!

@Moonshot Thanks for the feedback! How and when we bring these advanced features to the web, while maintaining the Freetrade experience is something we’re definitely working on.

[Cameron]

I don’t mean to put a such downer on it, I agree with the approach of pushing code fast and often. I just hope future iterations do revisit some of the core design patterns / principles rather than just adding functionality.

[rehpot]

It looks good. I’m glad you don’t need the app to log in. However, it is disappointing that you cannot yet do basics like buy, sell, top up or withdraw, especially as all I really want from it is execution. I’m sure it’ll be one of the first things added but I’m afraid the webapp’s pretty useless to me until then.

[crebbo]

Congrats to the Freetrade team, I’m sure more has gone into this initial bootstrap than appears.

At least now we can really see how quickly Freetrade can ship/iterate. Hopefully it won’t all be “backend/performance” updates.

Expecting stock discovery and trading soon.

[SirCaesar (Cesare G. A.)]

Slightly concerned about security. With the app we need to install it and then use a “Magic link”, whose “secret code” only has eight digits. With over 1M users, it feels like a “lucky” bot could manage to snatch one or two of those, at least in principle, if there aren’t additional security measures under the hood when magic links are used.

I feel that having a web platform makes this risk even higher, as it is much easier to automate processes in-browser than it is through an app interface.

I’m a broken record on this, but Freetrade desperately needs 2FA.

[fryry]

Although it’s quite sparse, I’m all for FT shipping early and often. It will give the community the opportunity to steer things in the right direction.

[clloyd (Chris Lloyd)]

@rehpot Thanks for the feedback! I agree, and we’ll be regularly communicating as we add this functionality.

@crebbo Hope you won’t be disappointed!

@SirCaesar it’s a great question, so one of the limitations of the web is that you need to open the magic link in the exact same browser as it was requested with, this means if someone accidentally shared their magic link (or it’s guessed/generated automatically), without the browser that initiated that login request, the code is useless. Great feedback about 2FA more generally. I’ll pass that on!

@fryry Thanks! That’s definitely the plan!

[SirCaesar (Cesare G. A.)]

Ah, that’s great then. Thanks for the answer!

[freddiejmc (Freddie McGee)]

Good stuff keeping in mind that this in an MVP. Looking forward to seeing progress and great that it’s being built in public

[DarkRabbit]

upon login, part of me was expecting to see enhanced charting capabilities, indicators etc…

[mamoskoja]

Why not integrating tradingview charting functions into the web?

[Pdw]

Love it - Everyone needs to remember:

[My.financial.journey]

Im happy that’s the feature is rolled out atleast they can improve on it and focus on other features too good progress freetrade keep it up