I get the need to generate revenue but surely thereās a way to do it without charging an excessive fee for what is very limited features that are pretty much offered as a standard elsewhere. In its current form the new features are very threadbare. For a site thats called āFreetradeā going through a great period of growth to then put stocks behind a pay wall seems counterproductive. Surely right now you want to entice the new members in to stay for the very long term (which is where the money longterm will come from) rather than giving them reasons to go to an alternate provider that offers these features and much more for free.
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Youāre already criticised for having a massively reduced catalogue of stocks/limited available compared to other providers. Now youāre going to limit users further by only allowing those on premium account. Just seems absolutely crazy in your growth stage and on a site that even has free trade as its name thatās behind in number of stocks now many of them will be behind a pay wall.
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Agree with a lot of the comments on here but here is my feedback and suggestion for what Plus should / shouldnāt include:
Plus should include:
- ISA, SIPP (then JISA, LISA) - note I think you could charge more than Ā£10 a month if you included all of these.
- More stocks (I would put recently IPOād stocks in Plus as an early bird feature - then move them into standard after ~4 weeks, I would also stick Emerging and Asian markets in Plus only)
- Reduced FX fee (perhaps half of the current fee)
- Interest on cash balances (base rate fine)
- Stop losses (trailing stop loss feature too)
- Priority access to invest in Freetradeās next crowdfunding round (maybe a bit controversialā¦ but just an idea)
- Detailed stock data / financial metrics. Take a look at stockopediaās premium offering, they have a nice feature which shows when a stock hits famous investorsā criteria. This is genuinely worth paying for as you can create customised watchlists based on certain investing criteria. Basic account should still show what you can find on Google, Yahoo, Apple stocks app etc.
- Ability to create multiple portfolios (this is just a front end thing) and multiple watchlists.
- Multi currency accounts
Plus shouldnāt include:
- Limit orders - a basic investor should be able to state the max price they are willing to pay
- Restricted US/EU stocks - FT should not be restricting these yet. Both the Plus offering as a whole needs to be better and FT needs to have more customers. This will annoy me the most if you start sticking US/EU stocks in Plus - it massively goes against that narrative of you becoming the leading free brokerage for European investors. I can see Monzo style backlash coming on your freemium offering if you do this.
Things that I donāt think are that important either way:
- Curated collections are fine - but basically have no value
- Priority customer service sounds nice - but again donāt really place too much value on it. Whatās the difference between a 10 min and 1 hour wait as an amateur investorā¦?!
Edit: Also a quick suggestion for FT team to state what is coming in āmuch much moreā to give customers a sense of where Plus is going. You will also get early feedback this way.
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Hey! There has a been a vote in the thread.
47% might be interested if the offer becomes more complete. I am of the same opinion.
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Paywalled stocks looked to me a little like a low hanging fruit, which was relatively easy to implement and which added features to the current form of the Plus. Will wait till the official explanation of which stocks and why get behind Plus. I donāt see it as a solid Plus feature for now
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Limit orders are great but for Ā£10 per month seem expensive. For some investors makes more sense to pay per use for 2-3 trades per month at 1Ā£ per limit order. This should be resolved with more features added to Plus.
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Would love to see a lowered FX above certain volume as with the current fee structure very large trades may cost like an iPhone in terms of fees. This makes sense to launch with SIPPs and EU expansion to drive larger portfolios to the platform.
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This has been mentioned above and got a lot of likes so will just copy the text - Ā« multiple mini portfolios (customizable organisational folders for stock types) with a graph attached to each for easy management of larger portfolios Ā»
Many good suggestions have been mentioned in the thread already and if integrated will make the offer X times more enticing. The discussion will make more sense when the Plus is officially launched.
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The NPS feedback from our customers is overwhelmingly praising the continuously increasing list of stocks. We are adding new IPOs, SPACs, etc. There are plenty of investments in the universe you wouldnāt find anywhere else on the market for free.
We finalised the first big batch of Plus stocks, and Iām very excited about the small companies we will add to the subscription plan for the first time.
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Thereās definitely been an uptick in expansion of the stocks available - mad respect for that.
For me personally, the appeal of plus depends on what kinds of stocks are available behind the paywall. e.g. @adam mentioned adding the NEX exchange - which is definitely āfairā to have as a premium offering - no one else offers this. On the other hand, if small but widely available/traded stocks were behind the paywall (e.g. Abcam), that would be such a dissapointment. I wait patiently to hear what plus will offer.
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Thatās a good example.
Our vision is to make every stock, in every exchange of the world, available.
Plus will play a key role in that.
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Iād like if you were more transparent about what key roles FTP is going to play for FT.
If you were upfront of why the cost is x and what these monies will be used for Iām sure it will be another good incentive to join (for me, anyway 
).
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I cannot remember seeing this (as in āmore exchangesā) articulated so directly before. Probably my memory, but thatās something Iād happily pay for. If I hadnāt plus for life already.
Clearly this will take some time, but good to know the direction of travel. 
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Would Plus give access to invest in Tencent?
With 41000 listed companies in the world (according to the OECD) this seems a realistic ambition. But the search feature might have to be refined. At the moment, for example, āInvestecā is not the top result even if you type āInvestecā!!
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Reading through the last few dozens of posts it feels like majority of people feel itās not āworth itā, largely because they compare 120gbp per year to their overall yearly investment gains and find it significant.
Itās not a problem in itself and there are at least 2 possible solutions:
- Charge % based fee for plus. I.e. plus portfolio gets 0.2% fee. You can then make an argument that different types of orders and more insights can easily make you extra 0.2%. That way it would get more value for people with smaller portfolios. For comparison HL charges 0.45% on similar portfolios.
- Give people some perks like that Revolut metal card or rewards āi.e. things that create a perception that itās worth it
The later is obviously harder to do, but nothing a good marketing person canāt fix.
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I think FT is going for the subscription model too soon. Letās be realistic, it needs to be at least at the level of T212 or Degiro in terms of features to even think about it.
I think many people joined FT because it was free and there is no harm. Like, I opened an account in many challenger banks without actually thinking about it because it was for free and just for fun.
I struggle to find any reason for anyone new to join FT instead of T212 or Degiro. T212 gives me more features for āfreeā and degiro allows me even more expanded stock universe with option to buy stocks like Tencent.
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I quite like your first suggestion of charging a percentage based on portfolio worth - it would be good to see a cap of Ā£10 if that approach was adopted.
Alternatively, it would be good to see Alpha adopt a no FX fee - IMO thatās probably the easiest target to give the account that worthwhile ānessā we are all looking for.
@Viktor really good to see you participating in this conversation, imagine its a bit of a minefield at the moment. What are the chances of an updated list of how many stocks are available v competitors now? With the weekly addition of stocks thats been adopted Iād imagine that particular gap is closing fast?
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One can just not pay and keep the free version so it is not as if everyone will be forced into it.
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I quite like your first suggestion of charging a percentage based on portfolio worth - it would be good to see a cap of Ā£10 if that approach was adopted.
I see no reason to cap it at 10GBP. Here is what HL charges:
On the first Ā£250,000 |0.45%|
On the value between Ā£250,000 - Ā£1m |0.25%|
On the value between Ā£1m - Ā£2m |0.1%|
On the value over Ā£2m |No charge|
Do we know that largest portfolio on Freetrade?
We are talking about the paid version here.The FT paid version in itās current form is not comparable to even free/cheaper products in the market. The FT free version will be even less appealing and thatās not even in the competition.
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If the caps not lower than existing platforms there remains little reason to use the less mature platform - agree it doesnāt have to be Ā£10, I just put that as Ft have obviously decided thats a reasonable price point already.
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The thing is, the majority of Freetrade customers do not frequent this forum.
Back in June, there was apparently only about 7k on the forum (How should Freetrade boost the growth of this community?), so as weāve surpassed 200k customers, us folk on here only represent a tiny percentage of Freetrade customers.
Freetrade has the tricky task of balancing the needs of the vast silent majority who might be happy with paying Ā£9.99 for Plus (or not, as the case might be)
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