MEGATHREAD: Freetrade Plus :plus_:

Great work team :blush: my question is - can I pay for Plus annually rather than monthly? I prefer to have one clean payment rather than lots of monthly stuff rolling out of my accounts.

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Thanks, added Lemonade into that Collection now! :lemon:

As for the slightly pixelated Plus banner, it’s not a native screen on the app which we fully control, unfortunately, but in fact, a carousel which we populate from Intercom.

Expect to see a lot more ‘Plus’ brand as we move closer to full launch!

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I was hoping for more something that could compete with portfolio trackers and other tools such as Simply Wall Street and sharesight, as right now freetrade plus is more expensive than quite a few tools and has to compete for that subscription fee.

Right now plus costs £119.88 a year and offers limit orders and stop losses as well as access to stocks placed behind a paywall.

This doesn’t seem like good value for me specifically and i cant see myself subscribing until new features are implemented, but as a starting step for premium features i think its a good base to build on. More and more interesting and risky stocks can be placed behind the freetrade paywall limiting risk for new investors and limit orders and stop losses can be good tools for these gamble investments.

Some ideas i can suggest for premium features would be advanced portfolio management, multiple mini portfolios (customizable organisational folders for stock types) with a graph attached to each for easy management of larger portfolios. Auto investing can then be built into this by allowing users to assign how much money gets split between these folders and the individual stock weights inside. Adding new stocks to a portfolio would then be a matter of assigning it a place within a mini portfolio and allowing it to grow on its own.

In conclusion Freetrade plus’s feature set isn’t for me right now but i like the idea and it certainly has a’lot of room to grow a powerful feature set in the future.

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@smarmara - great question. Initially we’ll only be taking monthly payments, but we definitely intend to add the option of signing up for a year with one single payment.

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Yeah I thought the paywalled stocks would be against the ethos of the brand but thinking about it it does make sense. The extra cost of adding and servicing smaller, less liquid stocks (and likely more customer support issues too) means someone has to pay for it. And as you mentioned its very much the opposite of the robinhood “fund your account and YOLO” approach.

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Thanks for the feedback, we’ll definitely take it on board :+1:

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I’m disappointed by the concept of keeping some stocks behind a paywall. Perhaps you could at least offer the option to pay £1/ trade for non plus members to access them? The rest seems fine (though not bothered about any of it myself). Will have to wait and see if I actually want any of the ‘plus only’ stocks.

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To add another angle. What happens when you get plus only stocks and than stop paying for the subscription. Will you be able to only sell and not to increase your plus only holdings?

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When we get more AIM stocks added which people ask for instead of Steve Madden and Kodak (not sure why you’d invest in those) then I might consider the £9.99 fee.
I can’t see myself buying into a paywall of stocks while good suggestions aren’t added in nearly half as much time.

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Like idea of a cost-per-trade for non-plus members. Nice extra revenue earner for FT as well (and you could upsell the upgrade to Plus in the share screen too)

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The interesting thing about Plus is you can add some very cool and advanced features for not only portfolio management but investing as a whole as presumably Plus membership is aimed more towards people with more knowledge over investments and investing.

Cost-per-trade of paywall stocks sounds interesting for none members but muddys the “Free” brand that Freetrade promotes itself on. There are definitely a lot of good ideas here though.

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I don’t think paywalling stocks is a good move. I can understand all other features like stoploss orders but to block investors from certain stocks is quite annoying. I do hope that this is more about AIM stocks rather than access to other non-US/UK markets. some clarity on that would be nice.

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First of all congrats to the team on getting this ready - as an investor I’m really impressed with how Freetrade has operated over the last few months; getting out new features, quick customer service and no loss of service.

I have a few thoughts on Plus -

The expanded stock universe is an interesting and good option but really this shouldn’t be limited to a Plus membership. You are competing with T212 and need to continually enlarge stock universe on all platforms.

Also competitors already offer limit orders and stop-loss on their free products so I’m not sure the value for money is there.

If you could package this monthly cost with insurance or interest on cash balances it would look more attractive.

Also you should consider a weekly free share lottery for plus members.

Also if you could have a tiered Plus option and a higher cost version that has integrated market intelligence e.g. Morningstar that would be really attractive.

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maybe offer a discount for paying annually in advance? seems pretty standard with subscription offers.

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Would never be an option or reality for something like this platform but my friend the other day after watching The Big Short, said "wouldnt it be interesting if trading sites allowed you to purchase default swaps? like insurane or betting on if a company will go under. Sounds very cut throat and grim, but its how many back then in 08 made loads on the market going under. Would be intersting option to have something like this as a Plus member.

Congrats on the release.

I generally think paywalled stocks is a bad idea. I think paywalled markets are better, and more easily understood. For example, Freetrade could offer Euro/Asia stocks (when they arrive) as Plus exclusives. I don’t want to see a company and not know intuitively whether it’s available on my non-Plus account.

Limit orders are incredibly valuable. And while you want to paywall value, I think basic limit orders should be available for free. I’d be happy with more advanced functionality such as stop loss, and take profit, as Plus-only.

Why place Stock Collections behind a paywall? I don’t use them for discovery, but they seem such a trivial and easy thing. It doesn’t seem particularly valuable.

This feedback might suggest placing too much value in the non-Plus product, but I’m sure more new functionality will be added to the Plus product in future. For example, auto-investment in a portfolio, multi-currency accounts, or after-hours trading.

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Swaps are unregulated trades made by off the book, very few select members of the ISDA.
The movie also stated the capital requirement was $1.5bn in 2008, not sure what it might be now.

That’s not going to come to private investing in our life time.

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Oh defo, was just my friend thinking out loud and would never happen as I mentioned. One can still ponder though.

But overall so far I agree with many above, pay walling some stocks I dont agree with. Any and all stocks should be available to everyone on FT, be they normal or Plus account.

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Making users pay for stocks and features they can get for free on other platforms is a horrible idea.

Limit orders and stop losses are such basic trading features, it seems like FT struggled to find truly premium features to include at launch so they decided to use these instead.

Likewise with paywalled stocks. If a user has the option to pay a monthly fee to access certain stocks or they can access them for free on another platform, it’s more likely they’ll take the free route.

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Imo limit orders shouldn’t be behind a paywall as they’re basic and available for free elsewhere, same for collections

Exclusive stocks seem like a good idea to me ! Not sure about a cost per trade for non plus members because if it was 1£ someone would need to do 11 trades a month on exclusive stocks for it to become cost effective to subscribe, and if it was more than 1£ (which I suspect would be closer to the real cost) it might be detrimental to the brand by making it seem expensive

Multi currency accounts + live pricing + After hours trading + some research/analysis are all musts for a subscription

I would personnally add options (unleveraged, where you cannot lose more than you invested) because this is something people would absolutely pay for and no one would offer for free but maybe later on as the brand is targeted to first time traders for now

And for the pies/auto-investing I’m still unsure but leaning towards including it in the free version because it’s available for free elsewhere and it could be a great marketing argument to acquire customers

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