MEGATHREAD: Freetrade Plus :plus_:

Freetrade Chat šŸ”„
104

At the moment I donā€™t think it offers enough to warrant me signing up for plus the features seem pretty limited at the moment and donā€™t seem to be worth the upgrade. Though I imagine more features will be added as time goes on and I may eventually sign up.

Key features I think would add value would be things like
-Foreign markets behind paywall rather than individual stocks i.e-EU/Asian stocks
-No FX fee or FX fee heavily reduced
-Ability to split money into separate investment pots so I can have multiple portfolios which fit different purposes/goals that are visually separated into their own portfolios with their own graphs
-More detailed stock info in the like that you would see on Yahoo Finance inc earnings calls, dividends etc.
-Live pricing although I feel this should be available to even GIAā€™s
-Multiple currencies
-LISA
-Maybe a discussion feature under each stock so people can share thoughts, though hopefully not spam filled like you see on Etoro more like Yahoo Finance.
-More technical and bigger variety of graphing capabilities- i.e ability to compare your portfolio performance against major indexes. (Though the graph on the basic account still needs major work as it is essentially unusable if you do regular deposits as the graph spikes and makes it incomprehensible this needs immediate attention)

At the moment plus account does not offer me anything worth paying for but these additions Iā€™ve mentioned would definitely encourage me to make the switch in the future and add a hell of a lot of value to plus accounts.

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105

Yeah Ā£10 a month isnā€™t worth itā€¦ not even tempted at that price.

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106

If it was cheaper (say Ā£5-Ā£7 a month) I may have been temptedā€¦

But withholding stocks for Plus members seems both a backhanded and confusing way to do things, when compared to the other Freemium dealers.

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107

I donā€™t agree at all.

If you are a new investor making more than 10 trades a month you are doing something wrong.

The mission isnā€™t to get novices day tradingā€¦

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108

really hope Rolls Royce isnā€™t a plus only stockā€¦after waiting so patiently.

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109

I guess its technically Ā£7 if you already get the isa.

I agree with you, withholding stocks only works if its something completely different like Japan/Korea or cryto/forex eventually. If its a regular UK stock itā€™ll annoy everyone.

Btw if you are obsessed with the T212 competition you can look up their accounts, when the cfd regulations changed their profit fell 85% then last year they made a loss. Theyā€™ll have to change their model somehow, just think theyā€™re doing a spotify, trying to get as many people hooked in first

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Yea Ā£7 a month seems more enticing though I do understand they need to make money so if they add a lot more plus features to make it worth Ā£10 Iā€™d be more willing to consider the upgrade.

I agree withholding specific individual stocks seems odd which is why I think and agree with a lot of others in the thread they should just put whole foreign markets behind a paywall instead. That way you at least are clear what you do and donā€™t get between basic and plus accounts. Access to a comprehensive foreign market set of stocks seems like a fair plus feature.

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111

I will pay for it. Where else can you get an opportunity to shape a product like community members can on freetrade? I am sure it will evolve just as well as freetrade has.

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112

I think at present the features are not really enticing enough for me to pay Ā£10 pounds for a plus account.

Stop losses, limit orders, price notifications should be standard for basic account.

Reduced/cancel FX fee will be a plus
Live pricing (buy/sell) with improved charting, e.g. deposits shouldnā€™t affect the graph, more interval charts availability; daily, weekly, monthly, 3monthly, 6monthly, yearly.
Being able to create a watchlist
Pre hours and after hours trading. I will SIGN UP now for this alone! Please make this happen.

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I dont have think back far to see these features would have been a god send to have. Covid crash.

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Competition is always ramping up (Revolut, Trading 212, etc.
FreeTrade needs to be careful how you position the Plus account because all users are different.

Some constructive feedback / comments

  • Donā€™t make me pay for things that I donā€™t want to use as a take-it-or-leave-it approach!
  • Say people want limit orders and this is the ONLY feature they care about (not the other Plus stuff)
  • If competitors offer it for free, people will naturally switch over and the app growth will fall off
  • By the time you position to change this, it may already be too late, people donā€™t like change

Suggestionsā€¦

  • Consider offering a separate add-on or limited free option for these ā€˜Plus featuresā€™
  • E.g. 3 Limit Orders every X months or something, something feasible that still lets the Plus users get moneys worth but doesnā€™t make you lose your users
  • Allow users to make use of the Plus features as one-off with a little extra charge (e.g. Ā£1 or Ā£1.50 for limit order (where maybe only partial deduction if it is cancelled etc)
  • This would allow FreeTrade to use existing infrastructure features and still make money
  • Existing free users who have recommended so many friends/family to get you where you are nowā€¦ you canā€™t buy customer loyalty but good will goes a long way
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116

Not sure about this. The whole point of the premium tier is to present more value than paying for the parts separately.

If you see more value in paying for a single feature on a pay per use basis something is off.

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117

It depends.

Thereā€™s several things in the premier tier that for me are not appealing, but I do like the more advanced orders.

If the choice given to me is pay full wack Ā£9.99 if you want it, then Iā€™ll suck it up and eventually go to Trading 212 or so and wonā€™t in good faith be able to recommend FreeTrade to anyone I know. Why? Because the competitors are offering more advanced features for free.

If I could pay like Ā£5 a month and just get the advanced orders only (or some other one-off-at-execution equiv) then maybe I hang around and donā€™t think about it.

People will always do what they want to do, you may well be perfectly happy with the model. Others may never want/care about the advanced order features and happily continue using FreeTrade - thatā€™s cool! But Iā€™m saying not everyone is like that and as someone invested in the company I worry it will deter this generation of people who are increasingly wanting to learn more and more about investing.

EDIT: You only have to google / youtube search for comparisons between FreeTrade and Trading 212 to get an idea of what is the ā€˜pushedā€™ consensus view. Yes Trading212 has been around longer and rightly so ahead of the curve, but thatā€™s why positioning for freemium things must be carefully considered, donā€™t take your customer base for granted.

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Donā€™t you think Freetrade will have considered almost every suggestion at some point before they finalised the Plus product? Of course everyone wants the best product possible at the cheapest price but Freetrade is a business ultimately.

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Yeah I get that, like you Iā€™m also an R5 Investor. Of course I want the company to do well, but that doesnā€™t mean I shouldnā€™t be able to give some constructive feedback.

Offering an all-or-nothing is simpler from a branding perspective and technical implementation perspective, the trade off is the very things I am suggesting. Maybe itā€™s a matter of time and will come further down the line as adding the ā€˜greyā€™ to a black/white mix isnā€™t always cheap.

I just think being able to partially opt-in at some fair (and lower) cost will mean customers are less likely to go elsewhere, you may not agree with it but thatā€™s my opinion and I hope they consider it.

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120

I use a number of platforms, but I would rather just use Freetrade. If it had LISAs, JISAs and SIPPs and euro accounts I could close the rest. These could be separated out or bundled together.

As Freetrade Plus is a bundle, for some interesting thinking on this I recommend
Intro Ā· Four Myths of Bundling and the Invest Like The Best podcast with the author.

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121

You only have to look at the mess Monzo got into about its Plus account to see that companies donā€™t always get it right and disregard feedback at their peril.

Part of being in business is being able to admit that perhaps what you thought was a great idea doesnā€™t actually work out or that the market has already moved on.

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122

All messages on this thread are great to read. Very engaged user base, good or critical insights to what freetrade are doing.

OK another note, when people actually are able to start paying for plus I think a nice little gift in the post would be great. Left over pair of socks or a t-shirt with the forum Web page under the logo would be great.

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Freetrade basic/ISA has been a wonderful product and Iā€™ve been very pleased with what I have been provided with for investing in ETFs and great companies commission free through the basic and ISA account, it absolutely knocks the socks out of AJ bell which had been my primary broker beforehand. In particular its been great to see so many new stocks make their way onto the platform since the invest platform and crowdfund round completed.

I appreciate the following about plus

  • The company has to make money some how, it cant simply give everything we would like away for free
  • The product does not need full uptake for the product to achieve profitability (in the most recent pitch deck an estimate of 9.4% by year end 2020 uptake moving up to 15% by year end 2023), its possible I am not in the target market
  • In the blog announcement it explicitly states that there is much much more coming, thus this is an early version of the product

So the way Freetrade chooses to do this and who they are targeting the product is ultimately up to them. Given how strong the basic/isa accounts are though there has to be a convincing reason why someone would pay Ā£10 a month for premium features.

Much feedback and many suggestions have been given already so Iā€™ll just focus on my own consumer choice and the reasons for it, I already pay for the ISA so it would be Ā£7 a month extra:

First off Iā€™ll state that my investing style is mostly ETF index focused 2/3 with the rest being individual picks predominantly in growth stocks.

Limit orders and stop losses:

Controversially these donā€™t interest me much although I can see why they would to most, I have had good experience with the current system of market orders and as someone who buys a stock with a long term investment horizon of 5 years+ a small price move does not concern me personally

A larger list of investments:

I would be interested potentially in investing in interesting companies with small market caps especially as I like growth stocks. At the moment I have no idea which companies will fall into this category so I canā€™t comment on whether this would in itself be enough to get me to buy plus. I donā€™t know what the likelihood is of me finding opportunities like this that I want to continue to invest in each month so if there is no minimum contract length on plus I may be tempted to cancel it from month to month and re-subscribe when I need to

Curated collections

If these enabled me to find opportunities in aforementioned small cap growth stocks then potentially this would be valuable to me, if they donā€™t then it wonā€™t interest me. Pointing me in the direction is enough and I can then do my own due diligence on the company myself.

Priority customer service

Whilst this is nice I think the current standard of customer service from freetrade has been very good and I hope that it continues to be.

So based on todayā€™s offering I wont be putting my name down to upgrade my account. The basic/isa offering is extremely solid and until I find out more about what I actually get for my Ā£84 a year. Iā€™ll be watching with interest though and once the product has been fleshed out a bit more I may even try it out for a month to see if I like it (anyone like the sound of a one month free trial :smiley: ).

Finally just a couple of thoughts on alternate brokers. I personally donā€™t care if a brokerage is offering a subsidised service because itā€™s CFD platform is the main money winner for them. I consider myself knowledgeable enough as to know to stay away from that and focus on things that I know more about and I would still use the product if I felt as though it was better. However I wouldnā€™t recommend it to any of my friends and family many of whom have perhaps a far less interested attitude to investing than I do and donā€™t have the time or inclination to teach themselves about the dangers of various leveraged products. If I recommend a broker to someone I am going to feel personally responsible if they go on to lose money on products like this, get their fingers burned and never touch investing again. Thatā€™s why I recommend freetrade whose philosophy I agree with and I donā€™t recommend T212.

Hope this feedback is helpful freetrade team, keep up the good work.

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Comparing Freetrade to some of the competitors is not useful if the competitors mentioned do not have sustainable business models. You cannot run a great investing platform without investing in people and the platform!

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