I have reviewed online brokerage accounts before and several people have asked me how ShareBuilder compares to some of the other online brokerages, such as and Zecco. ShareBuilder is consistently rated in among the top online brokerages and this review should give you a good idea about the pros and cons of investing with ShareBuilder.
ShareBuilder is owned by the same parent company that owns ING Direct, one of the most popular high yield savings accounts. One of the nice features about this is the ability to link your ING Direct account with your ShareBuilder account. But more on that later. Let’s jump into what makes ShareBuilder an attractive option.
ShareBuilder’s claim to fame – automatic investing
ShareBuilder is unique among discount brokerages because they promote automatic investing more than day trading. The folks at ShareBuilder believe the path to wealth is by growing your shares through long term investing, automatic investments, and dividend reinvestments, not short term investments or day trading. To encourage automatic investing, ShareBuilder offers very attractive rates for automatic trades and also allows fractional share purchases, so every penny of your investment goes toward purchasing the stock.
Select your ShareBuilder account level
ShareBuilder has 3 plan options for customers. They are the Basic Plan, the Standard Plan, and the Advantage Plan. The Basic plan is free and offers $4 automatic investments, which places ShareBuilder among the least expensive options among online brokers. The Standard Plan costs $12 per month, and offers 6 free automatic investments an additional automatic investments at $2 each. The Advantage Plan is a little pricier at $20 per month, but offers 20 automatic investments with additional investments for $1 each.
Real time trades and options trades cost the same regardless if which ShareBuilder plan you choose. ShareBuilder also offers a free trades for a wide variety of ING owned mutual funds.
Here is a quick breakdown of ShareBuilder plan options and pricing. For more pricing information, visit the ShareBuilder home page.
| ShareBuilder Price Plan | Basic | Standard | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Automatic Investments Included with Program |
None
|
6 per month
|
20 per month
|
| Additional Investments |
$4 ea.
|
$2 ea.
|
$1 ea.
|
| Base Fee | None | $12/month | $20/month |
| Real Time Trades | $9.95 | $9.95 | $9.95 |
| Options Trades | $9.95 +$1.50 per contract |
$9.95 +$1.50 per contract |
$9.95 +$1.50 per contract |
Opening a ShareBuilder Account
Opening ShareBuilder account account is easy and only takes about 10-15 minutes. You will need to have the standard information required to open any financial account, including identification, address, SSN, employer information, trading experience, financial information, etc.
Transferring Money and Making Trades
Transferring money. ShareBuilder offers the usual money transfer methods, including ACH, wire transfers, checks, etc. ShareBuilder also offers Express Funding, the option of placing a real-time order and transferring funds from your bank account to cover the cost of the trade. The Express Funding service costs $5.00 per trade, but is free if you link your ShareBuilder account with ING’s Electric Orange high yield checking account (you can link your ING Direct, Electric Orange, and ShareBuilder accounts). This is a great option compared to some brokerages where you may need to wait 5 days to have access to transferred funds.
Making Trades with ShareBuilder. Trading on the ShareBuilder platform is easy and intuitive. It is easy to set up automatic transfers to your brokerage account and set up automatic investments. ShareBuilder also offers the full range of brokerage services in addition to automatic investing, including real time trades and real time research and information, options and margins trades, mutual funds, ETFs, Dividend reinvestments, partial share purchases, and more.
ShareBuilder’s Research and Education Center
Research. ShareBuilder has quite a few research tools available, however, it must be noted that some of them are Premium Tools which are only available to account holders who have the Standard or Advantage accounts. At $12 and $20 respectively, I decided not to sign up for them (once you leave the Basic Account, you cannot go back). Some competitors, such as , make all of their resources available to all account holders without additional fees.
One of the more fun tools to play with is the “What If You Had Invested” tool. It allows you to play “what if” scenarios with your portfolio. Of course, this doesn’t help your portfolio now; it’s just fun to play with. Other research tools include tools for screening ETFs and stocks, options trading tools, watch list, market movers, and more.
Education. The ShareBuilder education center is basic, but effective. The main topics include beginning investment courses, types of investments, retirement, taxes, and investment advice.
Manage your taxes with GainsKeeper
ShareBuilder offers GainsKeeper to track your realized and unrealized gains and losses. GainsKeeper also tracks all your trades so you can maintain your investing records. The Gains & Losses tool allows you to export your tax related gain/loss data into a TXF formatted file, which can be easily imported into popular tax preparation software packages such as TurboTax and TaxCut. You can also export your gain/loss data into an Excel file or a text file, which can be imported into Quicken or MS Money.
Other features at ShareBuilder
ShareBuilder offers a full brokerage service with many additional features, including:
- No fee IRAs and ESAs. ShareBuilder does not charge IRA custodial fees or fees for Educational Savings Accounts, or Coverdell ESA. This is a new feature as of November 1, 2008, and applies to all IRA accounts held at ShareBuilder. Many brokerages charge $20-30 per IRA account, which can add up quickly!
- No load, no transaction fee for ING Mutual Funds. All ING Funds have low management fees and are free to trade within ShareBuilder.
- No account minimums and no inactivity fees.
- Automatic investing at discounted rates.
- Access to mutual funds, ETFs, and options trading.
- Dividend Reinvestment Plans (DRIPs) and fractional share purchases.
- Free education and research section.
- Tax management software.
- Money Market Cash Account. ShareBuilder offers a money market account where you can store your cash when you don’t have it invested in any equities.
- Excellent customer service.
My thoughts on ShareBuilder
ShareBuilder is a no frills, no non-sense brokerage built primarily for people who want to automatically invest into the same stock or fund. And at $4 per trade or less, ShareBuilder is a good vehicle to use for managing your investments. The no load, no transaction fee ING Mutual Funds are another great benefit of using ShareBuilder for your investments, as is the ability to link your ShareBuilder account to your ING Direct account. ShareBuilder is also good for people who invest via DRIPs because you can purchase and own partial shares through ShareBuilder.
However, ShareBuilder is a less attractive option for people who like to make frequent real time trades. It is not difficult to beat ShareBuilder’s $9.95 real-time trades – just look to at $4.95 or Zecco at $4.50.
For more discount brokerage reviews, be sure to check out these articles: TradeKing Review, Zecco Review, and Zecco, TradeKing and ShareBuilder comparison.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree with your review – I have my 3 year old’s account with Sharebuilder. This type of investment account is best suited for long term dividend growth/reinvesting strategies where you only plan to add to your positions over time.
One thing that should be noted is that although the commission on an individual purchase is only $4, if you ever plan to sell a position, you have to do that in real time which, as your table above shows is $9.95. That’s good because, as I recall, it used to be more ($15-$16).
Also, after ING acquired Sharebuilder, they expanded the brokerage service to include some basic option trades – the occasional prudent covered call might be appealing for investors in this kind of account.
You nailed it in the close– Sharebuilder is an excellent long-term investing tool, but it is not for daytraders . . .
Yep, only good for long term investors. I have an account and I’ve never paid for a trade. Sometimes you can find promo codes for free trades and they have a sign up bonus for costco members (usually between $50 – $100). I like that it’s linked to my ING account, I can log in to my savings account and see my investment balance at the same time.
Is it true that Sharebuilder doesn’t charge you any annual fee on IRAs? If that’s the case I might open one next year with them. I hate paying a $30 annual fee to my stock broker ( I didn’t pay commissions up untill early 2009 though).
Hi DGI, Yep, no admin fees, but standard commissions still apply ($4 or less per automatic trade, or $9.95 for real time trades). Here is the ShareBuilder IRA fee schedule.
I like my Sharebuilder account. I find the interface to set up a trade to be a bit confusing in timing the trade and turning it on (for the $4 trade option) but overall it satisfies my needs. Thanks to them I can say I own a teency tiny bit of Berkshire Hathoway (a fractional B share).
If you’re buying for the long term and don’t plan to sell often then this is a nice place to check out.
I had a bad experience where they took 14 minutes to process a transaction. I did not have a lot of shares, so the money factor was not a big deal. (It went up $3 a share in that time period) It was the customer service that bothered me. I am going to migrate my account when I find a company that will pay for the transfer.
Just thought I should share that. Thanks.
rmorris, I have had nothing but excellent experiences with TradeKing, which you can read about in this TradeKing Review. Individual trades are cheaper and there are more investing tools available at TradeKing. They also reimburse new customers up to $150 to transfer their funds to their company. TradeKing was rated #1 discount brokerage overall two years in a row by SmartMoney, a financial magazine from the Wall Street Journal. I encourage you to check them out.