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Zecco Changes their Pricing Model
I just received an email from Zecco, stating that due to the economic crisis, they are no longer providing 10 free stock trades per month to account holders that have a minimum $2,500 in their account. I’ve been a big fan and customer of Zecco, and recently did a thorough Zecco review, preaching the benefits of their pricing model, so I was a little disappointed to hear this news. But upon closer inspection, I think Zecco is still the best deal out there.
Zecco’s New Pricing Model
Although Zecco no longer offers free trades for those with a $2,500 account minimum, they still offer the benefit to those with $25,000 in their accounts. For those under this threshold, trades will be $4.50 each, which is still a bargain. To my knowledge, it’s still the cheapest trading platform out there (if you know of another, please let us know in the comments). I believe TradeKing comes in second at $4.95 per trade.
Other Zecco Price Changes
To reflect the fact that they will now be charging more people for trades, Zecco will be investing in their customer service and trading platform. They’ll be upgrading to an entirely new trading platform later in 2009, to improve reliability and to introduce advanced order types, enhanced options trading capabilities, bond trading, better account management, one-step login, and a faster website.
More Thoughts on Zecco’s Price Changes
I can understand the business motivations behind this move. Apparently they found that the $0 trade, advertising monetization model did not result in the profitability that they were anticipating (especially in this market). No other brokers made the move to this pricing model, and probably for good reason. If you think about it, they probably had many customers that simply maintained low account balances, got their free trades, didn’t click on the ads, and left the site. Because they’re still the cheapest out there, and will be improving their platform, I’m going to stick with Zecco for my non-retirement funds.
If you’d like to start a new account with them, you can Sign up for Zecco here.
Zecco Discussion:
- What do you think of Zecco’s new pricing model?
- If you are a current Zecco customer, are you going to stay one?
- Who have you found the cheapest discount broker to be?
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My name is G.E. Miller and 
This won’t make me leave Zecco. I joined b/c of the free trades, but I ended up not making many trades anyways and the account has no fees, which is great. It’s a good company.
TradeKing has WAYYY better tools and a great community. Their service is the best (check out the accolades they get from Barron’s and SmartMoney). And at $4.95 (with no hidden fees like some brokers), they are the best. At least for me. Oh, and they reimburse account transfer fees. So when Zecco tries to ding you for leaving, TradeKing will pay you back! I transferred there from Etrade last year. I love TradeKing.
Just2Trade charges $2.50 per stock trade
Frequent trading isn’t really a good strategy anyway; Buy and Hold is better for the long term.
Sogotrade.com charges $3 per trade.
It’s quite high number in my opinion (if compare to the other).
I use Tradeking as a brokerage and just opened a Roth IRA. Have not sent in money yet… BECAUSE there is no ACH transfer!
What do you all do? Wire? Check? It annoys me that I have to either write check (per pay period) or pay money to wire funds to the IRA!