Carta Reviews: 4.4/5 — Solid Choice

It has brilliant tools to automate the process for granting, exercising options and generating share certificates. The reporting functionality is great and the support team are very helpful.

There are minimal issues but it would be great to find even more ways to automate the process!

Saving time along the equity journey for granting and exercising options, and ensuring the quality of data is accurate for audit purposes.

The Cap Table, Round Modelling and HMRC exports save a lot of time when needing to file/share info with 3rd parties. The dashboards give a clear view of ownership both fully diluted and undiluted. The process of issuing option grants is easy and the ability to send an email update to all shareholders instead of emailing is also a great time saver.

The integration with Docusign has woeful support. We ended up having to disconnect it because we were stuck between Capdesk and Docusign when it wouldn't work and so now we pay for each envelope despite having our own Docusign account which is annoying.

Having to manually track the cap table, and execute share option agreements.

Online issuances, online management, everything in one place

Recent price increase, lack of customer support on the telephone (that said, via email they are very helpful)

Management of employee share options plan and online issuance of documents

It works well for tracking my options and their vested status

Other than the number of shares and their status, it doesn't give you a huge amount of additional information

It tells me about my share options

Easy to navigate user interface......................................

Not much, it works well for us.....................................

We have a complex cap table with over 70 investors and have mutliple financing rounds with convertible notes and warrants. Carta helps us stay on top of all this.

The support team and account mgmt team respond very quickly, resolving any issues within hours or, tops, a few days. They always make you feel like your questions/issues are important, which generates a strong sense of trust. I trust that Capdesk will look after our needs.

The site doesn't have all the bells and whistles that some of the bigger providers would, however this means the product is more focussed and thus navigation is tighter, less clunky. This is great, but it means that occasionally there in missing functionality which you'd prefer to have.

Improving the reporting suite to deliver a single report with all pertinent award details, rather than one for each equity class. This will speed up analysis for us. Equally, the new front end makes the user experience far better.

Excellent system for organising and administering a Cap Table, with multiple shareholders

Absence of full document signing & storage functionality.

Administering complicated and large Cap Table

Automated process for new joiners and leavers regarding options and excercises. Solid help from the team for solving issues as they arise. Great onboarding with no errors found on the info that we submitted at Go Live.

Lack of a central reporting menu and lack of "super" admin control to be able to undo errors (Although back end support staff at Capdesk are great to help with this)

Fast growing headcount, meaning need to automate as much of the equity side of onboarding new employees. Clear and instant CapTable reporting that is accurate. Yearend Share Based Payment reporting.

Capdesk has been super instrumental in helping us scale our share options scheme and helping employees gain insights & values out of it. Capdesk is simple to use and quite intuitive. The most recent dashboard release has been a cool feature that has helped a lot of our employees gain a lot of value.

Capdesk is still reasonably early in its journey but building a great platform. From an admin perspective, some of the reporting functionalities can be improved, and the admin user journey

Capdesk has helped us automate the end-to-end option grant and exercise process, which will scale with us as we continue to grow & expand as a company.

Speed, reliability, everything in one place, gives me reassurance that nothing is being missed. Continually adding new products and features to improve the experience

That I can't just have it live for options....but they are working on this so I'm very happy about that! There are a few other minor things that I would prefer in a slightly different way, but overall they don't materially diminish the experience

We have a huge captable. This can be both a challenge from a management perspective, but also a problem from a corporate perspective as new investors or acquirers worry about the size. This is overcome with capdesk.

I like how clear Carta makes it for employees to understand the value of their equity grants

I can't think of anything! Carta has made the process so easy for me

Carta is helping me to dive deep into learning about equity grants and how their value changes over time. Carta is helping our company make the process as easy and enjoy as possible for employees.

Carta helps me keep track of shareholder information for each portfolio company that utilizes its services. I can quickly look at documents, up to date cap tables, and even investor updates in some cases (founder needs to elect to use that service).

I've used the platform to keep track of my entire portfolio in the past. It was very manual and hands-on to keep up to date at the investor level. It is more efficient if each portfolio company manages the investor and cap table information at the start-up level.

I do not need to take possession of stock certificates nor track down and store final closing packets on every investment with Carta. I can verify my ownership stakes quickly and confidently.

Carta is the only tool out there that has helped me manage company stock options and understand my taxes upon exercise. I don't think there is anything else out there on the market that makes this really complex process easier.

The one thing I find lacking is reporting capabilities. I have not found a way to pull a report on past transactions. I have never had to use their support so I am not sure what is available.

Equity Management as an employee.

Carta has a simple and easy-to-use web interface with nice dashboards and lots of information. You get constant email reminders about vesting process and a gamified interaction for vesting options, keeping the shareholders engaged and active even during a long vesting window. Carta has mature mobile apps for Android and iOS, making it very consumer friendly.

We did not use Carta for the IPO process (public listing in the UK stock market), so I can't rate how their system behaves during these critical times.

Granting stock options for employees of startups. Managing the vesting of options and selling stocks on the public market. Keeping options holders motivated and engaged during the long vesting process. Communicating with all stock and option holders in case of a liquidity event.

The ability to manage all my ESOP's & RSU's from multiple years and vesting schedules into a single place is highly convenient. The application shows you both the Net & Total Holding value based on today's share prices. In case of ESOP's it also gives you a clear idea about the amount one needs to pay to exercise the options.

For non-US bank accounts you need to set up wire transfer which involves an extra fee and an intermediary back, which is not very user friendly way of doing things.

Employee benefits management like ESOP's & RSU's.

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It's just exceedingly easy to use, and it's great to have all of my angel investing portfolio information in one place (at least for those companies that use Carta). We also use Carta for investor relations management with our investors in my cybersecurity company, CESPPA.

I wish every company that I've invested in used Carta! There's genuinely not a whole lot about the product that I don't like. I wish I had invested in the company back when I looked at it as an investment!

It solves a lot of investor issues, especially if you have all of your investment companies using Carta. As an entrepreneur, it simplifies a lot of investor relations issues.

Carta is very easy to use and to manage with multiple employees. However, what has impressed me most is definitely the response time of the Customer Service team! They are extremely quick and super helpful. Whenever I have an issue, I can quickly hop into a chat room and discuss my concerns and questions and the response time is extremely fast and usually is able to immediately address my concern.

Honestly, I have yet to come across any issues. In general, the user interface and user experience are both highly intuitive and whenever I do have an issue, the customer service team has responded very quickly. The only exception is uploading new options can sometimes be tedious, though the templates they provide have made that process much easier and simpler. I think that one advantage I have had is using a law firm that is familiar with Carta and therefore can also explain and walk me through issues. I think it would be great to have 'consultative' services for those people that do not have legal counsel that can effectively walk companies and administrators through the pros and cons of different approaches and strategies behind things like convertible notes and employee option plans.

Administration and documentation of our ESOP was a nightmare before switching to Carta. Carta has made it so much easier to deal with all of our employees: leaving, joining, executing, etc. etc. and etc.

It's easy to issue grants and do 409a evals

Some of the functionality can be confusing, some investors find it confusing

Helpful to have 3d party holding corporate securities

Takes away all my cap table management pain

Onboarding was slow and cumbersome. Would like it to be less US entric (i am in the UK). Would also be great to be able to paper rounds (gather signatures from current shareholders) within Carta. That would change the game for me!

Great for employee option schemes. Board meeting feature could be richer

The online interfacing and the mobile functionality. I am able to perform tasks through my phone which is very convenient.

I need better customizable reporting features. there are lots of pre-filled reports but it is difficult to navigate through them and decide which one I need.

Ability to quickly visualize what is happening to the cap table. Able to solve for things like notifying pending option holders of actions they need to take. Analyzing questions as a administration that I get from plan participants.

Takes all the headache out of managing a cap table and makes 409A valuations less costly.

It is expensive and needs a competitor to keep pricing in check.

It saves a lot of time for my finance department.

get's rid of need for complicated spreadsheets.

I am pretty happy with the tool and customer support, no complaints

Saves a lot of time, and allows investors to access most updated cap table themselves which helps stop incoming questions.

Ability to put all share certificates in one place electronically

Sometimes it's hard to find support/useful tips

Being able to electronically file all share certificates for my small companies

Carta makes it easy to track all your investors/equity, option exercises & new option issues, along with various additional tools such as expense accounting and scenario modeling. Some of the additional tools are extra cost but they are worth it. Customer service is also very good.

Nothing that I really dislike. Overall a great tool. I've used many of Carta's features and the only one I would say still needs a bit of improvement is the Data Rooms.

Simple cap table management, options exercise, expense accounting, scenario modeling for new funding rounds, 409A valuation. It's been very easy to track everything related to equity. The only mistakes we've noticed are input mistakes which were internal.

Best cap table management software I've seen with the best UI/UX. Carta made it super easy to onboard and engage all relevant stakeholders to complete the tasks that they need to.

Slightly more expensive than other solutions

It's made cap table management intuitive and simpler to manage overall. We have had significantly less work to manage equity related communication with investors and employees as well as had some success with using their valuation tools as well.

Carta can easily handle all of our all cap table management needs. By far the best feature is the Customer Support Team. They have friendly and informative staff that will answer most if not all you questions instantly through their live chat or by email. User interface is very intuitive and easy to navigate. Accessing data is fairly straight forward. Issuing option grants to employees is a breeze; fill out the information on a downloadable template and import it directly to Carta. Carta also offers 409a valuations.

Some reports that are created from Carta can be extremely large (over 20 MB's) so if your computer does not have enough memory, accessing the file will make it crash.

We no longer need to manually update and reconcile our cap table on a spreadsheet. Carta manages it all.

Quick and easy management of startup equity grants

Not all terms are defined in enough detail for equity neophytes.

Equity grants from my employer (startup).

Easy to use, good way to track the progress, constant notifications

Nothing really in particular. Maybe it’s new name Carta is not as clear anymore and when they were transitioning there were some interruptions.

It is difficult for our employees to understand and manage their SAR and eshares helps a lot to have self service there.

I find that the user interface is one of eShare's strong point. Nowadays, everyone wants user friendly and simple to navigate platforms, which eShares has achieved. Both from the administrative perspective and the user side it has an easy to use platform. The system's capability of handling multiple investors and stock options makes eShares a must. Their cap table is also top notch, simple and easy to export and send to investors.

The price is a big high in my opinion. There was hesitation of bringing it on board as the questions regarding stock options from employees are the same quantity, but it has helped the exercise portion of employee stock options very well. One thing I don't really love about the system, and perhaps its because I never looked into it too closely, but the lack of integration into payroll for deductions for ESOP exercises. Compared to Solium's platform, which is more expensive, that is one thing I missed.

From the Employee Stock Option side, we have used eShares to manage the option program giving each option holder the ability to go in and check their own option plan. From a cap table perspective, I really enjoy the tools they've put together for this making every investor request and audit request a breeze.