Since our beta launch in March 2012 and our official launch in October 2012, Stock Rover has been a completely free service for all users. Today, we are finally ready to officially launch our premium service. This change has been long in coming and we are thrilled to enter this new phase in Stock Rover’s development. The paid service will allow us to invest more resources into the development of Stock Rover. This in turn will ensure that we can provide you with an ever more capable investment research companion to help you make better investment decisions.
This blog post will explain what this change means for you. First I’ll go over when is this happening, how much will it cost, and the fine print (there’s not a lot of fine print, but it’s important). Then I’ll delve into what is included in the Basic and Premium versions.
The complete list of differences between Basic and Premium can be found on our subscription page. While much of what is currently available in the product will remain in the free-forever Basic version, some features will become Premium-only. In general, Premium membership will be geared more towards investors with more sophisticated needs. The key differences are portfolio management and analytics, plus advanced screening, charting and research features. The Basic membership will continue to provide robust stock screening and research capabilities.
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Starting Friday January 24th 2014, every user will have a free 30-day trial of the Premium service. After Sunday, February 23rd, if you don’t sign up for a Premium account, you will be automatically switched to Basic. Of course, you can upgrade to Premium at any time. To get discounted pricing for one year, upgrade by February 28, 2014. Plus there is an additional early bird special if you sign up by January 31st, 2014 (more on that below).
The baseline price for Premium will be $19.99 a month, or $199.99 a year, with some differences depending on the level of support you choose (this is explained more fully below). Our pricing was designed to be within reach of all investors.
To reward the users who signed up with Stock Rover early on (that means you!), we are offering special discount pricing through February 28th. Compare regular and discount pricing in the table below.
You can see there are real savings to be had no matter what plan you choose. (At minimum you could buy one extra latte a month, or as much as one share of Procter & Gamble, two shares of Coca Cola, or several dozen penny stocks). The discount pricing will last for one year from your sign-up date before reverting to regular pricing.
In addition, there is an extra special bonus offer: sign up for Stock Rover by January 31st and receive a $19.99 rebate, provided you maintain your subscription through May 1st, 2014. The rebate check will be mailed no later than May 15th, 2014. Details on that promotion are here.
This the best pricing you will ever see for Stock Rover, so if you like Stock Rover’s Premium-only features, now is the time to lock in the lowest prices possible.
You may have noticed in the table above that there are a few different levels of support available to you: No Support, Email Support, and Email & Hotline Support. Those describe levels of access to our Customer Support Team (who work 9am – 5pm ET on weekdays).
No Support means you are not guaranteed a response from the Customer Support Team if you email them. Of course, you are still welcome to email us with any feedback, questions, or problems. We will continue to read and consider all emails. Depending on the issue, we may respond to you directly, but a response is not guaranteed. For questions about Stock Rover, you are encouraged to use the many support and training resources available to you on the website. There are the Help Pages, the Support Pages (created from common feedback questions), or search with the search box at the top of the app (shown below).
We will also continue to augment these resources over time to make them as thorough and helpful as possible.
Email Support means you are guaranteed a response (within a reasonable time frame) from our Customer Support Team when you email us. For users who regularly dialogue with our team over email, opting in to support is recommended. Email support is $5 a month and can be added on to Basic or Premium. Note that a standard Premium membership does not include email support.
Email & Hotline Support is an option for Premium subscribers only. In addition to the email support described above, you can call in from 9am – 5pm (ET) to speak with one of our team members. If you prefer to resolve Stock Rover questions and concerns by talking to a human being, the hotline support option might be your best bet. It’s $10 a month, or $5 per month more than email support.
Boring, but important—please take a moment to read our terms and conditions. I’ll put them in bullet format to keep it short and sweet.
You can always read the fine print here on our terms and conditions page.
Now let’s go over the differences between the two versions. Again, you can always find the most up-to-date list on our subscription page.
If you choose to go Basic, you can still access Stock Rover from any laptop, desktop computer, or iPad or Android tablet with an Internet connection. Much of the Table, Chart, and Insight panel will function as they do now. You can still search for data on over 40,000 tickers, or add tickers to the database as needed. And, you can still get your daily/weekly/monthly performance emails on portfolios and watchlists. From the Investors’ Library, you can still download free screeners, portfolios, watchlists, research links, and Views, though custom metrics and metric packages will be available only Premium subscribers only.
Premium users can access 10 years of data, whereas Basic only gets 5. Note that this applies in the Chart, in the Table if you expand the table rows (shown below) and in the Income Summary, Balance Sheet Summary, and Cash Flow sections of the Insight panel’s Detail tab.
Premium users can page through an unlimited number of tickers in the Table, whereas Basic users can only see 100 rows at a time. This means that if you’re a Basic user and you load the S&P 500 in the Table, you will only see 100 stocks of the index at a time (which 100 will depend on how you have sorted the Table). To be clear, you can still access the data for all 500 of those stocks—the stocks that display depend on the sorting and filtering you have enabled. You can sort by any column or filter by any metric to change which stocks you see.
Basic users can keep up to 10 portfolios and up to 10 watchlists, whereas Premium users can keep up to 30 of each of these items.
Basic users can keep up to 15 screeners, and up to 15 Views, whereas Premium users can keep up to 30 of each of these items.
Premium users can save up to 250 tickers in a portfolio or watchlist, while Basic users can have up to 100.
Custom metrics (found in the Investors’ Library) are only available for Premium users. All standard metrics that are currently in Stock Rover will still be available to all users.
Basic users will be able to chart any one of these six fundamentals:
Premium users will continue to have access to the full range of fundamentals charting that is available in the product now. This includes access to over 100 metrics, plus the ability to save favorites and create metric packages (bundles of fundamentals that chart at the same time).
In addition to some of the differences described above, there are a few other functions available to Premium users that are not available to Basic members.
As mentioned above, in addition to having more fundamentals available in the chart, Premium users will also be able to chart several fundamentals at once—what we call a metric package (currently available in the product.) Basic users will only be able to chart one fundamental at a time.
Premium users will be able to take advantage of the Investors’ Library Custom Metric section—they’ll be able to download custom metrics, as well as suggest their own.
One of the most frequently requested features in Stock Rover: Premium users will be able to export data in the Table to a CSV file so it can be opened in Excel™ or another spreadsheet program. Note that per a licensing restriction we have, Premium Trial users will not be able to export data.
Premium users will be able to detach the chart and the Insight panel so that Stock Rover can be spread across multiple monitors. Note that the detach feature is only supported on Chrome and Firefox.
Our ranked screening facility (formerly quants), which scores and ranks stocks, will become a premium-feature only. If you like screening but have never tried this feature, be sure to try it out! Remember it’s still free for everyone for the next 30 days.
Tagging a stock with a keyword will soon be available only to premium users. Once tagged, you can group stocks by common tags, as well as save all of the tagged tickers as a watchlist or a portfolio.
The ability to add historical positions to your portfolio will also become a premium-feature only. Basic users will only be able to list current holdings in their portfolios.
Relatedly, the Portfolio Reporting feature, which contains in-depth analytics for assessing for your portfolio, will only be available to Premium users. Again, if you’ve never used Portfolio Reporting, be sure to test it out during the free trial for valuable insight into your investments. You can learn more about it here.
The Notes facility, found in the last tab of the Insight panel, allows you to create a searchable database of your own research notes. This will be a Premium feature.
Finally, there will never be ads in the Premium version of Stock Rover. Basic members will eventually be served non-invasive ads.
Clicking on a Premium-only feature in a Basic account will bring up the following box:
Here you can read about premium features, choose to upgrade your account, or go back to your Basic version of Stock Rover.
Some of the Premium features will be greyed out in Basic so that it is obvious there is a restriction, such as the Portfolio Reporting facility (shown below.)
Due to the engineering complexity behind the UI, please note that some items, such as the 10 Year chart button and the Notes tab in the Insight panel, will not be greyed out.
The version of your account will always list in the top right of the Stock Rover screen.
Your level of support access will be listed in the Feedback form. Click the ‘i’ icon for more information about what your level of support entails.
If you’d like to upgrade to premium, go to Options→Upgrade→Upgrade to Premium. This will bring you to a Stock Rover page where you can update your subscription settings.
To cancel your premium membership email feedback@stockrover.com telling us you would like to cancel your premium membership. Once you cancel, no additional charges will be placed on your credit card. As per the fine print, we will switch your account to Basic once your paid through date is reached.
If you switch from Premium to Basic, we will not delete any parts of your account that that are Premium features, such as extra portfolios, Views, or metric packages. That data will be waiting for you should you decide to start up a Premium membership. However, you will not have access to those Premium features.
And that sums up everything you need to know about the upcoming subscription service! As we’ve said, we do hope that Stock Rover proves to be a valuable stock research tool for all users, Basic and Premium. However, we think there are some pretty exciting features available in the Premium version, and we intend to put more engineering to make Stock Rover (both Basic and Premium) even more powerful and more useful to you over time.
Please don’t hesitate to be in touch with any further questions by emailing feedback@stockrover.com.
