Certent Equity Management vs. Carta

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Certent Equity Management
Score 7.2 out of 10
N/A
Certent Equity Compensation Management, now part of Insightsoftware since the January 21 acquisition, helps companies stay compliant in the administration of equity awards and grants.N/A
Carta
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Carta (formerly eShares) is cloud software that allows private companies to manage and interact with their share- and optionholders. Accoding to the vendor, companies can easily issue stock certificates individually or in bulk, and shareholders can receive and view their shareholdings across all private companies on one screen.N/A
Pricing
Certent Equity ManagementCarta
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Certent Equity ManagementCarta
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Certent Equity ManagementCarta
Top Pros
Top Cons
User Ratings
Certent Equity ManagementCarta
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(3 ratings)
9.0
(8 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.6
(2 ratings)
Online Training
6.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Certent Equity ManagementCarta
Likelihood to Recommend
Insightsoftware, Inc
Certent Equity Management is well suited in the following ways: 1. [The] software provides seamless integration to internal software. 2. [It provides] detailed reports of market equity management. 3. [The] software prepares financial equity footnotes for 10k reporting very well. 4. It helps with award modification [as] needed. 5. I enjoy doing capitalization tables.
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eShares, Inc.
Carta is perfect for any sized organization when shares and stock options are in the picture for new/seasoned employees alike. If a company does not provide these benefits to employees, it may not be the best fit for them unless there are other value-adds the tool can provide in other areas.
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Pros
Insightsoftware, Inc
  • Expense calculations – the whole accounting for equity awards is pretty technical and not real easy to follow. It does a good job of calculating GAAP expense for each award.
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eShares, Inc.
  • Expense Reporting - GAAP compliant and easy to manage, a report is run monthly and provides all the details needed to book the expense.
  • Equity Manageent - All stock certificates for our investors are held in Carta making Equity easy to manage.
  • Stock Option Issuance - Options are issued in Carta and the entire option life cycle from issuance, approval, and exercising is handled in Carta.
  • User Interface is very easy to follow.
  • Support is very responsive and helpful.
  • Numerous education articles available to all users.
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Cons
Insightsoftware, Inc
  • There are no features that are hard to use or that I would like to see improved.
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eShares, Inc.
  • Still some issues with the auto-generated Excel file for stock calculations that required correction by technical support.
  • Could offer integration into accounting platforms or HR/payroll platforms to further cut down on manual input.
  • It should allow for custom user creation to allow for varying levels of access based on role in the company; currently, all security roles in the platform are out of the box without any modification allowed.
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Likelihood to Renew
Insightsoftware, Inc
I personally like the Equity Edge software better. The reporting is better and the software easier to use. The reason we didn’t continue to work with them is we didn’t want to use E-Trade as captive broker.
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eShares, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Usability
Insightsoftware, Inc
Pretty easy to go through and learn on your own.
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eShares, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
Insightsoftware, Inc
I can only remember a couple of times when cannot access the system.
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eShares, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Insightsoftware, Inc
We do not access support directly. We go through Plan Mosaic.
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eShares, Inc.
Every time I have sent a message to Carta's support team, they've responded within 2 business days. The support team is very helpful and always has answered my questions competently and professionally. Many of my questions have also been answered through their extensive support articles. Carta makes available a lot of information that has helped reduce te administrative work of answering questions for our employees as they are able to get most of the information they need through Carta's website.
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Online Training
Insightsoftware, Inc
We had a 2 hour introduction to the software over a Webex meeting by Plan Mosaic, and a user guide. Plan Mosaic is a reseller.
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eShares, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Insightsoftware, Inc
A lot of decisions had been made already when I joined. I thought it was a fairly smooth process. You just need to make sure that you do a good job of auditing all the awards that are transferred from system to system. We did a reverse stock split that caused challenges with rounding of shares.
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eShares, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Insightsoftware, Inc
As an organization, we have evaluated various Equity management and accounting software before shortlisting and testing these software and finally selecting 1 software. It has a user-friendly interface that helps and encourages employee participation. Moreover, it has simple and easy-to-understand grants and reporting, which are illustrated by easy-to-understand examples.
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eShares, Inc.
I was not personally involved in choosing Carta over any other platforms. However, I can say I'm very happy with Carta. Carta allows for a central place to manage stock options from multiple companies and is extremely user-friendly and intuitive. With Carta being a market leader, it's nice to find new employers already using it as well.
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Return on Investment
Insightsoftware, Inc
  • It helps with taxation compliance, which could be a major issue.
  • [The] uploaded template helps with large amounts of data [that needs] uploading in grants and helps keep a lean team in management and operations.
  • [The] availability of different types of reports makes transactional activity easy.
  • Accounting, reporting, and disclosures become easy.
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eShares, Inc.
  • If a company's cap table is wrong that is legally considered fraud ( yes, a capital F fraud ), as in there could be criminal repercussions, and almost assuredly whatever transaction that requires it to be accurate will be canceled.
  • Compliance is a major factor when it comes to having a stock option plan. Carta is the best I've seen at keeping a company in compliance.
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ScreenShots