Coinbase is a digital currency exchange (Coinbase Pro) and crypto-oriented software solution suite for businesses, including hosted checkout pages, payment buttons, invoicing, and multiple ecommerce integrations (Coinbase Commerce), a turnkey solution for brokerages, exchanges, and fintechs enabling them to offer customers crypto (Coinbase Prime), crypto asset custody (Coinbase Custody), and a wallet to self-store crypto (Coinbase Wallet).
$0.20
taker fee
Guideline
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Guideline headquartered in San Mateo offers a cloud-based 401k management software for businesses priced on a per employee basis.
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Investors Vanguard
Score 9.8 out of 10
N/A
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Pricing
Coinbase
Guideline
Investors Vanguard
Editions & Modules
$100K-$1M
$0.20
taker fee
$10-50K
$0.35
taker fee
<$10K
$0.50
taker fee
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Coinbase
Guideline
Investors Vanguard
Free Trial
No
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Contact vendor for pricing information
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Coinbase
Guideline
Investors Vanguard
Features
Coinbase
Guideline
Investors Vanguard
401(k)
Comparison of 401(k) features of Product A and Product B
I think Coinbase is extremely suitable for people who are just starting to get into crypto-related activities. Based on how easy it is to use along with the brand recognition I think it offers beginners a better sense of security. Just like all trading platforms, it is extremely easy to get carried away as you only have to confirm your purchase twice and it goes through. It would not be very suitable for those who have little self-control.
I believe that the only thing more broken than Guideline's product is their customer support. From initial contribution dates to the disastrous account closure that cost us personally thousands of dollars, this has been by far the worst SaaS and customer experience I've ever had in my career. If only 1) Guideline's product or 2) customer support had individually been broken, we would not have ended up in this state. I sent dozens and dozens of emails inquiring about oddities I was seeing in the product, but Guideline's reps only gave more conflicting and what ended up being grossly inaccurate feedback and status updates. I hope this review reaches anyone who is thinking of closing their Guideline account. Be extremely wary of what Guideline says and does in the account closure process and exact for detailed and exact timelines (you'll have to follow up many times...). For those of you who haven't yet selected a 401k provider, I'd recommend staying as far away from Guideline as possible.
Vanguard is a tried and true investment platform. They hold a large portion of people's wealth in the United States, so they have experience and the reputation to go along with it. Their customer service via phone is top-of-the-line, which is helpful for any retirement or investing-related questions. However, their website and app sometimes lack functionality, and it can be difficult to navigate. For users looking for an easy-to-use platform for investing, Vanguard might not be it.
Just like other apps(venmo, cashapp, PayPal) it keeps all your trade portfolio under coin based. Not transferable
Even though, they give you a starting balance of $10. They do wants you to put at least $10 of your money
The training video are simple. Learn about US dollar coin, USD, and bitcoin. But it doesn't teach you how to be a savvy trader. That will take additional education
You can't add small cryptocurrency like BAR to your portfolio. It certain amount to trade with.
I feel that the customer support was abysmal - In my experience, we were consistently given conflicting advice and statuses as we closed our account with Guideline. Despite many, many follow-ups attempting to clarify our current status and remaining steps to close the account, Guideline's reps continued to provide, I believe, misleading and inaccurate steps. This cost us thousands and thousands of dollars given Guideline was not able to appropriately pull the funds before closing the account.
Guideline's integrations - I believe there is clearly a broken pipeline between Guideline and Rippling. In my experience, contributions were not funded as expected when we first opened the account, and when we closed our account, there was no communication between Guideline and Rippling. Guideline continued to expect contributions into perpetuity despite closure of the account
I feel that Guideline's product itself is just broken in critical places - most importantly, statuses of contributions were reflected incorrectly in the software (Guideline thought funds were transferred, but they were not and Guideline never attempted to pull the funds from our bank). This, combined with the terrible customer support, cost us thousands and thousands of dollars after we closed our account. There are many absolutely critical features that are broken -> to give just one of many examples, it was not possible to update the bank account information and no error message was thrown. I was told that our account ended up in an exceptional state given our last payroll contribution date and account closure, but these seem like very basic things a 401k provider has to get right if there are going to manage people's money.
Great UI, Great tools for education learning with freebies, eqsy onboard, site and app are pretty good. Good API documentation. The opposite is high fees and slow support when needed. Overall it is good for its simple use and balance between beginners and professional traders making it a great choice and this is why it is one of the most famous site out there.
I haven't needed to contact support for Coinbase yet—it's probably because it is super easy to use and very intuitive. If I were to use the support, it would probably be better than these other companies because most of the other ones come from foreign markets or aren't as big as Coinbase.
The few questions that we've had have been answered quickly and helpfully. The implementation was a breeze and the onboarding contacts were really helpful. There was some stuff I had to learn about 401(k)s in making the decision to implement Guideline, but the Guideline team was helpful in pointing me in the right direction.
Coinbase is just better overall, with access to investments that can be traded for USD. As well as the crypto that can gain interest, Coinbase is amazing at educating the user along with providing real-time data, that allows the user to make the best decision they can when making this kind of risky investment. Coinbase takes the risk out of Crypto.
We selected Guideline due to their relationship with Gusto, our payroll service. However, we did review alternative options for our 401k program and found them very competitive as to price and quality. We were thinking about going with one of the bigger companies like Schwab, E*TRADE, Ally, etc., but found Guideline to be the best choice for us based on price and ease of use.
I thought I would need Vanguard Predictive Planning, but the robot-investor style tool like that didn't fit my current needs. I have availability to learn and explore so I took the plunge to handle it myself without predictive planning in place. I do review quarterly, but I didn't need a separate tool for that.
It's saved time from figuring out how to buy and sell cryptocurrencies
It makes monitoring market prices and fluctuations in the value of crypto holdings very easy and simple. Which also saves time.
We don't do as high of volume so the lower transaction costs even though there is a slight premium saves us a lot of money in contrast to many of the exchanges that can charge 4-5+% transaction costs.
