Carta vs. Shareworks, by Morgan Stanley

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.

Incentivized

Well suited for privately or publicly held companies with stock option plans or ESPP. Helpful for calculating stock compensation expense.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Calendar of vesting schedule
• Visibility into value of various equity based compensation
• Ability to setup default release elections at vesting dates

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• At the time, couldn't calculate a formula based on milestone vesting
• Had some small hiccups with calculating stock option compensation expense, but Capshare was able to solve over time.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We had a great team consisting of two Solium Shareworks admin experts, and one financial reporting expert to help us with the implementation. After the implementation, I feel we are in good hands with the Solium Shareworks relationship manager. We have quarterly contact with the team when new grants need to be added. Other then that, we are self-sufficient with the tool.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We like Carta because they offer transfer agent services in addition to Cap Table management. Shareworks is the upgraded Capshare. This is for IPO ready companies who are ready to take the next steps

Incentivized

• 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.

• Positive - easy for employees to review stock plan and agreement.
• Positive - easy to pull cap table reports.
• Negative - requires a lot of administrative work for account activation, acceptance by users.
• Negative - support is not responsive.

Incentivized