Carta

4.2 (58)
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Equity management solution for public & private firms

Overall rating

4.2 /5
(58)
Value for Money
3.7/5
Features
4.2/5
Ease of Use
4.0/5
Customer Support
3.8/5

83%
recommended this app
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58 Reviews

Mallory
Mallory
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
  • Used for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

Super easy to keep track of my stock options

Reviewed on 2019/12/13

Overall it is simple and easy to use and makes it easy for a company with a large number of...

Overall it is simple and easy to use and makes it easy for a company with a large number of employees to keep track of which people have which vested stock options.

Pros

Love how Carta automatically updates me as to when I have more vested options and shows a progress bar as to how far I still have to go for all of my stock options to vest.

Cons

No complaints but I probably haven't used this software at a deep enough level to truly find anything difficult or something to dislike about this software.

James
Overall rating
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

Carta - all-in-one Equity management for privately held companies

Reviewed on 2023/01/01

5-star. I have a been a Corporate Securities Attorney for 20+ years (15+ years in house) and Carta...

5-star. I have a been a Corporate Securities Attorney for 20+ years (15+ years in house) and Carta is my favorite application for privately held entities. It has saved countless hours in spreadsheets, providing a turnkey solution that is accurate and easy to administer for the Board, Investors, and Employees.

Pros

Equity management is turnkey. Ability to share with our Attorneys and Accountants. Ability to quickly pull data and reports for outside Funds and Auditors. Self-serve option portal for Employees.

Cons

Some of the nuances are complex, but the Software works. It takes some training, but the effort is worth the time to keep all your Equities in a single ledger.

Sho
Overall rating
  • Industry: Information Services
  • Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 6-12 months
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 6.0 /10

Love-Hate Relationship with Carta

Reviewed on 2021/01/10

I have nothing else to compare Carta to, so I don't even know how to respond. On a positive note,...

I have nothing else to compare Carta to, so I don't even know how to respond. On a positive note, I suppose I can list 'Carta' as a skill on my resume, though I don't know whether I would want to deal with Carta ever again if I seek different employment.

Pros

When I have issues with this software (which is often), Carta's support team is usually very responsive and will work with me on the issue.

The software itself works fine, I guess, as it rarely has technical problems. The offered tutorial does help, and I appreciate the Carta team for putting the tutorial together.

Cons

Not very intuitive to use! A major part is requiring a good foundation in securities and stock options knowledge, which I clearly do not have.

One HUGE gripe I have with Carta is that there is no quick way to bulk update a set of option grants, but rather I have to go into EACH option grant, upload the document I need to upload, add a note of what I am updating, wait for 5 seconds for the update to occur, and repeat with the rest of the 1000+ option grants. I have been uploading/updating these option grants for a few days now while trying to do my other work, and I am still updating as I write this review on a Saturday evening. I don't know whether to keep on updating while cursing at the Carta screen, or just call it quits for the day. Also, the update generates an email notification for the option holders, and of course a good amount of them send me questions afterwards despite our team having already prepared a mass message for our Chief Sales Officer to send out that explains these notifications. I'm at the point where I'm inclined to curse out the next sales employee that asks me what these Carta notifications are for.

Joe
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Essential Tool in Equity Management

Reviewed on 2022/01/29

- Investor equity management
- Employee equity option management
- Cap table management
- 409A...

- Investor equity management
- Employee equity option management
- Cap table management
- 409A valuation

Pros

- In-depth knowledge database that gets you started quickly
- Easy to use interface that allows for efficient navigation
- Carta combines equity and salary compensation benchmarks and adjusts for size, location, industry
- Well structured reports, funding overviews, cap tables, and ability to create a data room for investors
- Free annual 409A valuation report

Cons

- Expensive for startups
- Salary compensation tool should be included in base subscription
- More comparative details with similar companies (benchmarking functions)

Alternatives Considered

Shareworks and OptionTrax

Reasons for Switching to Carta

- Ease of use of the platform / knowledge database for employees - Industry leader - Recommended by legal team and investors
Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

Great tool, however one flaw

Reviewed on 2024/06/03

Pros

I love how we can get updates based on several other clients' comp data. This allows us to remain competitive.

Cons

I would love to see historical data. Ie: With existing employees who are brought in at an IC_ or MGR_ level, a couple of years ago, it would be helpful to see where they were brought in within the band (XX%ile) back when the market was showing that historical data.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Media Production
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Monthly for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 5.0 /10

Simple But Gets the Job Done

Reviewed on 2022/04/14

Pros

If you're looking for a simple piece of software to track employees' options and their vesting schedules, Carta gets the job done. Employees will be notified as options vest over time, and can even simulate exercising their vested options.

Cons

The average person does not understand what options are, or how vesting schedules or exercising options works. Carta could improve this experience for users by perhaps incorporating basic explanations of terminology into the software (ie: with info buttons next to certain terms). This would certainly give users an increased understanding of and sense of control over their financial assets.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Internet
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support

Once top shop for cap table management

Reviewed on 2018/07/12

Pros

Very easy to use
Option grants to employees are all done through the software
There are reports for all our needs, from stock based comp calculations, min disclosure for financial statement audits, etc...
Customer support is top notch. Chat feature allows you to live chat support team with minimal wait time.

Cons

Reports take a very long time to populate and the files can be extremely large. Some report files are over 20 MB's

Zeah
Zeah
Overall rating
  • Industry: Hospital & Health Care
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10

Eshares to Carta

Reviewed on 2018/08/29

We started with Carta when it was Eshares. Prior to using this software we were tracking everything...

We started with Carta when it was Eshares. Prior to using this software we were tracking everything in an excel spreadsheet which was a complete cluster. Now we can easily pull reports for information on the shareholders. The only difficulty I have encountered is the lack of a report that my auditors will accept without manipulation from myself. Still way better than manual tracking.

Pros

The ease with which data can be entered

Cons

Reports for Audit purposes can be painful

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Consumer Goods
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10

Stock Options Made Easy

Reviewed on 2018/11/14

Pros

Carta helps us track all of our company's stock options in one place, providing simple reports and instant changes to our cap table.

Cons

Changes to Stakeholders now require more steps than they did in the previous format, it is a bit more time consuming when making a lot of changes.

Alan
Alan
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used for 1+ year
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

Easy way to manage stock options

Reviewed on 2020/09/24

Overall I have had a positive experience with Carta and am glad it exists to easily manage stock...

Overall I have had a positive experience with Carta and am glad it exists to easily manage stock options.

Pros

Their documentation and blog are very helpful in understanding all the terms and nuance of stock options.

Cons

There is nothing that I don't like - the software does a solid job servicing our need for managing stock options.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Financial Services
  • Company size: 2–10 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 1+ year
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

Work on the ease of completing deals

Reviewed on 2022/12/11

Pros

It saves time and effort by giving up tiring spreadsheets that consume a lot of time and require a lot of manual operations. When I encounter a problem, Carta support team is usually quick to respond and works with me to solve the problem and is also easy to use, which makes work on developing data with high accuracy

Cons

I don't really have a complaint about Carta other than that it's hard to back up

Rob
Overall rating
  • Industry: Financial Services
  • Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Huge timesaver, great value and has improved continuously over time

Reviewed on 2019/06/21

Pros

It solved a hugely expensive problem very easily (I used to have to manage our cap table in excel, print out paperwork and issue my own stock certificates. However, every time I look at software options, I was stuck going back to the same system. Using lawyers is truly insane cost-wise, so we manged it in-house. I talked to users of all competitive products and every single one noted errors in those products that led to board-level action and highly expensive fixes. This is NOT something you want to mess around with. Carta, however, was FAR superior to all other options in ease-of-use, accuracy of data, security, rapidity of product development, and ability to scale along with our company. They could make any adjustments needed without the needs for costly external counsel or board interaction.

Cons

When we first started using it (nearly 5 years ago), we found a few bugs in accounting reporting on edge cases (we had a couple outlier cases unusual for a company of our size at the time ). The Carta team quickly made adjustments to their software to resolve the problems however (and have continued to respond quickly to feedback).

David
Overall rating
  • Industry: Venture Capital & Private Equity
  • Company size: 2–10 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 1.0 /10

Imposible to use because its always so SLOW

Reviewed on 2020/05/10

The CEO's and law firms that use it seem to be happy with it, as an investor user, I literally...

The CEO's and law firms that use it seem to be happy with it, as an investor user, I literally cringe every time we get a new stock cert from Carta because it takes so long to do antying.

Pros

In theory, it should be easy to manage our portfolio of over 50 different holdings.

Cons

We are investors, not issuers. As investors, we have 3 big issues.
A). The site is SO SLOW, I literally end up e-mailing the portfolio company to ask for the information.
B) The UX for the portfolio is nonsensical. For example, if you accept a certificate, you are not taken to the holding,s rather to some summary page from which you then have to search for what you just accepted and if you are not in the right "portfolio", it doesn't show up.
C) Carta makes it very difficult for one to keep a backup.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 2–10 Employees
  • Used Monthly for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 0.0 /10

Carta does everything to avoid providing service and still charges a premium

Reviewed on 2022/10/13

Most of the time I don't know they're there, because I don't need them. When I do need them, it is...

Most of the time I don't know they're there, because I don't need them. When I do need them, it is a consistently horrible experience.

Pros

I don't find the software to be very intuitive or helpful. It does appear that the people behind it know the business domain, but beyond that I can't say much for it.

Cons

Their customer service is impossible to reach, and when you reach them very unhelpful. They clearly don't value their customer relationships. They check in periodically to see if they can upsell me to add-on products that aren't useful to our business.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10

Simple way to manage equity in a startup.

Reviewed on 2019/07/30

Pros

It's easy to see when I can exercise shares, and it's easy to see my current holdings.

Cons

It's such a bare website. I would like some more features, maybe educationally-focused links and ways to track the value of the shares, if there is any information.

K Lakshmi
Overall rating
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Monthly for 6-12 months
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

Easy to manage ESOP distribution

Reviewed on 2023/01/09

Good and positive experience.

Good and positive experience.

Pros

The portal provides easy access to employees to manage their ESOPs. It gives you the complete vesting schedule. The admin can just keep adding more ESOPs as needed to employees. the portal also allows to exercise options among other features. A easy to use from an employee perspective with complete security

Cons

Nothing a such as a user. As of now my experience has been positive only.

Margaret
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

Great tool for equity management

Reviewed on 2022/11/15

Great for cap table management. Customer service is also excellent.

Great for cap table management. Customer service is also excellent.

Pros

I like that it is commonly used in tech companies so many investors are already comfortable with it.

Cons

Some functionality is difficult to locate and the help function references a different version of the software than i have.

Luke
Overall rating
  • Industry: Financial Services
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used for 1+ year
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 0.0 /10

IPO was a debacle

Reviewed on 2021/05/21

Pros

The pages were easy to navigate and well laid out.

Cons

Carta’s handling of the Affirm IPO was a debacle. I believe that Affirm no longer works with Carta as a result.

Every employee’s sell order was accidentally canceled on the day of the equity release. Carta did not have any alerts system, and did not notify affected employees for a month. Some employees were left tens of thousands of dollars worse off than had the error not occurred.

I would generally be concerned about the quality of their software. Amusingly, one employee had $50K worth of stocks go missing from their account. Carta’s software engineers had to deploy a bug fix for these stocks to be visible again!

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Monthly for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

Great equity management system

Reviewed on 2021/02/26

Overall, this system makes it really easy to understand your equity.

Overall, this system makes it really easy to understand your equity.

Pros

Overall, Carta makes it really easy to not only view your holdings, but each individual grant and what has vested. It also allows you to exercise options that are available to you.

Cons

Our company went through a re-price so all old grants had to be cancelled and reissued. It's not easy to tell which grants are active vs which ones are voided.

Carolyn
Overall rating
  • Industry: Fund-Raising
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Monthly for 1+ year
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 0.0 /10

Avoid at all cost

Reviewed on 2022/12/23

Terrible.

Terrible.

Pros

I do not like anything about this software.

Cons

Carta is awful, bottom line. We cancelled our account on November 6th, 2022 but they went ahead and charged us nearly $5k on December 18th. I have reached out to the "success manager" assigned to our account to refund our money since we cancelled and she just doesn't respond to my emails. I have called the support line but they just redirect us to our "success manager." They are an unethical nightmare. Avoid at all cost.

Kevin
Overall rating
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 1+ year
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

Great App for Managing Private Equity

Reviewed on 2019/12/04

Overall, it's been awesome using Carta. It's a great tool to manage private equity. I'd highly...

Overall, it's been awesome using Carta. It's a great tool to manage private equity. I'd highly recommend this.

Pros

- Keeps track of multiple companies in a singular account
- Great data visualization tools for exercised vs. vested, etc.
- Repository for pertinent documentation

Cons

- Mobile application is lacking some features that the web app has (i.e. documentation repo).
- Sometime difficult to understand the workflow required to accomplish a task. There are multiple ways to do the same thing, which can leave the user feeling a bit lost at times.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Monthly for 1+ year
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10

Easy for users, simple interface

Reviewed on 2020/09/23

Very seamless and straightforward. Positive experience for end users, and helps feel like the...

Very seamless and straightforward. Positive experience for end users, and helps feel like the equity system is more legitimate within our company.

Pros

Uncluttered user interface. Very obvious where to click & navigate. It's nice to track my overall equity and individual grants. The best feature is the ability to simply forecast overall share allotments across varying vesting schedules.

Cons

There isn't a robust feature set beyond the basics to track your equity, but I'm not sure how much more I would need for that.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer & Network Security
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Monthly for 1-5 months
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 3.0 /10

Onboarding Nightmare

Reviewed on 2018/11/14

Our company has been managing equity via Excel spreadsheets and have grown to the point that we...

Our company has been managing equity via Excel spreadsheets and have grown to the point that we need something better. Once we have Carta up, we are hoping to spend far less time updating spreadsheets. Should just be enter the information once and all the reports update.

Pros

Software is very pretty. Our rep is available consistently for phone calls to discuss onboarding.

Cons

If you have any non-standard options, Carta is probably not for you. We have been onboarding for months now, and our account rep has done almost nothing. We gave him the information we had, but he doesn't seem to grasp the spreadsheets so we've basically had to do the uploading ourselves. Now that we are almost ready for go-live, I still can't find information in the system that I am looking for. Additionally, the software doesn't make up agreements (for example, if you loaded up a template). You just upload your agreements into the system after they are made on another platform. So basically it's a hosted skin for shares reporting? Not sure, and not happy.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Monthly for 6-12 months
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Very Easy Management of Company Shares

Reviewed on 2019/01/13

I have loved that I can see all of my equity in the company and when the stock vests.

I have loved that I can see all of my equity in the company and when the stock vests.

Pros

I love being able to go in and see how many shares I have, how many have vested, and when the next shares will vest. It has a portfolio section as well that shows how many shares will vest and on what day those shares vest. Overall, it is a very simple program for the user and (from what I have heard) very easy to set everything up on as a company.

Cons

I hope that one day Carta will get into other markets to allow you to invest in other private companies. I feel like they have a great platform and would be good at adding a feature like this.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Telecommunications
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Monthly for 1+ year
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10

Stocks in One Place!

Reviewed on 2019/07/16

Overall, no major issues with Carta. Makes the stock options piece of my job easier to manage and...

Overall, no major issues with Carta. Makes the stock options piece of my job easier to manage and communicate.

Pros

I really like using Carta to manage our stock options for employees. I find it simple to use both for administrators as well as employees who are creating accounts and reviewing options.

Cons

Sometimes I find the reports are tedious to complete because there are many options to select. Sometimes it does take some time to make multiple changes.