Carta Reviews & Insights

Score9.5 out of 10

53 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Carta are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Easy Navigation and User-Friendly Interface: Many users have praised Carta for its extremely easy-to-navigate platform and user-friendly interface. They have found the clean layout of the app/tool to be intuitive, making it effortless to track and manage shares/benefits. This has not only made the process exciting but also helped upper management remain transparent and honest about promised rewards.

Helpful Documentation and Support: Several reviewers have highlighted the value of Carta's Help Center, which they describe as seriously well done. Users appreciate that Carta has a vast database of articles and help documentation, covering a wide range of topics. This comprehensive resource provides guidance on various aspects related to equity management, ensuring that users can easily find answers to their questions.

Streamlined Equity Management: A significant number of users have commended Carta for streamlining equity management processes. The platform handles all stock certificates for investors, simplifying stock option maintenance, cap table maintenance, and scenario modeling across multiple companies. Additionally, from issuance to approval and exercising, the entire stock option life cycle is seamlessly managed within Carta

Carta Reviews

8 Reviews

Carta - I Can't Believe I Used to Do Stock Admin Without It!

Rating: 9 out of 10

July 2, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Carta is used for managing our capitalization table. This includes the issuance of stock options and the maintaining of stock ledgers for each class of stock. Carta also has a service for conducting and preparing our 409 ( a ) valuation each year. Additionally, our investors are able to request data from us through Carta, which provides an easy way to correspond on sensitive data.

Pros

Stock option maintenance
Cap table maintenance
409 ( a )
Scenario modelling

Cons

Online help
Support documentation
Highlighting errors

Likelihood to Recommend

Hands down the best functionality that Carta has, in my opinion, is the stock option issuance/maintenance functionality. As someone who has had to maintain the option ledger and stock ledger manually in my past life, Carta offers the easy button. It allows the admin to not be required to track down individual emails and keep track of those over time. When a company needs to get in touch with all shareholders it is invaluable to know that Carta can easily do that with just the click of a few buttons.

Verified User

C-Level Executive in Finance and Accounting (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Carta with bugs

Rating: 4 out of 10

December 30, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It is managing our stock certificates and issuance. It is being used by the organization to track the shareholders.

Pros

Streamlines the stock certificate
Cost effective

Cons

Software has bugs
They do not acknowledge the bugs or fix them.
Poor customer service

Likelihood to Recommend

You need to keep an eye on the software since it generates random users and errors. This is very troubling since we have reported this to them numerous times and given them examples, but the bug continues to occur. The data in Carta is suspect and we have to keep second and third copies to assure it is correct.

Verified User

Executive in Finance and Accounting (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Carta - A fantastic product

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

March 26, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Carta is being used by our organization to manage our entire equity process. All stock options are issued through Carta along with any stock certificates associated with fundraising rounds. We have used Carta's data room feature to efficiently manage our fundraising due diligence and the extensive reporting features are very helpful for tracking our option pool.

We also utilize the expense reporting features to record our stock option expense each month.

Pros

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.

Cons

The Board room feature is somewhat lacking. We investigated incorporating this into our Board meetings but it didn't have enough features for us.

Likelihood to Recommend

Organizations that issue stock options and need a way to calculate their monthly expenses without having to perform a Black-Scholes calculation will find Carta particularly useful. We are an early stage organization and Carta has had a tremendous impact on our team efficiency enabling us to manage our equity pool with minimal resources.

Since everything is electronic, Carta eliminates the burden of maintaining paperwork and requesting physical signatures on different items. Exercises are handled via ACH also reducing the administrative burden on the finance team.

Verified User

Director in Finance and Accounting (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Carta - Happy user at 2 companies, including my current one!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

November 8, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use Carta as our official record of all stock option grants to employees and equity grants to investors. All holders of equity awards must log in to Carta to view and accept any offerings.

Carta allows for us to have one central source of truth for all things equity, which is a necessity for any startup. It also allows the accounting team to automate the recording of all stock compensation expense required for US GAAP purposes, and it generates the support for all required footnote disclosures. To calculate all of this manually would be nearly impossible.

Pros

Streamlined and efficient UI.
Automatic calculation of all necessary accounting computations and footnote disclosures, properly support for external audit purposes.
A central source of truth for both internal (like accounting and legal) and external (outside counsel) stakeholders in the equity process.

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

I believe Carta is perfect for any startup companies looking for a fully fleshed out platform to track all equity. Stock options and equity are a complicated enough area, both legally and from an accounting perspective, that I believe all organizations should employ some kind of software like Carta in order to make sure it is done right.

Where it may be less appropriate to implement is a later-stage company right before an IPO. Such companies, whose equity structures are about to get a lot more complicated, may need a more robust platform.

Walter Luceno

Director of Accounting in Finance and Accounting at Zest AI (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Carta -- the best central location to manage your equity

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

July 15, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Carta is being used to manage stock options and RSUs within our company. As a growing startup, gaining equity in the company is top of mind for many employees joining and Carta makes managing that equity extremely simple and streamlined. Each interaction I've had with the platform has been intuitive.

Pros

Simple and intuitive interface.
Makes managing multiple companies stock options very feasible.
Integrates with our SSO.

Cons

Training on getting more from the platform.
Could be more clear on setting up notifications upfront.
Concept is new to a lot of folks, could more proactively educate users on managing equity.

Likelihood to Recommend

Carta is well suited for early stage start ups that want to entice talent to join their company by offering stock options. With how quickly people join and leave start ups, managing equity can be a little complex. Carta creates a place to keep all your options in a central location.

Verified User

Account Manager in Sales (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Carta brings us an exciting peace of mind that no other tool can~

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

June 25, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Carta is being used to track, provision, and approve the shares and RSU gifts within our organization. All members of the org here are using it and is helps everyone really understand where their shares stand and when each portion will be vested. The transparency and peace of mind the tool provides are priceless.

Pros

It is extremely easy to navigate and understand the app/tool itself.
The clean layout make tracking and managing our shares/benefits easy and exciting.
This helps upper management remain transparent and honest about what is promised and when it should be rewarded as time passes.

Cons

It would be great if we were able to link our 401k to the app and have all benefits in the same place.
I think that an occasional training or resource provision on the best ways to use our options would be helpful.
Mentorship and guidance upon IPO or Acquisition would be a really cool benefit to our younger employees.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Hayden Anderson

Senior Enterprise Account Development II - Team Lead in Sales at Lucid (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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Carta!

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

January 4, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The company I work for currently utilizes Carta to manage our company shares vesting sequences. It tracks the maturity of your vested shares as well as our strike pricing. Carta has seemed to take care of the needs thus far of managing our employee stock options thus far. It's better than having to do everything in a non-digital medium.

Pros

Carta tracks my vesting schedule.
Carta allows for me to know how many shares I have.
Carta is unintrusive. They don't spam me with notifications.

Cons

Their live chat team takes a while to respond. They could improve their response times.
Their support team is okay...

Likelihood to Recommend

Carta has been sufficient so far. It seems pretty easy to use and our team has very little problems thus far. I would like to see an improved live chat response time. I'm still waiting for a response. Regardless, the experience has been satisfactory. Vesting schedules appear to be working properly.

Verified User

Employee in Customer Service (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Carta Does It All

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

December 21, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Carta is being used as our internal Employee Stock Option software for all employees who currently have Employee Stock Options across our entire organization. Rather than needing to complete tons of manual paperwork every time my ESOs vest, I can easily login to Carta and locate all of the paperwork I need including reminders of how I filled it out last time.

Pros

Well Constructed UI - One of the most important things for any software I use is how well constructed is the UI. In Carta, the icons are clearly visible and understood intuitively. Certificates can be clicked on to display all relevant ESO information. Issue dates, share amounts, cash cost are all front and center for easy visual consumption. This has the side effect of making Carta easy to use, which is something that all web app software should try and do.
Ease of access - Getting started with Carta was really easy (also helped that our HR department sends you an email with ESO info if that is part of your employment contract). Once things got going, I really only needed to login to Carta once every vesting cycle to review my available shares and make a purchase.
No Nonsense - The concept behind no nonsense is a little more art than science. Carta tackles one thing; ESO solutions. It does not attempt to beat around the bush with other features or ideas that might be secondary or tertiary to their primary focus. Instead, they only work towards building and supporting ancillary features and interface choices.
Help Center - Seriously. Well. Done. Carta has an ENORMOUS database of articles and help documentation. Just about anything you could want or need help on is right there.
Two Factor Authentication - Just when you thought you were safe from thing sin the world, EQUIFAX gets breached. Fortunately, Carta has wisely considered the advantages of 2FA and enabled it!

Cons

With all of the time I've spent poking around, learning, and utilizing Carta, I can confidently say that nothing stands out as needing glaring improvement or attention. I usually have more to say when it comes to this type of feedback, but find myself sorely lacking.

Likelihood to Recommend

Not everyone in the organization is offered ESO, so Carta would be unnecessary for those employees. That's the only use case where Carta credentials would be wildly inappropriate.

Harrison Bond

Research Analyst in Customer Service at Riskalyze (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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