Usability, look & feel - Robinhood interface review
An important aspect of our crypto trading broker reviews is to ensure that the website is usable and take a look at what kind of experience it offers investors. In this case, Robinhood provides a safe, easy to navigate, user-friendly and well-designed trading platform. However, as a result, Robinhood’s customizability is limited.
Robinhood’s web trading platform and trading app have a very similar look and feel, making it easy to invest in whichever interface you prefer. Both provide a great user experience and design while we conducted our Robinhood review thanks to the simple, clear layout. Within minutes you’ll be able to buy and trade stocks or coins with ease.
While you can’t customize the platform which more seasoned investors might prefer, the layout is logical. Having said this, the opening screen when you log on shows a line chart that depicts your portfolio value. However, neither the X or Y axis has descriptions, making it confusing to understand. Robinhood reviews its platform consistently but changes in terms of data and customization seem to take a long time to manifest.
Robinhood Highlights
- Diverse cryptocurrencies on offer
- Accessible user interface
- Regulated by FINRA and the SEC
All investments involve risks, including the possible loss of capital.
A helpful feature for side-by-side comparisons of stocks or coins is under the ‘collections’ tab when you click on a stock. You will be able to see all related tags to that stock/coin. If you click on a tag, you will see all stocks or coins that share that tag. This is a great way to see lists of similar companies.
The alerts and notifications are also a great function of Robinhood. You can set these for a variety of events:
- Dividends payments
- Price movements
- Money transfers
- Earnings announcements
- Corporate actions
- Orders
| Company | Robinhood Financial LLC |
| Headquarter | 85 Willow Road, CA 94025 Menlo Park, USA |
| Year of Founding | 2013 |
| CEO | Vladimir Tenev |
| Website | robinhood.com |
| Available Languages | English |
| Customer Support | Email Support |
| Email | support@robinhood.com |
| Phone | +1 650-940-2700 |
| Licence | CRD#: 165998 |
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| Verified by | – |
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Robinhood payment options
A key aspect of our Robinhood review is payments, is it easy? What are the limitations? Thankfully, making deposits and withdrawals on Robinhood is both free and easy to do. However, the simplicity does have some drawbacks, for example, you can only use a bank transfer and larger deposits can take several days.
Making deposits on Robinhood
As noted, deposits on Robinhood are completely free of charge but can only be made using bank transfer.
You have the option to make an instant deposit in which your money will arrive immediately. Otherwise, your deposit will take 4 to 5 business days.
The instant deposit option has limitations:
- Robinhood Instant account holders can deposit up to $1,000 instantly
- Robinhood Gold account holders can deposit up to $50,000 instantly
Any transfers higher than the above limits will take 4 to 5 business days.
Making withdrawals on Robinhood
Robinhood won’t charge any fees for ACH withdrawals but if you wish to make a wire transfer, it’s very expensive:
- $25 for domestic wire transfer withdrawals
- $50 for international wire withdrawals
Once you’ve made a withdrawal on Robinhood it’ll take 3 business days to appear in your account. There is a withdrawal limit of $50,000 per day.
Another limitation to note is that if you deposit money but don’t use it for trading and wish to withdraw it, you’ll have to wait 5 business days first.
Stock transfers on Robinhood
You can also transfer stocks in or out of your account on Robinhood. You can make incoming stock transfers for free but outgoing stock transfers will set you back $75 per transaction.
Customer service - is Robinhood reliable?
Customer support is one of Robinhood’s main weak points. There is no phone support or live chat. However, you can contact the support team via email.
You can submit a request by choosing one of the topics and writing a short description of your problem. The customer service team will then respond via email in about a day. Other crypto exchanges offer 24/7 customer service which is almost to be expected with brokers.
License & security - is Robinhood legit?
Robinhood is regulated by the top-tier financial authorities and provides investors with strong protection. However, there are a couple of pitfalls in Robinhood’s security.
As the company is authorised and regulated by the FCA and is a member of SIPC, your investments are protected up to $500,000 if the company was to fold. This is a great piece of reassurance for those putting a lot of money into investments.
The fact that Robinhood is a US-regulated broker is a brilliant sign of its safety.
However, as Robinhood is a private company, it is not listed on the stock exchange which can sometimes provide extra security. Despite this, the company does make its financial information publicly available anyway.
Robinhood doesn’t offer negative balance protection either and does not hold a banking license.
Robinhood’s website security is strong with a two-step login which offers more peace of mind than a simple username and password.
Despite being secure, the website wasn’t always completely reliable during our Robinhood review. For example, both the mobile app and website suffered from significant outages when the market surged in February and March of 2020. Robinhood explained that the systems could not handle the “unprecedented load” and promised to improve their systems.
