Alinea Invest has quite a few noteworthy perks to highlight, as well as some downsides you need to consider.
Top perks
Super intuitive layout
The Alinea Invest trading platform is very simple to use. Once you're in the app, you can easily set up an automated plan, trade stocks and ETFs, monitor your portfolio, and read educational material.
Automated investing or self-directed
Alinea Invest lets you choose between automated or self-directed investing (you can also do both). The automated investing plans are theme-based and include Recession Proof, Alinea All Stars, and Climate Change. These plans come with automated rebalancing and send you weekly and monthly recaps on how you're doing. While these plans don't charge any extra, you'll need to meet a minimum investment to get started (for example, the Climate Change plan has a minimum investment of $20).
Playlists give you investing ideas
One super unique feature in Alinea Invest is its playlists. In a nutshell, these playlists are stock portfolios that users can create and share. You can use these playlists as inspiration for your own portfolio, or you can invest in them directly. Many are value-driven, like climate change and Black empowerment, while others are based on location, like California and New York companies. You can also find more traditional themed portfolios, like green tech or metaverse, as well as some unusual ones, such as "The Magician."
The platform has several creative tools that help you visualize your portfolio. For example, there's the "Time Machine" feature, which tells you how much an investment would have grown had you invested money at a previous time. Better yet, this tool even sports a DeLorean from Back to the Future -- one of several fun designs that give the app its own flavor of identity.
Sometimes, the app feels like a social media platform. You can "heart" stocks and ETFs, which become visible to other users, as well as leave comments on them. You can create and share playlists and discover those created by others. You can follow and be followed and choose to display the companies you're investing in. All in all, the app turns what's usually a solitary activity into a community practice.
What could be improved
Membership fee is steep
Alinea Invest charges a $120 annual membership fee to use its platform. That's on the pricier side for an investing platform. Indeed, many of the best brokers let you open accounts for free (with commission-free trades on stocks and ETFs too). Some even offer perks that are comparable to the impact-investing portfolios of Alinea Invest, such as ways to screen for companies that align with your values.
Alinea Invest's biggest selling point is its simplicity. Many large brokerage firms try to appeal to a wide audience of investors, including those from multiple generations and demographics, which can bloat their platforms with services and tools that beginners don't need. While surely anyone can use Alinea Invest to invest, it's designed for new investors, primarily students and young professionals from Gen Z. If investing in stocks and ETFs intimidates you, if you want to invest in what you believe in but don't know how to get started, it might be worth paying $120 to get your feet wet and figure it out.
There are, however, many cheaper alternatives. For example, you could save money by going with a robo-advisor. Many of the best robo-advisors charge an annual management fee that can range from 0% to 0.40%, which would make your annual fee between $0 and $40 for every $10,000 you invest. You won't get the fun or sociable aspects of Alinea Invest, but you could save a lot of money on fees.
As a platform for beginning investors, Alinea Invest does not have advanced charting capabilities, like the ability to overlay technical indicators to help you analyze market volatility. This isn't surprising (after all, this was built to be simple). But if you want to analyze potential opportunities and invest more actively, the platform will leave you wanting more.
No retirement accounts
You can't open retirement accounts, like an IRA, within the Alinea Invest platform. Currently, all accounts are taxable investment accounts.
Fact Checked
Eric McWhinnie
