How we put Traders First

Jan 20, 2020

Written by: by Panagiotis Charalampous, Head of Community Management of cTrader at Spotware

Traders First™ has been our motto since the inception of cTrader. While many might think that this is just a marketing trick and a nice to hear slogan for traders, Traders First approach is a way of living for us, and a concept closely associated with our business model and success. In this article, I will try to explain why Traders First is not just a catchphrase, empty of meaning, but rather a solid business strategy to which we remain committed even a decade after we started working on this project.

So how does cTrader place Traders First? The common perception would be that because there is no fee charged to the traders for using the platform, then Spotware’s direct clients are brokers. Thus it is their needs that Spotware has to fulfill as at the end they pay the bill. While there is a portion of truth in this statement, indeed brokers pay the bill and we care about them as much, what is not mentioned is what the bill consists of. cTrader is not offered on a traditional software licensing basis, where the client pays for a license to the software company and a support fee to keep the software up and running. Instead cTrader is offered on a platform-as-a-service basis and brokers pay fees based on the volume traded on the platform. This means that the more traders trade, the more money we make. And when do traders trade more? Of course when they are successful. Hence, cTrader aims to attract successful traders and enable them to remain successful in the long term. We want traders to succeed, it is a win-win situation for us.

So how do we put Traders First in action? The pillars of our strategy are the following:

• Intervention-free platform. We host and manage everything on our infrastructure. Brokers cannot mess with price feeds, your orders, your trading and your trading history. Brokers just get a back end application allowing them to setup accounts, symbols, commissions, spreads, monitor the activity and, essentially, do what a broker’s job is to do.
• Feature rich platform. We aim to provide traders a platform with advanced trading features that allows them to have a competitive advantage compared to traders using other platforms.
• Continuous community driven development. We continuously improve the platform with enhancements stemming mostly from community feedback. We interact with traders through various channels on a daily basis and we update and upgrade the platform several times a year.
• Top notch infrastructure. We are not stingy when it comes to infrastructure. We host our platform on high end hardware supported by a worldwide proxy network ensuring a fast and reliable operation all around market hours.
• Transparency. We believe in transparency. All trading activity is logged and presented to traders in an easy to understand manner so that they always know what happened with their trades.

Summarizing the above, we have built a business deeply dependent on traders' success. This is why based on internal reports there are about 35% more successful traders on cTrader, than the industry average. For us, the more the traders stay on our platform, the better. And the more successful they are, the more they stay. We have no interest in scam brokers and we have nothing to gain if traders lose their money and abandon the platform. Therefore every trader should rest assured that cTrader is on her or his side, always putting Traders First.