charles stanley or cavendish

xyz123

hi looking to open online Stocks ISA account to start investing some money for long term in funds. will start off with £3/4k with drip feeding £500 every month or so.... had a look at monevator and fee wise both charles stanley and cavendish are same.

for anyone who has used it, will they recommend one over other in terms of usability, service, any research/website features or other relevant info.

thanks a lot

JohnRo

The Cavendish account web portal is truly horrible (or it was), Charles Stanley's on the other hand is thorough and comprehensive. A little OTT if anything but it's nice to have direct access to everything in terms of data, relating to the investments held.
Cavendish tap into the Fidelity web service but I think the features they are able to offer are a "lite" version.
For a simple investment ISA using funds I think everything else in terms of customer service and basic charging is about the same.
I ditched Cavendish a couple of years ago in favour of CSD for IT investing and haven't regretted it.

Jsscmm

When I looked at both last tax year, I couldn't figure out cavendish at all, in terms of who did which part, where to apply, how transfers worked or fees. According to monevator at the time, the only price difference was CSD had a fee for migrating away from them. However, after some frustration around cavendishs websites, I opened with CSD and haven't had any issues since.

Please note, depending on what you are wanting to do with the account in terms of types of investments, frequency of trading etc, there are several potentially cheaper alternatives.