Ask a legacy vendor what a broker costs to launch and you will get a price for their piece — never for the whole. That is how founders end up discovering the true number one invoice at a time: the platform licence is one bill, the market data another, the CRM a third, and the integration work to make them cooperate is a fourth that nobody quoted at all. By the time the stack works, the marketing budget has been eaten by plumbing.
Let's do the honest accounting instead — what each line in a traditional stack costs you in money, time and risk, and what changes when the pieces arrive as one bundle.
Line 1: The Trading Platform Licence
The platform is historically the heaviest line. Legacy server licences are priced for the industry's incumbents: a substantial upfront fee, monthly support charges, and per-seat or white-label arrangements layered on top — before you have onboarded a single client. And the licence is only the beginning: legacy platforms assume you run the infrastructure, so add servers, administrators and monitoring to the real total. This is the line the bundle deletes most decisively: eTrader ships inside the Singuard bundle — web-native, nothing for clients to install, native iOS and Android apps (coming soon), hundreds of clustered servers run for you — priced from $6,600/month for brokers plus a one-time $3,300 setup fee and a $1.50 per-account fee, hosting included. Firms attached to MT4, MT5 or cTrader can still bridge in one click, but they stop needing a separate licence just to have a modern terminal; the deeper economics are in why legacy platforms cost more.
Line 2: The Market-Data Contract
The quiet monthly drain. A broker needs live prices across FX, metals, indices and crypto, and in an assembled stack that means sourcing a feed vendor, negotiating a contract and paying every month — with redistribution terms that need their own legal read. In the bundle this line is simply zero: a 70ms-updated data feed is included free, streaming into eTrader and the portals from day one, with the option to plug in your own sources per instrument whenever you want. One entire vendor relationship — gone.
Line 3: The CRM
The CRM is where the broker actually operates — onboarding, KYC queues, deposits, withdrawals, support, IB tracking — and standalone broker CRMs charge accordingly, usually per seat, per module or per volume tier. The stitched-stack problem is less the fee than the seams: a CRM that learns about balances from nightly platform exports produces the reconciliation spreadsheets your team will live in. The Singuard Broker CRM is included in the bundle and pre-wired to the platform — balances and equity stream in live with a polling backstop, deposits credit trading accounts automatically, and the three-portal structure (client, ops desk, admin) covers every seat in the firm without per-module pricing.
Line 4: Payments, KYC and the Website
Three smaller lines that add up. Payment processors: cold applications to high-risk-friendly acquirers take weeks and land at mediocre approval rates; each processor then needs a custom integration. In the bundle, Singuard introduces you to card, crypto and PSP providers through its network — at the highest approval rates — and every processor connects via API in one click. KYC: a standalone provider contract plus integration work, versus Sumsub, Onfido, Veriff or manual review wired in from the same one-click hub. The website: an agency project measured in weeks, versus a conversion-ready site built alongside the platform (or the broker plugged into the site you already have).
Line 5: The Invisible Costs
The lines nobody quotes are the ones that hurt most:
- Integration engineering — making platform, CRM, feed, PSPs and KYC talk to each other is real development, billed hourly and prone to slipping. In a pre-integrated bundle this cost does not exist.
- Hosting and a tech team — legacy stacks need servers patched, monitored, backed up and scaled, which means hires or retainers. Singuard runs the whole stack — you employ zero infrastructure staff.
- Time — every month of integration is a month of licence fees and salaries with zero revenue. A 24-hour launch converts that burn into marketing spend; the launch sequence itself is in the 24-hour playbook.
- Upgrade fees — legacy vendors bill for versions and migrations. Managed bundles roll new features out automatically at no extra cost.
| Cost line | Assembled stack | Singuard bundle |
|---|---|---|
| Platform licence | Separate contract + servers + admins | eTrader included — from $6,600/mo (brokers), hosted |
| Market data | Separate monthly feed contract | Included free — 70ms-updated feed |
| CRM | Per-seat / per-module vendor fees | Included, pre-wired, all three portals |
| Payments & KYC | Cold applications + custom integrations | Introduced processors, 1-click connections |
| Website | Agency project | Built alongside the platform |
| Integration & hosting | Billed hourly + tech team salaries | None — fully managed |
| Time to revenue | Months of burn | 24 hours |
The pattern: the bundle doesn't just lower each line — it deletes entire lines. No data contract, no integration bill, no infrastructure hires, no upgrade fees. One vendor, one predictable price.
What You Should Actually Budget For
With the technology collapsed to one predictable monthly price, the real launch budget shifts to the things software cannot buy for you: the licence and corporate setup (jurisdiction-dependent, and the true long pole), regulatory capital where your regulator requires it, banking, legal counsel — and marketing, which is where every dollar saved on plumbing should go. That is the healthy shape of a 2026 broker budget: thin on infrastructure, heavy on acquisition. Your exact bundle quote is tailored to your firm and lands in your eTrader Business portal after KYB & KYC — no obligation until you accept — and you can inspect the entire product first in the live demo.
"The real cost of a broker isn't the licence — it's the stack you assemble around it. Bundle the technology and the spreadsheet gets shorter fast."
— Roman Onta, Executive Director, Broker CRM & UI/UX
Key Takeaways
- Assembled stacks hide their true cost in integration hours, hosting hires and months of pre-revenue burn.
- The bundle deletes whole lines: data feed included free, no integration bill, no servers, no upgrade fees.
- eTrader for brokers starts at $6,600/month plus a one-time $3,300 setup fee and a $1.50 per-account fee — platform, hosting and feed in one price.
- Budget the savings into licensing, banking and marketing — the parts of a broker software can't do for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is the Single Biggest Technology Cost in a Traditional Broker Stack?
The platform: licence fees plus the servers and staff to run it. It is also the easiest line to collapse — a managed, web-native platform with hosting and the data feed included replaces the licence, the infrastructure and the data contract in one price.
Is the Data Feed Really Free?
Yes — the 70ms-updated feed is included with eTrader at no separate charge, streaming into the terminal and portals from day one. You can also plug in your own sources per instrument; there is no forced dependency.
Why Doesn't Singuard Publish a Full Bundle Rate Card?
Because the bundle is sized per firm — account volumes, platforms bridged, processors connected. The structure is always the same: one predictable price, everything included, at a fraction of assembled-stack cost. Pricing is issued in your Business portal after KYB & KYC, with no obligation until you accept.