Most vendor conversations on an expo floor die on the same question: "so what does it do?" It invites a pitch, and a pitch tells you nothing you could not read on a website. The meetings that change a founder's plan start with a question narrow enough that only someone who built the thing can answer it.
SINGUARD will be at Forex Expo Dubai, and you can come and find the team. What follows is the list of questions we would want asked of us, written by the people who will have to answer them.
Ask what happens at the moment something breaks
Every trading system looks fine in the happy path. Ask about the ugly minute instead. What does the trader see when the feed gaps over a weekend. What happens to open positions when a prop account breaches its daily loss rule mid-trade. How does a deposit that lands twice get reconciled. Who gets paged when the bridge to the liquidity provider drops.
On the stand we can open the actual screen for each of those in the eTrader terminal and in the Prop Firm CRM, including the rules engine deciding a breach and the audit line that records it. If a vendor cannot show you the failure path on a live screen, that is your answer.
Ask about the parts nobody demos
Demos gravitate to charts because charts look good. The work of running a firm is elsewhere: KYC queues, withdrawal approvals, refunds, chargeback evidence, affiliate payouts, per-client leverage and markup, statement generation. Ask to see the back office rather than the front end. Ask how long a support agent takes to answer "where is my withdrawal" and how many screens that takes.
Ask about pricing structure too, and specifically about what is billed per account, per month and per integration. A price that scales with your trader count behaves very differently at 200 clients than at 20. If you are building the wider picture, the broker tech stack and the prop firm tech stack lay out the pieces that have to fit together before any one vendor matters.
One question is worth asking every vendor, us included: what do you not do? A vendor who answers everything with yes is describing a roadmap, not a product. We build software. Licensing, client funds and compliance stay with your firm, and we will say that before you ask.
Ask who is actually answering you
At most stands you get a sales representative who relays your question to an engineer weeks later. At Forex Expo Dubai you can speak directly with SINGUARD's Executive Directors, Alex Onta & Roman Onta. Alex Onta built eTrader with Roman Onta helping on the design and leads the platform. The two of them built the Prop Firm CRM, the Broker CRM, Scalegram and CopySignals together, and they carry compliance, payments and corporate structuring together as well. So a question about a rules engine and a question about payment rails get answered in the same conversation, by the people who wrote both.
The team is easy to spot. Everyone wears SINGUARD and eTrader t-shirts, so you can walk up without an appointment. Questions and demos are handled in English, Italian, Romanian and Russian.
Ask for the demo on a real screen
Say plainly: show me the terminal, the Broker CRM and the Prop Firm CRM, running, now. Then drive it. Ask us to create a client, place an order, trigger a rule, approve a payout. Watching someone else's recorded video proves nothing; watching a live system respond to a request you invented on the spot proves a lot. If you want to see the shape of that before you arrive, the eTrader page covers what the terminal itself does.
Ask what a firm like yours actually looks like
Bring your own numbers. A firm expecting 150 clients in the first year has a different problem from one migrating 4,000 accounts off an existing platform, and the honest answer differs with it. Tell us the client countries, the deposit methods you already have or want, the instruments and whether you are starting a broker or a prop firm. Ten minutes spent on your situation beats an hour of general capability talk, and it lets us say early if something in your plan will not work the way you expect.
Ask the awkward commercial questions
How long from signature to a firm going live. What happens to your data if you leave. Whether the contract locks you into one payment processor. Who owns the client database. What the support hours are and in which languages. Founders skip these at expos because they feel rude in a two minute conversation, and then discover the answers a year later at some cost. They are not rude. They are the questions the meeting is for.
For dates, hall details and the schedule, use the expo's own official listings. We are attending rather than organising, and you should take those facts from the organisers. If you would rather have a set time than catch us walking past, arrange it in advance through the Book a Call or Text Us links in the header of this page. More on getting value from short vendor meetings is in our guide to questioning vendors at an expo.
One thing we will not do at a stand or anywhere else: talk about returns. SINGUARD sells software only and is not a broker, bank or adviser. Leveraged trading carries a high risk of loss, and any vendor who answers a technology question with a profit figure has told you what kind of company they are.
"The question that tells you most about a vendor is what happens when something breaks. Ask that first, and ask to see it on the screen."
— Alex Onta, Executive Director, SINGUARD
Key Takeaways
- Ask about failure paths, back office screens, pricing structure and exit terms, not about features.
- SINGUARD will be at Forex Expo Dubai and the team wears SINGUARD and eTrader t-shirts, so no appointment is needed.
- You can speak directly with Executive Directors Alex Onta & Roman Onta, and get a live demo of eTrader, the Broker CRM and the Prop Firm CRM.
- Dates and floor details come from the expo's official schedule; a fixed time can be arranged through the Book a Call and Text Us links in the header.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I get a demo without booking in advance?
Yes. The team wears SINGUARD and eTrader t-shirts and you can walk up on the floor. If you prefer a set time, arrange it through the Book a Call or Text Us links in the site header.
Who will I be talking to?
Members of the SINGUARD team, including Executive Directors Alex Onta and Roman Onta, who built the platform and the two CRMs. Answers are available in English, Italian, Romanian and Russian.
Where do I find the expo dates and floor plan?
From the expo's own official schedule. SINGUARD is attending the event, not organising it, so the organisers are the reliable source for dates, halls and timings.
About the Author
Alex Onta is an Executive Director at SINGUARD. He built eTrader, the terminal, the mobile apps, eTrader Broker, Copytrading, Business and Community, along with the worldwide clustered-server infrastructure it all runs on, with his brother Roman Onta helping on the design, and he leads that division today. Together with Roman he builds the Prop Firm CRM, the Broker CRM, Scalegram and CopySignals, and the two of them carry worldwide compliance, payment processing and international business structuring side by side. He lives and works in Dubai for most of the year. Meet the executive duo leading Singuard's five divisions.