Fees/Commissions:  

Firstrade offers a great flat-rate of $6.95 per market or limit trade and $6.95 plus $.075 per contract for option trades. Broker assisted orders are a bit much at $26.95 and touch tone phone orders are $16.95.

Investments Offered:  

Firstrade offers stocks, options, mutual funds and exchange traded funds. They offer stocks listed on the NYSE and AMEX, the Nasdaq Stock Market and the Over-the-Counter (OTC) markets such as the OTC Bulletin Board or Pink Sheets. They also provide an impressive choice of 10,000 mutual funds and fixed income investments such as Corporate or Municipal Bonds, Treasuries, CDs and Agency Bonds. In addition, they offer retirement accounts, international accounts and education planning.

Ease of Use:  

The trading platform provided by Firstrade is simple and easy to understand with easy tabs to your information as well as shortcuts to market news and more.

Trading/Investment Tools:  

This online stock trading services offers some good investment tools including X-Stream for monitoring up to 20 of your favorite stocks, stock research from Standard and Poor's, streaming news and portfolios, screeners and planning tools. For added convenience, transaction information is compatible with Quicken and Microsoft Money.

Firstrade also has a knowledge center with tax information, investment guides, FAQs, a glossary and a recommended reading list. They also host an active blog, publish a newsletter and support a trader forum.

The only things we would like to see are more tutorials or webcasts or other helpful multimedia educational material and a cell phone app for mobile trading.
 

Support/Customer Service:  

Firstrade’s website is easy to navigate with well–labeled categories and tabs. You shouldn’t have any problem finding the information you need. If you do have questions about the service or trading, you can contact Firstrade by telephone, email or live chat. However, we would like to see 24 hour support.

This is not a bad choice for new traders with a low deposit, since they do not require a minimum and trade fees are low and predictable. However, many other services offer more extensive research tools and more comprehensive support.