Vanguard was founded in 1975, giving the brokerage over 30 years of investing experience. This online stock trading service offers the common investment vehicles including stocks, mutual funds and exchange–traded funds. In addition, you can purchase a number of fixed income investments including bonds, CDs, U.S. Treasury and Agency Issues and mortgage–backed securities—just to name a few.

As far as investment and trading features, Vanguard offers everything the average investor will need. You can customize your trading desktop with charts and graphs, streaming news, alerts and analyst research reports.

Vanguard offers customer support through three offices nationwide, email and over the phone. Many of your questions can be answered with the online documentation and FAQs.

The downsides to Vanguard: they have a steeper commissions schedule. They charge $7 for market and limit trades and $45 + $.05/share for broker assisted trades, however this is only for Flagship members, otherwise you have to pay $30 per options plus $1.50 or as much as $20 per  trade. You have to make a minimum investment of $3,000 to open an account with Vanguard.

This service seems to cater to big investors, to get the best trade rate of $2 per trade you have to $500,000 to over a million invested in Vanguard funds and Vanguard ETFs.