All-in-one vs the stack: what UK advisers actually pay for
Both approaches can run a good firm. The honest question isn't which is “better” — it's which costs you understand and which ones are hiding.
The typical stack
Most UK advice firms run some version of the same four or five tools: a CRM for client records and workflow, a cashflow modeller for planning, a suitability or report writer, a client portal for secure sharing, and a layer of spreadsheets filling the gaps — fee reviews, MI, RMAR workings. Each was bought for good reasons, usually because it was the best at its one job.
Best-of-breed is a real advantage. A specialist cashflow tool may model decumulation more thoroughly than any generalist will. If a particular capability is central to how you advise, owning the best version of it can be worth a lot.
The costs that don't appear on an invoice
The trouble with the stack is rarely the licence fees you can see; it's the costs you can't. Integration glue — the connectors, imports and exports that hold the tools together — is brittle and needs maintaining, and the connections that don't exist get filled by a person. Double entry follows: the same client typed into several systems, with the drift and reconciliation that creates. And there's per-seat sprawl — when every tool charges per user, a five-person firm on five products is paying twenty-five seats, including admin and paraplanning staff who may not need every tool but get a licence anyway.
Add it up and the stack often costs more than its sticker price in money, and considerably more in the time spent keeping it coherent. Much of that cost is invisible precisely because it's spread across people's days rather than itemised on a bill.
The trade-offs of all-in-one
All-in-one platforms answer the integration and double-entry problem directly: one client record, every function reading from it, nothing to reconcile. That's a genuine saving in both time and risk.
But it's fair to name the trade-offs. A single platform may not match the depth of a dedicated specialist tool in every individual area. You're placing more of your firm with one vendor, so their reliability and roadmap matter more. And migrating off an entrenched stack takes real effort up front, even when the destination is simpler. Anyone selling all-in-one as pure upside isn't being straight with you.
When each makes sense
Keep the stack when a single capability is so central and so specialised that owning the best-in-class version outweighs the friction of stitching it to everything else — and when you have the operational discipline to keep the copies in sync. Go all-in-one when your pain is coordination rather than capability: when re-keying, drift, reconciliation and per-seat costs are quietly eating your week, and what you most need is one trustworthy record.
A note on pricing
Pricing structure is part of the honesty here, so to be factual about our own: Bloom is a flat £99 per adviser seat per month, everything included, with admin and paraplanner seats free. That model exists because per-seat sprawl across a stack is one of the costs we set out to remove — though the real reason to consolidate is the single source of truth, not the line on the invoice.