Migration Guide
You're paying $600+/mo for a cap table — with 5-10% annual escalators, deprioritized support, and lingering data privacy concerns. Here's how to move to a full fund platform for $297/mo in under a week.
Carta built the digital cap table category. But for emerging managers in 2026, the calculus has changed.
Carta was caught sharing cap table data with secondary market buyers without founder or GP consent — leveraging its position as cap table administrator to feed its CartaX secondary marketplace. For GPs with fiduciary responsibility for LP data, this was a fundamental breach of trust. Multiple funds publicly severed ties, and the fallout continues to shape how emerging managers evaluate their tooling.
Carta applies 5-10% annual price increases that compound over your fund's lifetime. A $600/mo plan in Year 1 becomes $660 in Year 2, $726 in Year 3, and $799 by Year 4. Over a 10-year fund lifecycle, you pay 60-100% more than your starting price for the same service. For Fund I managers on tight management fee budgets, this pricing model is especially punishing.
Carta triages support by account size. If you're running a $5M Fund I, your ticket sits behind the $500M growth fund paying 20x what you do. Two-week response times are common for emerging managers. When you need help reconciling a capital call before a wire deadline, "we'll get back to you" is not an answer.
Carta gives you a cap table. That's it. No data room. No deal pipeline. No LP communication tools. No portfolio tracking. No AI operations. You still need DocSend ($45/mo), Visible ($149/mo), Affinity ($75/mo), and spreadsheets. You are paying premium prices for one piece of a six-piece puzzle.
Carta's interface was built for back-office administrators at large funds — dense menus, nested settings, and workflows optimized for compliance teams of five. When you just need to share an LP update or check an ownership percentage, you should not need a training session to find it. Emerging GPs need speed, not enterprise complexity.
Your fund data is portable. Here is exactly what transfers to Archstone.
Cap table data
Ownership percentages, share classes, convertible notes, SAFEs, transaction history, and round details. Full audit trail preserved.
LP investor information
Names, emails, phone numbers, organizations, commitment amounts, commitment status, accreditation type, and notes. All structured data maps automatically.
Portfolio company records
Company names, sectors, stages, investment amounts, valuations at entry, ownership percentages, founder contacts, and any tracked metrics.
Fund documents
LPAs, subscription agreements, side letters, pitch decks, and any other PDFs or documents stored in Carta. Upload directly into Archstone's organized data room.
Transaction history
Capital calls, distributions, and fee calculations. Historical records import so your fund's complete financial narrative remains intact.
Carta gives you a cap table. Archstone gives you a fund platform.
Say "Send a capital call to all committed LPs" and Archie calculates pro rata allocations, drafts the notices, and queues them for your review. Generate quarterly LP letters, run compliance checks, and score deals — all through natural language. No other fund platform has anything close.
Kanban-style deal pipeline with AI-powered scoring, due diligence copilot, investment memo generation, and IC vote tracking. Stop running your deal pipeline in spreadsheets or paying separately for Affinity.
Unlimited file storage, organized folders, password-protected shareable links with per-page view tracking. Know exactly who viewed your pitch deck, which pages they spent time on, and when. Replace DocSend entirely.
Proactive compliance calendar with automated reminders, AML/KYC checklists, Form D tracking, blue sky filing requirements by state, and LP accreditation management. Archie monitors deadlines and alerts you before anything is overdue.
Archstone Starter is $297/mo. Pro is $497/mo. Both include more functionality than Carta's $600+/mo plan. And we never raise your price. Year one pricing is year ten pricing. Your management fee budget is already tight — your tools should not make it tighter.
When you message Archstone support, you talk to someone who understands Fund I operations — not a ticket queue that triages by account size. Hours, not weeks. Because if your fund is stuck, our business is stuck.
An honest side-by-side. We credit Carta where they are strong.
| Feature | Archstone | Carta |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $297/mo flat | $600+/mo |
| Annual Price Increases | None — ever | 5-10% compounding |
| Data Room | Unlimited files + analytics | Not included |
| LP Portal & Reporting | Built-in quarterly reports | Basic, add-on |
| Deal Flow Pipeline | Kanban + AI scoring | Not included |
| Portfolio Tracking | Metrics + founder portal | Not included |
| AI Operations | Archie — full agentic AI | None |
| Capital Call Automation | AI-drafted, one-click | Manual |
| Compliance Calendar | Proactive alerts | Basic tracking |
| Document View Analytics | Per-page tracking | Not included |
| Cap Table Management | Included | Core strength |
| 409A Valuations | Partner integration | Built-in (strong) |
| Data Privacy Track Record | Clean — no conflicts | 2024 scandal |
| Sub-$25M Fund Support | Purpose-built | Deprioritized |
Most GPs complete this in 3-7 business days. No engineering required.
Log in to Carta and export your cap table, LP investor list, and any fund documents as CSV or PDF. Carta allows bulk export of stakeholder data, ownership records, and transaction history. Download everything — you want a complete snapshot before you begin the switch. This typically takes 15-20 minutes depending on your fund complexity.
Sign up for Archstone (14-day free trial, no credit card required) and launch the onboarding wizard. Upload your Carta exports — the import system automatically maps cap table fields, LP contact information, commitment amounts, and portfolio company data. Archie, our AI assistant, flags any data that needs manual review and suggests corrections.
Upload your fund documents — LPA, subscription agreements, side letters, pitch materials — into your data room with organized folders. Configure your LP portal so limited partners get a modern, branded experience instead of Carta's generic interface. This is also when you set up shareable links with per-page view analytics, something Carta never offered.
Cross-reference your Archstone data against Carta for one billing cycle. Verify cap table ownership percentages, LP commitment totals, and portfolio company records match. Run your next quarterly LP update through Archstone to test the workflow end-to-end. Most GPs find discrepancies are minor formatting differences, not actual data issues.
Once you have verified all data is accurate and your LPs are onboarded, cancel your Carta subscription. There are no cancellation penalties on the Archstone side, and you keep all your exported data regardless. The full transition from sign-up to go-live typically takes 3-7 business days, depending on fund complexity.
Most GPs complete the full migration in 3-7 business days. The data export from Carta takes about 20 minutes. The import into Archstone takes another 20-30 minutes with our guided wizard. The rest of the time is spent setting up your data room, configuring LP portal branding, and doing a parallel verification run. You don't need to cancel Carta immediately — run both until you're confident.
You can migrate your cap table data (ownership percentages, share classes, transaction history), LP investor information (names, emails, commitment amounts, accreditation status), portfolio company records, and any fund documents you have stored in Carta. Archstone's import wizard maps Carta's CSV export fields automatically, so you don't need to manually reformat anything.
Yes — and they'll appreciate it. Archstone's LP portal is modern, clean, and purpose-built for investor communication. LPs get a branded portal with quarterly reports, capital call history, distribution records, and fund performance data. Most GPs report that their LPs prefer the Archstone experience to Carta's generic interface. You can send LPs a simple email with their new portal login.
Your cap table history imports fully into Archstone — including share classes, ownership percentages, investment rounds, and transaction dates. We preserve the complete audit trail so your records remain defensible. For complex multi-class cap tables with convertible notes and SAFEs, our import wizard handles the standard structures. For unusually complex scenarios, our support team does a manual review at no extra cost.
Archstone uses end-to-end encryption with SOC 2 compliant infrastructure and row-level security on all fund data. Critically, we don't operate a secondary market or any business that creates incentives to share your data with third parties — which is exactly what caused Carta's 2024 data privacy scandal. Your cap table, LP information, and deal pipeline data are yours. We monetize through subscriptions, not data.
Archstone includes a full data room with per-page view analytics, an LP portal with AI-drafted quarterly reports, a deal flow pipeline with kanban and scoring, portfolio company tracking with founder metric collection, Archie AI for natural language fund operations (capital calls, compliance checks, LP letters), a compliance calendar with proactive alerts, fundraising CRM, co-invest module, and e-signatures — all in one platform. Carta focuses primarily on cap table management.
Three main reasons: (1) The 2024 data privacy scandal, where cap table data was shared with secondary market buyers without consent, eroded trust for GPs with fiduciary responsibility. (2) Compounding 5-10% annual price escalators that make a $600/mo plan cost $800+/mo by year four — punishing for emerging managers on tight budgets. (3) Carta deprioritizes sub-$25M funds in support and product development, so emerging GPs wait weeks for help while enterprise accounts get white-glove treatment.
14-day free trial. No credit card required. Import your Carta data and see the difference in a single afternoon.
Start your free trialOr see the full Archstone vs Carta comparison for more detail.