The part of Ellevest that most people knew, a low-cost automated portfolio designed around career breaks and longer life spans, closed in February 2025. Qualifying accounts were set to be absorbed by Betterment. What remains is a wealth management business for clients above $500,000, plus the argument Ellevest was built on about whose career an investing model assumes.
The Automated Service Closed in February 2025
Ellevest discontinued its automated investing services as of February 2025. Accounts that qualified were set to be automatically absorbed by Betterment, an established robo-advisor. The automated accounts are not available to new customers.
If you came looking for a low-cost, hands-off portfolio with a women-first design, that specific product no longer exists at Ellevest. Wealth Management continues.
When accounts move between platforms, the questions tend to be administrative rather than philosophical: whether holdings transfer as-is or get sold along the way, how cost basis carries over, and what the receiving platform charges compared with the old arrangement. None of that is specific to Ellevest. It comes with any custodian or platform change, and the transfer paperwork is where the answers live.
Wealth Management Continues, for Investable Assets Above $500,000
Ellevest historically split its services into two tiers based on investable assets: one for people with under $500,000 and one for people with over $500,000. Clients under that line were pointed toward automated investing. Clients above it were pointed toward Ellevest Wealth Management, which is the surviving offering.
Wealth Management is staffed by financial experts and human portfolio managers rather than algorithms. It includes:
- Fully customized investment portfolios
- Intentional Impact Portfolios
- Tax-loss harvesting
- Alternative assets
- Financial planning with an advisor
That's a fairly standard high-net-worth feature set, with the impact-investing option as the differentiator.
Why Ellevest Was Founded: Models Built on Men's Career Paths
Ellevest started in 2014 under Sallie Krawcheck, who had been president of Bank of America's Global Wealth and Management division. Closing gender gaps in the investment industry was the stated mission, and the specific gaps the company named were pay, time out of the workforce, and life span, all of which fall mainly on women.
The defaults inside a standard financial model tend to reflect the clients the industry has served longest: a working life with no gaps in it, a retirement of ordinary length, and priorities shaped by that same group of clients. Ellevest's argument is that this describes men's working lives far more often than women's.
In practice, two people with identical balances and identical target retirement dates can get different recommended savings rates if one model assumes a career break and a longer life expectancy. Nothing about the underlying math is exotic. The assumptions feeding it are simply different. Ellevest says it welcomes members of all gender identities and expressions and uses gender-specific statistics on salaries and longevity to inform its recommendations and forecasts.
Manager Diversity: 80% at Ellevest, 2% Industry-Wide
One claim here is concrete enough to check. Ellevest says it invests through underrepresented asset managers, with a woman and/or person of color on the team at 80% of the investment managers it uses. By its comparison, the industry at large can claim 2%.
That figure describes who manages the money, not what the money is invested in, a distinction worth holding onto if manager diversity is one of the things you're weighing.
What the Automated Portfolios Included
For anyone whose account is now in transition, it helps to know what the old service covered. Ellevest's robo-advisor built a portfolio around your risk tolerance and goals, allowed up to six portfolios, and offered two flavors:
- Core Portfolios, ETF investments focused on diversification and low fees
- Impact Portfolios, designed to invest in support against gender inequality, racial injustice, and other issues Ellevest describes as disproportionately affecting women
Automatic rebalancing and tax optimization were included, along with 50% off one-on-one financial planning sessions. Portfolios were built from exchange-traded funds, which is typical for robo-advisors: a single ETF can hold hundreds of companies. Individual stocks were not available, a direct consequence of the diversification-first design.
Diversification spreads exposure, but it does not remove the risk of loss. Ellevest does not publish expected returns for its plans, and no investment platform can promise them.
A Monthly Membership Fee Rather Than a Percentage of Assets
Ellevest charged a monthly membership fee rather than the asset-based management fee many platforms use. The two structures behave differently at different balances: a flat monthly charge takes a larger proportional bite out of a small account and a smaller one out of a large account, while a percentage fee scales with the balance either way. Neither is automatically cheaper. It depends entirely on how much you have invested.
SEC Registration, FDIC Coverage, and the Limits of SIPC
Ellevest is registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Ellevest banking accounts are FDIC insured up to $250,000. Ellevest accounts are protected by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation up to $500,000 against losses caused by broker mistakes.
That last limit is the one most often misread. It covers failures on the brokerage side; it does not cover investment losses from market changes. If a portfolio drops in value because markets dropped, no insurance program addresses that. Ellevest's investment advisory brochure lays out its fees, investment strategy, code of ethics, and brokerage practices in full.
Missing Account Types: Trusts, Joint Accounts, Inherited IRAs
Ellevest's account lineup was narrow. Betterment offers the same account types plus several Ellevest didn't:
- Inherited IRA
- Joint taxable accounts with rights of survivorship
- Trust accounts
- High-yield savings accounts
For someone who wanted a joint account with a partner or a way to save for a child's education, that gap was often the deciding factor, and it explains why Betterment came up so frequently in comparisons even before the account transfers.
Where Smaller Balances Land: Stash and Acorns
With the automated tier closed, investors below the wealth management threshold are looking elsewhere. Two commonly cited alternatives work differently from each other:
| Stash | Acorns | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum to start | $1 | $5 |
| Individual stocks | Yes | No — ETFs |
| Fractional shares | Yes | — |
| Custodial accounts | Yes | Yes |
| Round-ups | Yes | Yes |
Stash lets you pick your own investments, including fractional shares of stocks or ETFs, which suits a more hands-on approach. Fractional shares start at $0.05 for investments that cost $1,000+ per share. Acorns is a micro-investing robo-advisor: plans start at $3/mo, it invests through ETFs rather than individual stocks, and it advertises up to a 3.00% match on new contributions to an Acorns Later IRA plus a $20 bonus after your first investment. Both offer round-ups, where linked purchases are rounded to the next dollar and the change is invested automatically.
What's Left of Ellevest, and Who It's Built For
Ellevest today is a wealth management firm with a values-driven investment approach and a human advisory model, oriented toward clients above the $500,000 mark who want customized portfolios, tax-loss harvesting, and impact options in one place.
The transfer notices are where existing customers find the specifics: which accounts qualified for the move to Betterment, what the new fee arrangement looks like, and whether the account types they need are supported on the other side.
