I live in Belgium and what happened to me also happened to a few other belgian traders I know. If you pay 470 vat and fees included, I guess they have cut their price by 20/25% (I guess they were forced to do it because of the competition from new and cheap software/data vendors) or maybe you have a special price through you broker. I don't know if jtrader uses too much bandwidth but what i know is that cqg requires a very fast computer and connection. But, as i said, their product is really great. It just seems that a few belgian traders I know had a bad experience with their office in Paris and that this company seems to prefer institutional clients.
I've used both CQG and eSignal for many years. Though eSignal has primarily been a back-up, I spent sometime comparing the two in real-time last year. Now in the past, I believe CQG provided a superior product in all areas, but based upon my current observations, I find that, depending upon the area in consideration, this is no longer the case. Take, for instance, charting. CQG's software is extremely slick, stable, and versatile. Nothing I have used is comparable, though most of the competition's software is developing rapidly and appears to be more than adequate. Data comparisons, on the other hand, have seen the greatest change. At one time, CQG's data transmission stood well above other vendors but, within the last year, I've found eSignal to be comparable to CQG in reliability and speed, as far as the US markets are concerned. Finally, concerning customer service, I tend to agree with previous comments regarding account handling, though I have nothing but praise for CQG's technical support. It's been a long standing tradition at CQG to project an image of elitism, not only through product presentation but in regard to their clientele. "Retail" has long had a negative ring on the lips of their account representatives and as such you will often get the impression that your interests matter not at all to them. That line has grown a bit old. Considering that most of CQG's competitors now provide what I consider sufficient tools and data reliability to trade effectively, I can find few reasons for the majority of retail traders to use CQG, unless CQG provides some particular need.
Caution with Esignal and high volume issues. Impressive platform, no doubt. I used them for a couple of years and really liked it - except for the times I was trading futures and data feed lagged by 3-10 seconds. But for stock data, it worked perfectly for me and I don't recall ever a lag.
There is no way that E-Signal can keep up with CQG. But it doesn't matter if you're swing-trading one-lots three times a week. All depends on what you are trying to do.
I agree on this one. I used CQG years ago at the bank and it was very good. They did not have any backtesting then. I do not need real time now and I would safe money for this service. Take a look at QCharts too.
Actually the guys who developed CQG's front end started QCharts I think. Of course they've left ,and QCharts has gotten worse with every release since under Lycos.