Key Takeaways The top three estate planning solutions for advisors that should be at the top of...
With every financial plan now needing an estate plan, finding the right estate planning software for your advisory firm can make or break your team's success. And by now, you're probably aware of Wealth.com and Vanilla. Both claim they're the #1 estate planning platform for financial advisors, and promise to reimagine and transform estate planning for you and your clients.
Wealth.com combines a beautiful interface with AI-powered estate plan summaries, while Vanilla excels at estate modeling and analysis (especially for UNHW clients).
Some firms use both Wealth.com and Vanilla (and EncorEstate to fill in their estate plan funding gaps), but if you had to pick one based on your needs, this guide will help you narrow it down to either Wealth.com or Vanilla based on your specific use cases.
Wealth.com vs. Vanilla: Features Compared
Both Wealth.com and Vanilla do great work for advisors. Both offer powerful platforms that help advisors and financial planners better serve their clients' estate planning needs.
Let's compare their top features across the most common estate planning use cases for clients:
- Comparison #1: Customer Satisfaction
- Comparison #2: Total Cost of Ownership
- Comparison #3: Estate Modeling and Analysis
- Comparison #4: Document Creation
- Comparison #5: Trust Funding
- Meet EncorEstate Plans: The Best Alternative to Wealth.com and Vanilla
Related: Compare Wealth.com vs. EncorEstate Plans vs. Vanilla
Comparison #1: Customer Satisfaction
When looking at the 2024 Kitces Advisor Productivity Survey and 2025 T3/Inside Information Advisor Technology Survey, Wealth.com's advisor satisfaction ratings have higher variation (6.7/10 vs. 8.24/10, respectively) than Vanilla's satisfaction ratings, which ranked consistently well across both surveys with a 7.1/10 on the Kitces Survey and 7.23/10 on the T3 Survey.
| Estate Planning Software for Advisors | ||
| Survey | Wealth | Vanilla |
| 2024 Kitces Advisor Productivity Survey* (published April 2025) | 6.7/10 | 7.1/10 |
| 2025 T3/Inside Information Advisor Technology Survey (published March 2025) | 8.24/10 | 7.23/10 |
*Rating was specific to document creation ("estate document prep"), not estate summary nor modeling/analysis capabilities.
- 2025 T3/Inside Information Advisor Software Survey
- 2024 Kitces Financial Planner Productivity Study, "How Financial Planners Actually Do Financial Planning"
Comparison #2: Total Cost of Ownership In Terms of Price and Your Clients' Data
Depending on your cost commitment preference (e.g., annual subscription vs. pay-as-you-go) and whether you're okay with a vendor locking in your clients' data and estate plan updates unless you pay a subscription, this table will help you get a clearer picture of the actual cost of ownership of one of the top three estate planning platforms for advisors.
| Estate Planning Software for Advisors | |||
| Pricing and Data Retention | Wealth.com | Vanilla | EncorEstate Plans |
| Requires annual subscription contract | ❌ Yes | ❌ Yes* | ✅ No |
| Pay-per-plan | ❌ No | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Access to client data and estate plan updates without a subscription | ❌ No | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| "Unlimited" estate plans and amendments per advisor license** (subject to fair use policy, but with a cap at 120 total clients per advisor license***) | ✅ Yes | ❌ No | ❌ No |
*Vanilla has required annual subscriptions for access and requires additional payment per estate plan.
**You can only amend plans if the advisor is still actively subscribed to Wealth.com.
***According to several advisors who evaluated both Wealth.com and Vanilla.
Comparison #3: Estate Modeling and Analysis
Wealth.com's estate modeling and analysis features focus on providing estate plan visualizations and AI-powered information extraction of existing estate plans. They also offer gift and estate tax projections as part of their core modeling features.
In comparison, Vanilla also offers estate modeling and analysis, but with particular emphasis on complex estate modeling for HNW and UNHW clients (especially with regards to tax implications). Vanilla's modeling and analysis offerings are also very robust in advance estate planning like ILITs, GRATs, and SLATs.
| Estate Planning Software for Advisors | ||
| Modeling and Analysis Features | Wealth | Vanilla |
| Existing and new estate plan summaries | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Turnkey completed summary | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| Estate modeling and analysis | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Custodial integrations for analysis | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Instant AI-generated summary (advisor proofreading required) | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Uncover trusts that need funding where property deeds were never titled into the trust (probate avoidance) | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| Knowledge base | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
Sources:
Comparison #4: Document Creation
Both Wealth.com and Vanilla allow advisors to facilitate the creation of estate documents (like trusts and wills) with their clients.
The comparison table below presents a comparison of common requests clients have with regards to document creation and each platform's ability to handle them. There are many more subtle, nuanced requests clients commonly have that fall into only being accomplished by a human reviewer or attorney referral.
| Estate Planning Software for Advisors | ||
| Flexibility & Degree of Customization for Clients | Wealth | Vanilla |
| New trust or will | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Restate existing trusts set up outside of the platform | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| Amend estate plans | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Human quality control included on every plan | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| Immediate access to documents | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Third-party attorney access for trust funding (additional fee) | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Software-integrated third-party attorney review with advisor and client (letter and or phone call) | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| Corporate trustee language | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| Special Needs Trust (SNT) language for beneficiaries | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| Unlimited support at no cost | ❌ No | ❌ No** |
| Document Vault available | ✅ Yes* | N/A |
*Wealth.com's Document Vault is available as long as you're a paying subscriber.
**According to several advisors, Vanilla's support only consists of email support and a weekly support office hours webinar on Tuesdays at 8am Pacific Time.
Comparison #5: Trust Funding
Both Wealth.com and Vanilla have advisors refer their clients to estate attorney partners to complete trust funding. While it sounds straightforward and easy for advisors and their clients, referring clients to an attorney to get their estate plan funded reintroduces the same procrastination pitfalls that plague estate plan completion, i.e., when are clients going to actually get their trusts are funded?
One Wealth.com customer on Reddit raised concerns about referring clients to an estate attorney to complete trust funding, citing that it "would defeat the purpose of using the [Wealth.com] platform":
"The issue I run into when building trust based plans is that in order to properly fund the trust one of the first steps is to transfer real estate into the name of the trust.
Their advice is to seek out an attorney to do this. But that would defeat the purpose of using the platform.
If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them."
| Estate Planning Software for Advisors | ||
| Trust Funding Options | Wealth | Vanilla |
| Full service deed prep and recording | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| Business interest assignments | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| Exhibit A / Schedule A | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
Meet EncorEstate Plans: The Best Alternative to Wealth.com and Vanilla
Wealth.com and Vanilla are robust estate planning platforms with hundreds of financial advisory firms leveraging them to help clients ensure their estate plans are in place.
But, they each have gaps – Encore bridges those exact estate planning gaps while you still use Wealth.com or Vanilla:
Estate Document Creation Flexibility and Customization
In theory, many mass affluent clients have the same (if not similar) needs when it comes to estate planning. But, being able to customize estate documents to adapt them to your clients' needs is crucial, especially when it comes to beneficiaries. One-size-fits-all estate document templates clearly don't fit all!
Human Review of Every Estate Plan Document
Both Wealth.com and Vanilla turn around client estate plan documents instantly. But, Encore's team of estate planners and paralegals takes five business days (using a 60-point review of every estate plan) to comb through each estate plan and ensure everything is correct and accurately reflects your clients' wishes.
EncorEstate will also answer any and all of your questions about estate planning and or your clients' plans over live chat, phone, and or email at no cost (we don't provide legal advice). Encore's unlimited human estate planner support to advisors is why we consistently score the highest advisor satisfaction ratings in industry surveys like Kitces.com AdvisorTech and Advisor Productivity Surveys, and T3/Inside Information Advisor Technology Survey.
And according to a Reddit user on the CFP sub-Reddit, Encore's "Support is unmatched":
Estate Plan Notarization
EncorEstate provides a one-click option in its software platform to request a mobile notary and witnesses to be sent to your client's house for estate document signing.
Trust Funding
EncorEstate's full-service deed prep and recording ensures your clients' trusts are properly funded with their real estate. Encore's Support Team of estate planners and paralegals will pull the last recorded deed, prepare the deed, and prepare all county-specific documents – even if you’re not an Encore customer.
You nor your clients need to go to the assessor's office and or hunt down various forms because Encore will do it all for you and your clients.
FAQs
How valid are these feature comparisons?
We cross-referenced Wealth.com, Vanilla, and EncorEstate Plans's websites to make sure the latest information was presented here in this comparison of Wealth.com and Vanilla.
Does Wealth.com actually have unlimited estate plans pricing?
Wealth.com's "unlimited" estate plans pricing is capped at 120 total clients per advisor license (subject to fair use policy) according to several advisors who evaluated Wealth.com.
What's the best way to evaluate each estate planning platform for advisory firms?
As you read the "feature parade" as part of your evaluation of these tools for you and your firm, make sure to ask these questions during sales demos with Wealth.com, Vanilla, and EncorEstate Plans:
- How would this tool fit our workflow?
- Can a member of the support team actually help me with my questions before I'm a customer?
- Does it cost me extra to contact support? And is the support staff primarily product support or actual estate planning support?
- Does it actually help me close the estate planning procrastination gap for my clients?
- Can it scale with our operations?
- Will I be able to keep and access my clients' data even when I'm no longer a customer of the tool?
If your answers lean towards making the estate planning experience for your clients not suck, and you want white glove support and estate plan document flexibility and customization, well, you know where to find us 😄
Get a personalized deep-dive of the Encore platform. We're not trying to win a feature checklist – we want you to kick all the estate planning butt.
What's the best way to evaluate the EncorEstate Plans platform?
if you're evaluating estate planning software providers, get a deep-dive demo of EncorEstate.
