Alto Reviews 1,307

After using Alto Crypto IRA, I can confidently say I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone serious about investing in crypto through an IRA.

Their customer service is some of the worst I’ve dealt with. It’s all copy-paste replies, no one takes ownership of anything, and it feels impossible to get real help. When I finally escalated an issue to a supervisor and asked her to contact Coinbase, she kept dodging the request. Eventually, she admitted she hadn’t even tried — saying she already “knew” what Coinbase would say, so she didn’t bother.

The issue was with RNDR, a token that changed tickers to RENDER. Once Coinbase delisted the old token, Alto froze my asset completely. I couldn’t sell it, transfer it, or migrate it — I was just locked out with no options.

To be clear, this isn’t a Coinbase problem. I also use iTrust Capital, which uses the same Coinbase custody, and I’ve never had this kind of issue with them. Alto’s policies are the problem.

On top of that, Alto regularly sends last-minute emails warning you to take action on certain tokens — usually giving you just a few days. If you miss it? You’re out of luck, permanently. No support, no fix, no accountability.

It’s not just frustrating — it’s risky. Between the poor support, lack of transparency, and rigid policies, I just can’t trust Alto with my crypto investments. iTrust Capital has been the complete opposite: responsive, clear, and actually helpful when things come up.

This company has zero respect for Regulation CC that defines how long a hold should be put in a check. I did a rollover into an existing IRA at AltoIRA from a government plan. Even though they received a government check and even though my IRA already holds assets that are a little over 6 times the value of my rollover, they have still placed a week hold on the funds. This is totally unacceptable and unprofessional behavior that is totally uncalled for. In addition to this, AltoIRA seems to have an incompetent web page design team. They have online forms for transfer that are largely not usable without wasting a considerable amount of people's time. Their site seems to not be compatible with most browsers. After trying three different computers with three different operating systems and multiple browsers, I could not get their system to accept the forms. Both Chrome and Edge were useless with their site. Finally I tried a computer I have the Brave browser on it and that finally worked. If you want a crypto IRA, I would suggest trying iTrust Capital instead. I have had accounts with both for some time now and have found iTrust Capital easier to do business with.

I also did a rollover to Charles Schwab about 3 days after this one and Charles Schwab made those funds available in my account the day after it was received. I'm looking forward to when the larger firms like Charles Schwab start offering these products!

Terrible SCAM - promised no fees when I joined
THEY WON'T LET ME SWITCH
Paying egregious quarterly FEES from my credit card - not proceeds

While the setup went smooth, the fees are fair, and the employees seem helpful, I ended up dealing with an issue that makes me question the safety and security of investing with Alto. Long story short, they are connected to Coinbase. One of the tokens I held was migrating to a new ticker, and Coinbase delisted the prior ticker. (RNDR changing to ticker RENDER). When that happened Alto and Coinbase shut off all ability for me to migrate, sell, transfer, anything. I'm being told there is nothing they can do, and Im just out the money. They wont send me the tokens, sell them, let me access them... nothing. These migrations and dellistings are a regular occurrance, and if you miss their email notice, they just feeeze your tokens and you loose it all. This is not whining or complainig- this is a fact, and major risk factor you need to be aware of before putting money into an Alto IRA. Its been a constant fear that if Coinbase delists a token, you loose all access, and cant recover anything. In about 3 years with Alto, I've seen dozens of notices telling me I have days to sell that token, or loose the funds. Heads up.

Update: I've emailed Alto support a few times asking for documentation about them freezing my funds, and asked to speak with their compliance team. Crickets. They froze access to my tokens, won't give me any work around, and now are ignoring requests to speak with their compliance about it. Looks like I have to make a complaint to FINRA now.

It is impossible and directions to take a full early distribution is non existent and not self explanatory!!!

All the people that I spoke to were excellent. They were patient with me and walked me through a rollover IRA. Lindsey was particularly helpful as I was having some technical difficulties with the paperwork. She made sure that my paperwork went through and guided me every step of the way. Overall I had a great experience with AltoIRA.

Issue resolved a very professional manner!

First Class. No waiting for answers. Immediate communication - and clear explanation to questions. Friendly - helpful - informative.

I've noticed that every transaction—whether it's transferring funds in or out of Coinbase or moving money between different Alto accounts—takes significantly longer than expected. These delays make it difficult to manage investments efficiently and create unnecessary frustration. I hope the team can prioritize improving transaction processing speeds soon.

Everything was easy to navigate and simple for me to complete. Katelyn was very communicative and helpful from start to finish. This is exactly what I need from my self directed IRA custodian.

Setting up my account and moving funds from an existing IRA was Exceptional. I should have asked for more information in advance as far as investment opportunities. While there are 240 cryptocurrency tokens available, none are stable coins offering a return, such as USDC. The only totally safe option is to keep money in cash and then it isn’t working for you at all. Unless I am mistaken, which no one has shown me, be mindful of your objectives for these funds and plan to invest.

Aaron is perfect!

The customer support team is very helpful and easy to contact.

Morgan was very thorough and helpful.

Great experience all around.
Great support..

The representative we spoke with was very clear and made the answers to our questions easily understood

It would be nice though if money transfers from an account could clear in less than the 5 to 7 days

I have been a customer for a while now, less than 6 months. I initially had problems when I setup the Crypto Roth IRA with them. I transferred funds and it took almost 2 weeks for the funds to show up. I had to complain a few times before they made the funds available.

Recently I questioned them about Limited Power of Attorney. They told me "Alto does not offer the option to have power of attorney over someone’s account. As such, you will not be able to e-sign on their behalf to open an account.".

So I asked them what would happen if I got in a car accident and was in a coma and my wife called and told them that was the case and she had a POA. What would they do. This is the answer that I got, "We understand your concerns, but we are unable to provide guidance on hypothetical situations. If you ever need assistance regarding account access, we review each case individually based on the specific details and supporting documentation provided at that time."

So I asked to see their legal document that supported their position. This is what they said, "While this is not explicitly outlined in our legal documentation, it is standard procedure for all IRA custodians unless special permission is granted"

I recommend not doing business with ALTOIRA as it appears they are making rules up as they go. They clearly do not have legal documents to backup their claims, so it make me concerned about how they would change their rules based on who they are talking to and who the analyst is that is answering the question

Transferred and converted to a Roth, got $10K out, no problem. A year or two later I need them to coordinate with Computershare.com, who also suck, for the investment checks and it took a second round of checks to find that it might have been Alto that was the bigger problem.
They were very polite and apologetic and said they would be on top of it from then on. No, they have strung me along for another two weeks.
I started using abusive language, oops, in theory that will make thing worse on me, though I don't know how.
I started to look for other SD Roth providers, they charge several times more so I highly recommend letting these people do almost nothing for you unless you are a high wealth individual.

My emails were returned in a timely manner and any questions I had were answered. I also spoke with customer service and they do reach out to the team members to email me back asap. I really appreciate the effort.