RK Sterling vs MoneyGuidePro

MoneyGuidePro was launched in 2000 by PIEtech, a company that had been building planning software since 1985. Envestnet acquired PIEtech in 2019, and the product is now sold as Envestnet | MoneyGuide. Its core product, MoneyGuide, is goals-based planning: retirement distribution, Social Security optimization, risk tolerance, stress testing, tax planning strategies, a client planning portal, an online fact finder, and the Play Zone for testing variables live with a client.

Wealth Studios adds detailed cash-flow planning and advanced estate strategies (trusts, gifting, entities, family tree, and ultra-high-net-worth planning). Dash, introduced in 2026, is a lightweight planning experience that advisors can embed on their website so prospects and smaller clients can start a plan with minimal data gathering. MyBlocks is a set of client-facing educational modules. Its spring 2026 release added AI Summarize, which condenses Plan Notes into a single summary, and new planning strategies such as delayed RMDs and deferred compensation distributions.

MoneyGuide publishes list prices per advisor and relies on integrations for the rest of the stack: CRMs including Redtail and Wealthbox, custodians, and portfolio platforms. It offers an MCP connector that gives Claude a plan snapshot (plan health, goals, and net worth summary). By scope it is planning software: not a CRM, meeting notetaker, document management system, or practice-wide AI platform.

RK Sterling shares MoneyGuide's view that a plan should be quick to build and easy to discuss with a client, but it gets there differently. Sterling's One-Click Plans have AI draft the complete plan from data already in the platform: modeling goals, assumptions, toggles, and scenarios are built out automatically, so the advisor's job starts at review. The plan then connects directly to the CRM record, documents, meeting notes, and client-ready content in the same system.

RK Sterling is an integrated AI platform for financial advisors, founded in 2025 and based in Denver, Colorado. Rather than assembling a stack of separate tools for planning, CRM, meeting notes, email, and documents, Sterling combines them in a single platform where every feature works from the same household data.

The platform includes an Advice Engine that surfaces client-specific opportunities, advice management, financial planning with One-Click Plans (AI drafts the complete plan with goals, toggles, and scenarios for advisor review), tax analysis, AI-powered research with full household context, a CRM with workflows, workspaces, and tasks, document storage, a firm-branded client portal where clients see the plans, documents, and tasks their advisor shares with them, fact extraction from documents, an AI notetaker, AI email, an MCP connector that lets Claude build PowerPoint, Word, and Excel files from household data, and integrations with Schwab, Fidelity, and Microsoft Outlook and Teams.

The Sterling platform is free for every firm, with no platform fee, no seat fees, and no household tiers. AI features are usage-based, so firms pay only for the AI work they use. Client data is never used to train AI models, AI access is controlled per household, and audit logs are designed for SEC examinations.