So you have decided to trade crypto. Great choice! Many profitable opportunities are awaiting.

Having the right tools is also an essential part of your crypto journey; for better or worse, there are many to choose from.

This article will review two popular crypto trading platforms: 3Commas and Haasonline. They have been around for quite a few years, and each has different pros and cons. 

Do you want to know which one is for you? Then this is the article for you.

Haasonline is a veteran of the automatic trading space. Founded in 2014, the company has gained popularity among serious crypto trades. More time in the market means more features and fewer bugs. So if you are looking for an advanced and reliable bot program, Haasonline shines in this regard.

In this review, we will look at what Haasonline offers and if they live up to its reputation.

If you are looking for a top crypto trading platform that offers excellent reliability and a smooth trading experience, 3commas is a highly recommended choice. It was founded in 2017 to provide crypto traders of all levels with a competitive edge thanks to its complete suite of automated and manual tools. 

3Commas offers excellent trading tools with an intuitive layout and plenty of educational materials, making it an ideal choice for beginner and advanced traders.

If you are a pro trader looking for a highly customizable locally hosted or cloud solution, look no further. Haasonline has developed Tradeserver, a tool for advanced traders that have been refined over the years.

Let's look at the most prominent features.

Drang-and-drop strategy builder

The visual strategy builder lets you develop, test, and deploy strategies in minutes instead of days. The drag-and-drop interface lets you add indicators, conditions, and more to your strategy. It's equipped with an impressive set of configuration options designed to give you plenty of flexibility to build a strategy, no matter how complex.

HaasScript

If you have coding skills, you can create your bot from scratch using HaasScript. With the script editor, you can create complex automated trading strategies, build technical indicators, and more.

There is also a handy pricing chart where you can see the output of your script, useful for testing and debugging.

Backtesting and paper trading

You can test your strategies without risk, thanks to Haasonline backtesting and paper trading. 

When you perform a backtest, you can see the list of past trades the strategy would have performed and its results. I wish there were more statistics about the strategy, rather than a long list of trades. In any case, you can export the list of trades and perform further analysis in a spreadsheet.

Tradeserver Cloud

Haasonline offer a cloud version of their trading software, perfect for those who don't want to deal with the cost and time required to maintain their own hardware. The cloud version has the same features as the self-hosted version.

3Commas offers tools for manual and automated trading. Let's go over the most prominent ones:

Paper Trading

Paper trading is an essential feature not enough bot platforms offer. Paper trading uses fake funds to test bot strategies or manual trades in real time.

Paper trading is a must-have feature, especially for beginners learning the ropes of automatic and manual trading. Demo accounts are not utilized as much as they should be, and it's a mistake that can cost dearly to novice traders. It is a well-known fact that 90% of traders lose money, and the best way to be on the good side of that statistic is by practicing with paper trade.

You can activate your 3Comma's paper trading mode at the top bar of the page where it says, 'paper trading balance" by clicking activate. If it is not there, you will find it in the account settings, where you can toggle the “show paper trading” on the right of the screen to green and then activate the “Paper trading balance.”

3Commas' paper trading is robust. I have personally used it for many months without a hiccup. My only complaint is that you are given only one paper trading account on one "exchange," and it is unclear which particular exchange is emulating. I find it more instructive to mimic certain exchanges and have several paper trading accounts on each, enabling users to replicate their live accounts on paper trading. Nevertheless, 3Commas paper trading covers all the basics, and it's an excellent tool for practicing strategies without risking your hard-earned money.

Smart trading

The Smart Trading feature of 3Commas allows you to execute trades manually across all supported exchanges. The advantages of the smart trade over the native interface are twofold: 1. you don't need to learn and get used to each exchange interface, and 2. you have advanced options that exchanges don't usually provide, such as trailing take profit and stop loss, among others.

One neat feature of smart trading is the ability to split take profit targets, something you don't usually find on the exchange itself.

I found 3Commas's Smart Trading feature quite helpful and one of the most complete solutions for manual trading.

Grid Bot

3Comma's grid bot comes with standard features and a few extra perks. I really like that 

You can fix your grid orders in quote or base and profit in quote or base. Though it is impossible to set the order in base and profit in base, all other combinations are available.

In addition, you can activate the trailing up feature, where the grid bot moves upward with the market creating new grid lines (available when you fix your orders in quote and profit in quote).

Another nice feature is the ability to choose an action when the bot reaches the upper or the lower bound of the grid, allowing you to stop the bot only or stop the bot and buy/sell base.

On the downside, I must mention that I am missing a stop loss and taking profit features. You could argue that the upper stop bot and lower stop bot features could act as take profit and stop loss, respectively. However, they only work when a specific price is reached. You cannot set the stop loss or take profit based on ROI achieved, as you can do in other bot platforms.

I am also a bit disappointed that the upper and lower stop bot only work when you fix your order in base and profit in quote or vice versa. And the trailing up feature is only available when you fix the orders in quote and profit in quote. It is not entirely clear why some options are only available on specific combinations of grid order setting and profit currency.

DCA Bot

The dollar cost averaging (DCA) bots are 3Commas' most popular feature. DCA bots enable you to buy an asset at preset price drop percentages, lowering the average acquisition price of the asset. DCA bots are a great tool to reduce the asset's volatility risk and the entry price over time, which increases the chances of achieving your profit target when the price moves against you.

3Commas' version of DCA bots, specifically price-DCA bots, follow the Martingale strategy. Price-DCA should not be confused with time-DCA (HODL bots, explained in the next section). Price-DCA can be a great strategy under the right market conditions, but it is inherently risky and can quickly turn into losses if not managed properly.

Being 3Commas' most prominent and popular feature, it surprises me that they have not yet released an easy way to backtest their DCA bots. If you created your bot and want to see the results on historical data (and you should, always), then you have no choice but to try your luck with TradingView emulators or other third-party solutions. Alternatively, you can backtest a DCA bot on our platform for free. Even if you are a 3Commas user, you can replicate the bot settings in our platform just for the sake of backtesting it first; we do not charge and will never charge for backtesting.

HODL bot

The HODL bot implements the time-DCA strategy, in which you buy the same dollar amount of an asset periodically, independently of its current price. The HODL bot helps you to trade with much more flexibility by taking funds from your account and investing in your chosen asset, lowering the risk of significant price volatility. The good news is that the HODL bot is a set-and-forget bot, meaning you only need to ensure that you top up the stable coin balance used to fund the bot.

For example, you can set the HODL bot to buy $100 worth of your favorite cryptocurrency weekly. The bot invests the amount specified into the preferred crypto every week on the day and time of your choosing and will continue until you stop the bot.

Smart Bot

The smart bot is the newest addition to the 3Commas bot family. They are based on a combination of QFL 'Quick Fingers Luc' strategy and machine learning, which tries to anticipate and capitalize on price bounces.

Based on my limited experience (2 weeks running) and users' experience in the 3Commas Discord, I can say that these bots aren't the magic solution we have been waiting for. I am yet to see anyone raving about their returns. In fact, I don't think I have heard of anyone being profitable using one of these.

If you decide to give them a shot, test them on your paper trading account for a few weeks. It's still early days for the Smart Bots; perhaps they need more data to live up to their name.

Options Bot

Finally, the option and futures bots are one of the derivative trading instruments in the 3Commas platform. They are simple and convenient bots that allow you to profit from the asset's volatility and reduce your trading risk. The option bot gives one party, either buyer or seller, the option to buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price before or at expiration. Of course, all this is subject to payment of premiums.

Haasonline is a powerhouse for building and customizing your automated trading strategy.  The ample configuration options come with a necessary drawback, is not as easy to use and beginner-friendly as other platforms.

There are many help articles and videos to help you get started, though it seems that most of the official documentation has not been updated in several years.

3Commas is beginner-friendly, allowing new traders to use it with ease. The ease of use applies to mobile and desktop apps.

The onboarding process can be overwhelming to beginners because several parameters need to be set. If this is your first time setting up these bots, you may not be familiar with the different setting options.

The good news is that the platform has a 3Commas trading school and an active learning community that helps beginners learn how to become successful traders. You learn about cryptocurrencies, technical analysis, and bot trading, and you will have access to practical tools and courses.

Having said that, I find that sometimes 3Commas can better explain the different options with more tooltips and in-depth documentation. 

3Commas support all major exchanges. It is worth mentioning that 3Commas offers special promotions when signing up for certain exchanges, including Binance, OKK, Bittrex, Bitstamp, KuCoin, Huobi Global, Crypto.com, Gemini, Deribit, and ByBit, among others. But this depends on the agreement between the two platforms, so you must look closely at the exchange agreements. 

Haasonline has three tiers priced in Bitcoin. This can be a bit off-putting for many people since Bitcoin is a highly volatile asset. Hence, the cost in dollar terms can vary wildly depending on when you buy the subscription.

Therefore, assessing if the subscription price is fair can be difficult. The lack of a free tier and a trial are also barriers that prevent many beginners from using the program.

3Commas has four pricing plans to choose from, which have no hidden charges. The plans are free, starter, advanced and professional. The charges are straightforward:

• Free plan: It costs $0
• Starter plan: It costs $29 monthly, but users get a 50% discount if they pay for the plan annually ($14.50 per month)
• Advanced plan: It costs $49 monthly, but users get a 50% discount if they pay for the plan annually ($24.50 per month)
• Professional plan: It costs $99 monthly, but users get a 50% discount if they pay for the plan annually ($49.50 per month)

The free basic plan has the following:

• Only one DCA (single or multi-pair), grid, and option bot
• One active smart trade
• Trader's diary
• API Access

The rest of the plans vary on the number of active bots and smart trades you can have.

I find 3Commas plans fair priced, as the platform is packed with features. Be sure to look for discounts, which they often release, especially during holidays.

3Commas can be accessed from anywhere through its web platform, as well as through its android and iPhone mobile apps.

The mobile apps are very well designed and come with all the web version features. As you can see by their ratings, users have nothing but good things to say about them.

Haasonline provides chat support, which is always appreciated for a quick response. However, chat support is only online during US business hours. If you try to reach them outside of these hours, they will get back to you via email. Support is responsive and users have great things to say about them.

There is also a Discord community that can offer help and learning material as you advance in your journey with Haasonline.

The 3Commas customer service is willing to help traders with questions about the platform and trading. They can be contacted via customer support email, [email protected], and payment email, [email protected].

You can also use the website’s contact page, https://3commas.io/about/contacts, and also get to the social media platforms like Twitter, @3commas_io, and Reddit, r/3commasCommunity.

There is also a Discord learning community where traders can discuss and share ideas. However, some Discord users have complained about 3Commas' lack of support on their Discord.

3Commas also uses live chat for communication between users and support team members.

I have used 3Commas' support a handful of times and find them fast and responsive. On a couple of occasions they did not address my queries adequately, but they were able to raise my support ticket to someone more qualified who answered all my questions.

Haasonline offers standard security features such as 2FA and encryption of sensitive data. Further, security is very important for you, you can opt for the self-hosted version and take security into your own hands. This way, your exchange API key never leaves your machine, and you do not need to worry about the security risks that come with a third-party safekeeping it.

3Commas connects to your exchanges using encrypted API. The 3Commas system communicates with the trader’s exchange to start and close deals, but there is no access to withdrawals or transfers of crypto and fiat currencies.

3Commas uses Cloudflare as a security service provider. CloudFlare provides a web application firewall, SSL/TLS encryption between servers and visitors, and DDOS attack protection.

Traders are also advised to secure their exchange account and 3Commas account with two-factor authentication (2FA) and use a unique and strong password. Keep the 2FA backup keys safe, and do not store the API keys in an accessible document.

Report of 3Commas API leaks

3Commas has recently been at the epicenter of a heated discussion. A group of 3Commas users claims that $22 million have been hacked through unauthorized use of their exchange API, allegedly leaked by 3Commas.

3Commas have reiterated that their security is air-tight and their system has not been compromised, blaming them on phishing attacks performed by hackers trying to pass as 3Commas website.

While the investigation is still ongoing, you can take steps to increase the security of your API keys through IP and coin pair whitelisting. The sad news is that 3Commas still does not support IP whitelisting, which exposes its users to potential attacks.

Haasonline has been operating since 2014, so it is safe to say that it is one of the most reliable trading software solutions that exist today. Haasonline is trusted by retail and institutional investors, which attests to its reliability.

3Commas was founded in 2017, making it one of the oldest trading platforms available. Hundreds of thousands of users have used the platform, so in terms of reliability, 3Commas is one of the top choices.

There are reports of users who claim that 3Commas is not reliable during peak trading volume. However, those reports mostly happened years ago, and it seems that 3Commas has since taken steps to prevent the issues from happening again.

Haasonline is a pioneer in the crypto trading software space, and its products are already mature. Once the innovation phase is over, many companies shift their focus to product stability, making marginal improvements on existing product features rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.

This is the case with Haasonline. While the company maintains the product and fixes bugs, there haven't been significant feature updates in recent years, as you can see on the beta release page. This will not be a deterrent for most serious trades, as there isn't anything new going on in the world of trading. However, some users might be disappointed as the UI feels a little dated.

The platform has regular updates to make it more feature-rich and easy to use for users. In recent months, the platform introduced a host of new features to the grid bots as well as improvements to smart trading.

The team at 3Commas is doing a great job of keeping the platform updated.

Haasonline can be a great choice if you are:

• A trading institution that requires an on-premise solution
• A professional trader who wants the highest degree of customization
• Knowledgeable in coding languages and want to code your bot from scratch

3Commas is a great choice if you:

• Are an active trader
• Would like to automate all or part of your trading strategy
• Are comfortable with the risks of DCA bots

As we approach the end of this comparison, the question left to answer is: Which one should you choose?