The RIA tech stack in 2026: what to buy, what to skip

Most "RIA tech stack" guides are a list of categories with no vendors, no numbers, and no opinion. That is a table of contents, not a buying guide.

This one uses the 2025 Kitces Research AdvisorTech Study, which surveyed 706 independent advisors on 45 business functions and nearly 200 vendors, to answer the questions a firm actually has: which tools matter, which vendors advisors rate highly, what to skip, and how to tell before you sign whether two systems will really talk to each other.

What an RIA tech stack is, and the one number that matters

Ask advisors which system the rest of their tools revolve around and the answer is lopsided. In the 2025 study, 48% named their CRM as the hub of the stack. Financial planning software came next at 17%, then portfolio management at 14%. Among firms in the $1 million to $3 million revenue range, the CRM's share rose to 55%.

The hub decides how everything else behaves: every other tool is judged by how well it feeds that record. Kitces' framing is that as advisors work across multiple custodians, a "neutral," advisor-controlled hub becomes more relevant, not less.

The number that should worry you is a different one. Only 31% of advisors have data flowing automatically across their main applications, and only 10% have workflows that extend across systems. Average satisfaction with the stack as a whole was 7.0 out of 10; satisfaction with integration specifically was 6.2. Advisors with minimal integration rated their stack 6.3. Advisors with fully integrated workflows rated it 7.9. Nothing else in the study, not spend, not the number of tools, not all-in-one versus best-of-breed, moved satisfaction that much. So the real question is two questions: which tools do you need, and will they share data without a human re-keying it.

The core three: CRM, planning software, and portfolio reporting

CRM. 92% adoption, importance rated 9.2 out of 10, satisfaction only 7.5. Kitces calls the category "on the cusp" of disruption because so many advisors depend on a tool they do not love. Wealthbox is the most-used CRM at 28.7% share with 8.2 satisfaction; Redtail is second at 20.3% and its satisfaction fell to 7.2; Salesforce sits at 11.9% with 7.7. Advyzon has the highest satisfaction in the category at 8.4 on 5.9% share. Workflow support inside the CRM is the most common complaint: importance 8.4, satisfaction 7.1, and Asana, a tool with no advisor features at all, rates higher than most CRMs on it.

Financial planning software. 95% adoption and the highest-rated of the three. eMoney leads on share at 31%, RightCapital is second at 25% and has the highest satisfaction of the big three at 8.6, and MoneyGuide has slipped to 18.6% with 7.4. Among firms under $500,000 in revenue, RightCapital's share is over 40%. RightCapital's recap of the report has the full planning numbers.

Portfolio management and performance reporting. Importance 8.6, and the one core category the study flags as prone to disruption. Third-party reporting use fell from 67% to 60% as custodial platforms absorbed the function. The incumbents (Orion, Black Diamond, Tamarac) are all losing share; Advyzon (8.9) and Altruist (8.7) have the highest satisfaction. Many firms are deciding their custodian's built-in reporting is good enough.

Pick these three first, and pick them as a set: ask each vendor to show client data moving from custodian to reporting to CRM to plan before you sign any of them.

The second ring: RIA tools most firms already run

High adoption, high satisfaction: the incumbents are fine. Buy the one that integrates with your core three.

• eSignature (93% adoption, the highest satisfaction of any category). DocuSign has about two-thirds of users.
• Tax planning (76% adoption, up from 37% in 2021). Holistiplan holds 52% share. Kitces: adding tax planning that attracts higher-revenue clients beats adding another efficiency tool.
• Document management (importance 9.0). OneDrive, Google Drive, SharePoint, Box, and Dropbox each hold under 10% share and all rate well. Advisors will not switch; the CRM should connect to whichever one you use.
• Email and social archiving. XY Archive leads with 14.3% share and the highest satisfaction. The larger incumbents are tolerated rather than liked.
• Scheduling (67% adoption). Calendly holds 41%.
• Phone system (about 72% adoption). Zoom Phone leads; advisors judge phone tools mostly on whether calls log to the CRM.
• AI meeting notes. Adoption is 40% and rising to 43%, with satisfaction of 7.9. Jump leads the standalone category. Notetaking done inside a CRM already scores 8.5, which is why CRM vendors are building it in.

What to skip, or at least not pay for twice

A standalone workflow tool on top of your CRM. Hubly rated well but advisors resisted paying for a CRM add-on that cost more than the CRM; it was later acquired. Workflow belongs inside the hub. If your CRM cannot run a multi-step, multi-person process, that is a reason to change CRMs, not to bolt on a fourth system.

An all-in-one suite with weak modules. Kitces singles out Orion's platform, which spans CRM, planning, and reporting, for rating below average in most of those modules. The study found all-in-one versus best-of-breed makes no measurable difference to satisfaction. Integration does. Buy the better tool and demand the integration.

Standalone account aggregation. Satisfaction is 6.7, the lowest of any majority-adopted function, and the feeds built into eMoney and RightCapital outperform the standalone providers. Try your planning software's aggregation before you pay for another one.

Business intelligence, unless you are past $2 million. Only 15% of firms use a BI tool, and self-built dashboards in Power BI or Tableau rate highest.

Spending more. Firms spending under 1% of revenue on technology and firms spending over 8% report near-identical satisfaction. Satisfaction peaks at 4% to 6% of revenue, which is also the median. The problem is rarely the budget.

How to judge integration before you buy

Every vendor says "integrates with." The 2025 data says most of those integrations are one-way exports or manual imports, which is why fewer than one in three firms have automated data flow. A 2026 analysis of the same study puts it bluntly: integration is the single biggest driver of technology satisfaction, and AI is not.

Run this test with each vendor on your shortlist:

1. Pick one real household. Ask the vendor to show that household's accounts arriving from your custodian, its plan status from your planning software, and its last meeting note, all on one screen, without anyone typing.
2. Change something upstream. Update an address or add an account at the custodian. Ask how long it takes to appear in the CRM and who has to do what. Nightly and automatic is fine. "Re-run the import" is not.
3. Ask for the API and export terms in writing. Kitces found the median vendor scores under five out of ten on API capability, and closed platforms with limited exports are a named barrier to firms building their own reporting. Your data should leave as easily as it arrived.
4. Count the logins for one task. Take a routine job, an annual review, and count how many systems a staff member opens to complete it. Every extra login is a place data gets re-keyed.

A build order for a new or rebuilding RIA

Sequence matters more than vendor choice.

1. Choose the CRM first. It is the hub for half of advisors and the system every other tool will be judged against. Decide what your household record needs to hold, then choose the CRM that holds it.
2. Add planning and reporting, integration-first. Shortlist by satisfaction, then eliminate any option that fails the integration test above.
3. Connect the tools you already own. eSignature, document storage, archiving, scheduling, and phone. Do not migrate these; connect them.
4. Then decide on tax planning and meeting notes. These are the two categories where adoption is climbing fastest and the payoff is in advice quality, not efficiency. Kitces' finding, reported by Financial Planning, is that firms winning with technology use it to serve higher-value clients rather than to squeeze out more capacity.
5. Skip BI and standalone workflow until the core is integrated. They only work when the data underneath them is already clean.

Where Slant fits in the stack

Slant is built to be the hub the data describes: a household-first CRM that connects to the rest of an RIA's stack rather than trying to replace it. As of this writing, Slant's integrations include email and calendar sync, scheduling through Calendly, OnceHub, Cal.com, or Zoom Scheduler, custodian data feeds from Schwab, Fidelity, Pershing, Interactive Brokers, and DST, Black Diamond for reporting households and allocations, DocuSign for eSignature, and Zapier for everything else. Meeting notes, workflows and projects, intake forms, and AI Chat are built in rather than bolted on, and data imports from Redtail and Wealthbox are guided, which is why the migration off Redtail usually takes an afternoon of software time.

Because the custodian data lands in the same record as the notes and the calendar, the questions a stack is supposed to answer become one prompt instead of three logins.

List every household with more than $1M in synced custodian assets and no meeting in the last 12 months, and draft a short check-in email for each one.

If you are weighing Slant against the most-used CRM in the study, the Slant vs Wealthbox comparison covers the differences feature by feature.

Questions advisors ask about the RIA tech stack

How much should an RIA spend on technology?

The median firm spends 4% to 6% of revenue, and that is also where satisfaction peaks. Spending more does not raise it. Spend the median and put the effort into integration and training instead.

Is an all-in-one platform or a best-of-breed stack better?

Neither, measurably. The 2025 study found no satisfaction difference between the two approaches. Firms with fully integrated workflows rated their stack 7.9; firms with minimal integration rated it 6.3. Choose whichever gets you to integrated data flow.

What is the best RIA software for a solo advisor?

By satisfaction: RightCapital for planning (and it holds over 40% share among firms under $500,000 in revenue), your custodian's built-in reporting until you outgrow it, and a CRM that can absorb meeting notes and workflows so you are not paying for three tools where one will do.

Do I need AI in my stack yet?

Meeting notes, yes: 40% of advisors already use an AI notetaker and it is the fastest-growing category. Beyond that, 57% of advisors want AI to speed up tasks they still control, and only 28% want work fully automated. Buy AI that lives inside a system you already trust.

How often should we re-evaluate the stack?

Once a year, against one question: for a routine task like an annual review, how many logins and how much re-keying does it take? If the answer is going up, something in the stack is no longer integrated.

What to do next

Pull up one household and trace its data across every system you pay for. Wherever a person copies something from one screen to another, the stack is broken, and it is almost always at a seam between the CRM and something else. Fix the hub first. Book a demo if you want to see how Slant handles that seam.