Three things to look for before purchasing an EA

1. Look for a no charge trial evaluation - if the performance is good then should you be able to try before you buy on a demo account. After a few weeks testing in a demo, the subscription can pay for itself if you choose to trade with real money and “pay for performance” using the positive returns. A money back guarantee is also good but asking for a refund can be a hassle and not getting billed until after a trial period is better than paying upfront.

2. Subscribe to a signal service – Autotrading with a signal service is beneficial to both signal publishers and signal subscribers.

• Some people have reservations about paying for a monthly subscription fee instead of a onetime sale, but you really do get what you pay for. You want a trading system developer to have a long term interest in making sure that the system continues to work month over month. You don’t want to buy a trading system from someone that will just take your money and run. You want them to have “skin in the game” and have an interest in keeping you as a paying subscriber.
  
• Additionally a subscription means fewer configuration settings to tweak. Many non-signal based trading robots will require you to constantly tweak settings as market conditions change in order for you to profit. They'll often sell a membership to a club or forum so that you can get updates for the latest profitable setting of the day. Don’t fall for it! If you need to pay to join a club to get constantly changing settings for a robot just to make it work as advertised, you’re much better off to simply subscribe to a signal and let the signal publisher deal with all of that. With a Signal Service, the only setting that you may want to tweak is for "lot size" which controls the size of each trade. The Signal Publisher will handle everything else, so there is no guess work and you don't have to worry if ithe robot is configured correctly.
  
• The final reason a signal is a smarter choice is that non-signal EA developers know that their systems can be reverse engineered. You have to ask yourself, is the trading robot that they are selling really that valuable if they know that anyone on the internet can take their algorithm once they get their files? If the trading robot isn’t signal based then the system developer may just want to take your money and run.
  

3. Look for a live statement – You want to see a trading statement on the website that shows a history of closed trades so that you can assess performance. Take advantage of the signal’s trial period and compare your results against the closed trades in the published live statement.