December 8, 2026: Pulley shuts down and sends customers to Carta

Pulley is shutting down after seven years. If your cap table is just records, documents, and exports, stop renting the database.

December 8, 2026 is the date Pulley stops normal operations and services.

You did not get a product roadmap. You got a deadline. Pulley built a cap-table product for startups, ran it for seven years, then pointed customers and prospects at Carta.

That is the whole SaaS trick in plain clothes. Your ownership records live somewhere else. Then that somewhere else closes. Now you move when the vendor says you move.

What happened

Pulley was cap-table software. Startups used it to track financing, ownership, stakeholders, equity securities, transactions, and documents. That is not decoration. That is the company record of who owns what.

In September 2026, Pulley announced it was shutting down. TechCrunch reported that Pulley, described as a Carta rival, was shutting down. Business Insider reported that Carta would help transition customers. The kill sheet says Pulley had been operating for seven years.

The important dates are not vague. Pulley says its final day of operations and services is December 8, 2026. Pulley also says limited customer data access ends January 31, 2027. That gives you a shutdown date and a data access cliff.

Pulley also partnered with Carta to help existing customers migrate. Prospective customers are redirected there. So the product did not just die quietly. It died into a competitor path.

The user base was not huge public-enterprise sprawl. Reporting describes it as several hundred early-stage startups. That matters. These are the exact teams that cannot afford a messy cap table. They also cannot afford vendor archaeology every time a tool disappears.

Pulley pricing gives the rent math. Pulley published Startup at $1,200 per year, equal to $100 per month. Pulley published Growth at $3,500 per year, equal to about $291.67 per month. Enterprise was custom quote. Unknown means unknown. No public Enterprise list price is in the gathered material.

For the Startup tier, the three-year rent is simple: $100 per month for 36 months is $3,600. Team size in this model is 10, but Pulley Startup pricing is flat, not per seat, so the team size does not change the listed rent.

That is the small-number trap. $3,600 over three years does not sound worth fighting. Then the vendor shuts down and your cap table moves on their calendar. The real cost is not only the invoice. It is the forced migration, the deadline, the cleanup, and the fact that your ownership system was never yours.

What it actually did for you

You used Pulley for boring records. Good. Boring is the point.

You used cap-table management because somebody had to know who owns what. Founders, investors, employees, former employees, advisors, and other holders need one structured place. A spreadsheet can do this badly. A records app can do it cleanly.

You used financing and ownership tracking. Each round changes the company. If the history is vague, your next financing, diligence process, or internal planning turns into a document hunt.

You used securities and transaction recording. Equity securities and ownership changes need dates, parties, notes, and linked documents. That is not a social feed. That is a ledger.

You used stakeholder records. Companies, people, roles, contact details, and holder status need structure. If you cannot answer who is attached to which security and transaction, you do not have a cap table. You have fragments.

You used document management. Equity documents need to sit next to the ownership records they support. The document vault is not glamorous. It is the evidence locker.

During the shutdown, you use migration. That is now a feature because the product is dead. Pulley customers need an exit path before normal app access ends and before limited data access ends.

What padded the price is unknown. No source in the gathered material identifies specific Pulley features that few teams use or pay for but ignore. So do not invent fake bloat. The honest cut is narrower: most early teams needed the records system, the documents, the audit trail, and exports. They did not need their core ownership data tied to a hosted product with a shutdown date.

The daily job is not hard to name. Create a stakeholder. Record a security. Log a transaction. Attach documents. See the current ownership picture. Export the data. Track who changed what.

That is a database with rules. Not magic.

The math

Tier or build	Price per user per month	Team size	36 months	Total
Pulley Startup	Unknown per user, flat $100 per month	10	$100 × 36 months	$3,600
Owned build, pro range	Not seat priced	10	One build	$2,500 to $8,000

Over the first 36 months, you keep $0 in pure cash if you compare Pulley Startup rent with the high-end $8,000 build, but you keep the code, database, documents, export format, and server control. At the high end, payback is 80 months against the $100 per month Startup list price.

That is not a quick cash win at the high end. It is a control win. If you are paying only $100 per month and you trust the next hosted system forever, rent. If you do not want a shutdown notice to decide where your ownership records go, build.

The low end of the build range is $2,500. The high end is $8,000. The stated effort is 2 to 4 weeks. This is a pro build because it needs roles, audit logging, document storage, exports, and a sensitive migration. It is not a full Carta clone. Do not build one.

Build the records app. Nothing more.

What you would build instead

Stakeholder registry. Store companies, founders, investors, employees, advisors, and other holders with contact data and role metadata.
Securities ledger. Record equity securities and ownership positions in PostgreSQL tables.
Transaction log. Capture financing and equity transactions with dates, parties, notes, and linked documents.
Document vault. Store equity-related documents and connect them to stakeholders, securities, and transactions.
Audit trail. Record who changed cap-table records and when.
Export and migration pack. Produce CSV files and document bundles so you can leave the next system too.

Use PostgreSQL for the relational database. Use Node.js with Express for a small API. Use React for the browser UI. Use MinIO for S3-compatible object storage. Use Keycloak for login and roles. Run it with Docker Compose on one client-owned server. Back up PostgreSQL. Back up object storage. Keep production data off a vendor server.

The open-source building blocks are plain. PostgreSQL uses the PostgreSQL License. Express uses MIT. React uses MIT. MinIO uses AGPL-3.0. Keycloak uses Apache-2.0. Those licenses are known. They are not a subscription plan hiding under a nicer label.

Data migration is the job you do before the window closes. Use Pulley access before January 31, 2027 to export stakeholder records, securities, transactions, ownership data, and equity-related documents. Import structured records into PostgreSQL. Store documents in object storage. Keep links between documents and the imported records. Then test exports before you call it done.

You lose the Pulley hosted application experience, which stops being normally accessible after December 8, 2026. You lose Pulley support after operations and services end. You lose the default Carta-assisted transition path. You lose any Pulley or Carta features outside the used set: broader vendor workflows, vendor-maintained product updates, and vendor support processes. You also lose the comfort blanket of a third-party cap-table vendor claiming there is a roadmap.

Good. If all you need is the system of record, a roadmap is not a substitute for possession.

Who should do this

Do this if you are an early-stage startup with a clean cap table, a small internal finance or founder user group, and a clear need to keep ownership records, securities, transactions, stakeholders, and documents together. You are not buying a financial operating system. You are keeping your company records alive after a shutdown.

Do this if you are a growing company that already runs internal tools, already has a server or private cloud habit, and hates forced migrations. A self-hosted records app fits teams that can name the exact fields they need and do not want to rent the same database forever.

Do this if you are preparing for diligence and your current cap-table history is scattered. The build pays off when the real value is clean records, auditability, document links, and exports. It does not pay off when you want a full external service team to handle every workflow for you.

Keep renting if you need Carta-specific workflows, vendor support, broad cap-table service coverage, or a third party sitting in the middle because your investors expect that tool. Keep renting if your team cannot maintain backups, access control, and basic server operations. Keep renting if $3,600 over three years is the only number you care about and you accept the next shutdown risk.

Also keep renting if your cap table is complex enough that a small records app would become a fake platform. The replacement here is not a full vendor clone. It is a controlled system for the records Pulley users actually needed every day.

The SaaSKiller Take Pulley has a hard shutdown date, so this is not a normal vendor switch. If you only use it to track ownership, securities, transactions, stakeholders, and documents, you are renting a records database for $3,600 over three years on the Startup list price. Build the small system, export everything before access ends, and stop letting a SaaS shutdown decide where your cap table lives.

Sources

AI-generated

December 8, 2026: Pulley shuts down and sends customers to Carta

What happened

What it actually did for you

The math

What you would build instead

Who should do this

Sources

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1,200 tools: Klarna reportedly decommissioned Salesforce during its SaaS breakup

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