Why Take Command is not worth it

What Take Command customers report

Take Command has a 3.2 TrustScore on Trustpilot, and 27% of its 359 reviews give one star. Several come from long-time customers who say service fell apart after its new portal launched.

• Staff without coverage. A May 2026 admin wrote that wrong and conflicting answers from support left "our staff lacking health coverage for a period of a month."
• Missed deadlines that cost employees. An October 2026 employer wrote, "Take Command consistently misses important deadlines resulting in excess fees for our employees," that tickets go to an AI first, and that PDF claim upload has been broken for over a year.
• Months of wrong reimbursements. A three-year customer wrote in May 2026, "We are now on the fifth month of incorrect allowance reimbursements for our employees." A June 2026 employer wrote that approved expenses were left off a reimbursement report and still weren't fixed months later.
• Billed for people who'd left. A June 2026 employer wrote that Take Command "charged us thousands of dollars for inactive and terminated employees" and wouldn't refund it. An October 2026 reviewer was still billed a month after a "deliberately Byzantine cancellation process."
• Told to enter fake life events. A January 2026 client wrote that portal bugs stopped employees from waiving coverage, that he was advised to enter false life events as a workaround, and: "Want to talk to a human, budget 90 minutes on hold."

Take Command replies to about a third of negative reviews, and credited one customer after the fact. Read the one- and two-star reviews on Trustpilot yourself before you choose an ICHRA administrator.

An ICHRA administrator with a good marketing engine

Take Command administers individual coverage health reimbursement arrangements. You set an allowance, your employees buy individual plans, and Take Command's platform handles eligibility, substantiation and reimbursement. It also sells a QSEHRA product for smaller employers. Its pricing is public, which in a category where nobody publishes anything is genuinely refreshing and worth crediting.

What it does not offer is a group health plan. This is not a technicality. There is no network Take Command negotiated, no rate table it holds, no insurer carrying your group's risk. Each employee buys an individual policy where they live, through Take Command's shopping platform or another broker, at whatever the individual market charges someone their age in their county.

That model can be the right answer for a small, distributed, young team. It is the wrong answer for a company with families and a recruiting problem, and the sales process rarely makes the difference clear because the software demonstration is identical in both cases.

Public prices, and why the total is still hard to see

Take Command publishes two price lists and they do not agree, which is worth knowing before a founder tries to compare it with anything. Its public pricing page, checked in October 2026, shows $25 or more per employee per month for employers with 1 to 49 employees, plus a platform fee of $40 or more a month. For 50 or more employees it lists custom per-employee pricing and a platform fee of $100 or more a month. Its 2025 benefits consultant guide gives a different shape: a $30 per employee service fee on the base package, $40 on the professional package, and a $100 monthly platform fee for 1 to 50 eligible employees. The spread between $25 and $40 per employee, and between a $40 and a $100 platform fee, is the reason to get the quote in writing. Either way the allowance you reimburse is separate and is the largest number in the equation.

I quote the public page above because it is the one anyone can check, and I quote the consultant guide alongside it because it is the one the sales conversation tends to use. A pricing page that says "$25 or more" is telling you the real number is a negotiation.

Two things about this deserve attention. First, the fee per employee is not trivial at scale. Second, the per-employee fee applies to every employee who joins the HRA, and to anyone who does not log in and waive, whether or not the plan they picked fits their needs. The platform fee is set by the number of eligible employees. You are paying for administration and compliance, and the amount of administration depends on the number of people, not on the quality of the outcome.

Your team's coverage is whatever the individual market sells them

In an ICHRA you do not buy coverage, you fund a budget. The employee buys coverage. That means your plan quality is not a decision you make, it is the sum of twenty separate decisions made by twenty people with varying amounts of patience and understanding.

The consequences are not abstract. Individual-market plans often have narrower networks than employer group plans. A specialist in a specific health system may not be in network. A drug that is covered under a group formulary may sit on a different tier, or require a prior authorization that was not needed before. None of this shows up until someone needs care.

The employee also has a cash-flow problem. They pay the premium themselves, submit documentation, and wait to be reimbursed. For a household with $2,000 a month in family premium, that gap is a real burden, and it falls hardest on the people least able to absorb it.

• Ask what happens when an employee needs a specialist outside the network of the plan they chose.
• Ask about reimbursement timing. Days matter when an employee is fronting a family premium.
• Ask whether dependents are included in the allowance and how family pricing behaves in the individual market.
• Ask who answers a coverage question. The administrator tracks receipts. It does not mediate a claim denial.

The honest case for Take Command

I want to be straight about where this product wins, because there are real companies for which it is the best available option. A six-person startup with staff in five states cannot get an attractive group rate. A traditional group plan priced on a census of six, spread across five states, is often expensive and restricted. An ICHRA at least gives those six people tax-free money to buy where they live.

It also wins for companies whose staff previously had nothing. If the alternative to an ICHRA is no benefit at all, the ICHRA is strictly better and the administrative fee is easy to justify. The argument is not that the model is bad. It is that the model is being sold to companies that would be better served by a group plan, and the fee structure gives the salesperson every incentive not to mention it.

There is also a regulatory reason to use an administrator rather than doing it manually. ICHRA substantiation rules are real, and getting them wrong is expensive. Paying a specialist to handle compliance is a legitimate purchase. It is just not the same purchase as health insurance.

The failure mode I see most often is a company that chose an ICHRA at eight people and kept it at thirty. At eight it was clever: no carrier wanted the group, individual plans were fine, and the fee was small. At thirty the arithmetic has inverted. A carrier will absolutely want thirty employees, the group rates are better than anything thirty individuals can find, and the company is still paying per-employee fees to reimburse receipts. Nobody re-runs the comparison because nobody is being asked to.

So put a review date in your calendar even if you sign. The right structure at twelve people is not the right structure at forty, and the vendor is not going to call you to say so.

Take Command versus a group plan, on the same census

Run this exercise before you sign anything. Take your census, get a group plan rate table for it, and calculate what an ICHRA would actually cost: the allowance multiplied by expected usage, plus the administration fee. Then compare, and include the network and the effort as cost items even though they do not appear on an invoice.

If the group plan is cheaper and broader, the ICHRA is buying you flexibility you did not need. If the group plan is unavailable or unaffordable, the ICHRA is a good solution to a real problem, and Take Command is a competent administrator of it.

What to ask on a Take Command call

• What is the total monthly cost including the platform fee, on my actual headcount?
• What allowance level would make an individual plan affordable in each county where my staff live?
• What shopping support do employees get, and who answers a network question?
• What is the reimbursement turnaround, and do employees pay premiums upfront?
• Are there states or counties where the individual market is thin enough to avoid?
• What are the substantiation requirements, and who is liable if they are missed?
• Can we move to a group plan mid-year later, and what would that cost?

Who Take Command fits, and who should buy a real plan

If your team is small or distributed, an ICHRA is the right structure and the question is only who administers it. If your team is big enough to be interesting to a carrier, buy the plan.