I have been a user of E2T's Gauntlet Mini for almost 2 months. This is how I see it.
I know some people here hate the model and they are entitled to their opinions. I think it is no secret the company makes most of it's money with monthly memberships and resets. Obviously marketing is a big part of their model, but they are not making outlandish claims like that it is "easy" to pass or that "most of our applicants pass", etc. Like they said earlier, their numbers are in line with the entire trading industry in that a big majority of people lose money in the end. I think as long as funded traders are able to make withdrawals of their "live" account profits, then it is all ok. If one day people claimed their money withdrawal requests were failing, that would be a major red flag for me and probably the end of the company.
I have paid for 2 months of memberships and have reset once each month. I have set myself a "budget" of one reset a month. I got in on a lifetime discount of their new account so I pay $123/month for the $75k account. So with a reset I have paid $223/month. At the moment I am not going to reset until November. But I still have the Rithmic live data feed working so I am still using it to practice on Sierra's native SIM mode.
I have been trading for about 2 years. I made a ton of mistakes and wasted a lot of money on paid groups, crappy courses, etc before finding stuff that I have actually benefited from. All the stuff everyone goes through before they know any better. I would say I have the knowledge to be profitable now, but I make mental mistakes like revenge trading sometimes to my detriment.
I used to have a live Tradovate account where I traded last year. I had ups and downs and in the end lost about $1000 of real money before I decided to stop trading live funds. That is where then these funded accounts come into play and where I see the use. In my case my wife and I are saving to buy a property in the future, so even though I have money to fund a real live account, it is money I don;t want to risk at this moment. So for me a good compromise/solution is something like E2T. I know I can be losing $223/month if I have to reset but it is giving me not only a goal to strive for which could provide a real return, but also it is far better to lose $223/month than potentially thousands. Obviously I hope to pass it soon and I'll determine what timeline I'll give myself but in the meantime all this is education and practice in my trading.
People could just trade demo for months/years until they are consistently profitable and have saved up thousands to fund a real account. But for me, I have never been able to take demo trading seriously and I need to have some skin in the game. But obviously with some limits and cost management. So I see proc and cons to them. But you cannot just say that these are scams and should not exist, because they do provide an opportunity for a lot of people that either can't or don't want to risk thousands of their own money trading. And if I do get funded at some point in the future and I can make money consistently, then I can save all those profits plus funds from my regular job and eventually fund a real live account on my own with a good proven strategy for me. I would say the point, even if you are funded is not to work with these companies forever. Just use them to refine your strategy and mindset, save money and then keep 100% of your profits on your own.