VTTrader: Other platforms instead of CMS's VT

I've been using CMS's VT for several months for a demo account to trade a few systems but the connectivity issues with their server is leaving me with a lot of reliabilty issues with them. Their charts are great but it's the server reliability that is holding me back from going live and automated with them. What other platforms are available that allow you to write your own trading systems and let it run as an automated system through a brokerage? I know about TradeStation but I don't feel like paying $1200 a year to use it and have open an account with $5000. What has me hooked with CMS is that I can open an account with a few hundred bucks and be able to trade a mini first, 1 pip = $1, let the system run and 'make sure' that my real results are similar to the demo and see if a live automated account connection is more stable then the demo account. The $1 pip value is meaningless I know but if the stability issue is still there and something crashes with an open position and it moves against me 50 pips... that's only $50 not $250, $500....If everything is gravey after several weeks, then trade several mini's at a time...

Any suggestions or opiniions on other platforms?

CMS demo server is indeed very unstable, however that is not the case for their real live server.
I've tested both servers and must say that stability is there for real accounts.
CMS should upgrade their demo server because it's current instability drives away potential clients.

you should also check out the other CMS threads on this forum. You will find other brokers who use VT. Also a lot about the demo/live server bit.

The connectivity problems with CMS demo pisses me off. I have complained
about it with them to the nth degree but it hasn't improved. Every time I contact them about it they want to send me questionairre - in other words implying the problem is on my end. You could open a live mini account with them and see if live is more reliable as others suggest. Another alternative is to use the CMS trading systems with the demo to generate the signals and place live trades with another broker with a more reliable connection. Or, trade your CMS trading system live and when the system generates a buy or sell signal, just enter a manual stop and limit close when you get a fill.

I have complained to them as well; but the guy told me pretty much, there are 50,000+ people using the demo server, but only a few thousand using the live server, and the live server is quite a bit beefier.. They don't want to spend $$$$ upgrading the demo server, because it doesn't make them money. I can understand that..

I use CMS, and their live server is pretty stable..

That said, I picked them because of the programability of their software.. I even programmed Vegas' 4 Hour Tunnel and VWB into CMS