There are two modes of investing in mutual fund; Through “Regular plan” or “Direct plans”. In a Regular plan, there is always a broker involved, and Mutual fund houses give out various kinds of commissions to these brokers.
I will focus on one type of commision called “Trail commission”. For more details on comission strucuture read this article. I want to focus on trail commission, because this is like a slow poison. It’s a relatively small commission but paid out every year for eternity (i.e till you sell your funds). On an avg the trail comission is around 1% of your fund value paid out every year. That means if your fund returns an avg of 15%, 1% trail comission is around 6.7% (1/15) of your returns. To have a comparison, short term captial tax is 10% and long term gains are not taxed for equity, but you end up losing 6.7% in the form of trail comission!. Please have a look at the fund returns of “Direct” vs “Regular” in this link. For eg: Have a look at the 1Yr returns of “Axis Long Term Equity -Direct” and “Axis Long Term Equity” funds in the above link. As of today, the difference in return is more than 1% (which is the trail comission)
If you buy your fund offline through local broker or online through share brokerage accounts in demat form, you end up buying “Regular Plan”.
The only way to buy “Direct Plan” online is to go to the website of your fund house (HDFC Mutual fund, Franklin Mutual fund etc), and select “Direct Plan” while investing. As of today, almost all fund houses provide online mode of investing in “Direct Plans”.
For tracking the portfolio in one place you can use some portfolio management softwares. I use “ETPortfolio“, which is free and meets most of my requirements.
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