I know nothing about those companies, but self-directed IRAs are a great concept, in general.

Many people hold real estate in a self-directed IRA. Guidant and Benetrends aren’t really competitors there because Benetrends doesn’t help with real estate IRAs – my guess is that is because they are trying to benefit from search engines finding that term. If you search the web for “self-directed IRA” you will see Guidant everywhere…you will also see some pretty “suspect” looking sites so proceed with caution. Looking at the Guidant site you will see they are an Inc 500 company, were the NW Small Business of the Year (by the US Chamber of Commerce) and the SBA named their founders Entrepreneurs of the Year in 2007. That is pretty good external validation. I’d recommend calling a few companies and see who you like better. I’d ask them for testimonials from real life clients too…