To prove it, we’ll walk you through the basics of IDX real estate websites and how to build your own. We’ll cover terminology, strategy, themes, IDX plugins, and step-by-step instructions to build your own IDX real estate website in just a few hours. Important note: This guide covers how to build an IDX website using WordPress. If you’d rather use a real estate website builder like Real Geeks, check out our guide here: The 6 Best Real Estate Website Builders of 2022.

What Is IDX?

IDX, short for Internet Data Exchange, is the technology that allows Realtors and brokerages to display updated real estate listings from their MLS on their websites. 

Here’s how it works: Multiple times per day, third-party IDX providers take the raw listing data from your MLS and send it to the hundreds (or thousands) of real estate websites that have permission to display MLS listings. Whenever a listing is updated in your MLS, it is automatically updated on all the websites that display MLS listings through IDX. In 2022, most IDX listings are updated every 15 minutes. 

What’s an IDX Website?

An IDX website is any website that receives an automatically updated feed of listings from your MLS through a third-party IDX provider. That means that an IDX website will have listings just as fresh as your MLS’ website.

Potential buyers will have a very similar experience browsing an IDX website for new listings as your MLS’ site since the listings are updated with data from the MLS automatically. 

While many IDX real estate websites are focused solely on listings, others are full agent or brokerage websites with landing pages, About Us pages, agent profiles, mortgage calculators, a blog, videos, and everything else an agent, team, or brokerage might have on their website.

Do I Need to Use WordPress to Build an IDX Real Estate Website?

Absolutely not. There are many ways to build an IDX website, including coding it yourself or using another content management system (CMS) like Joomla or Drupal. Some third-party IDX providers can even send listings to Squarespace sites.

That said, WordPress is far and away the most popular CMS system on the market and has the most tutorials, support, and updates. This is why we strongly recommend that agents and brokerages use WordPress for their IDX website. Of course, if any of this starts to give you a headache or you just want help from the pros, Placester will build a full IDX real estate websitefor you starting at just $64 per month.

I give up, take me to Placester

How to Build an IDX Website in an Afternoon

Now that you know the basics, let’s go through the best way to build an IDX real estate website with WordPress.

Step 1: The Planning Phase

The most important (and most often avoided) stage in building a website is sitting down and figuring out exactly what you want from your IDX real estate website. While this might seem obvious at first (leads!!), you’d be surprised at what you can forget until you’re halfway through building your site. This will also make it easier to pick the right WordPress theme (more on this later) and IDX provider (ditto).

So take 10 minutes and write out what you want from your IDX real estate website. Think of features you’ve seen on other sites, like map search, video backgrounds, blogs, sliders, lead capture, home valuation pages, pop-ups, and the general aesthetic you want for your site. What would you like to offer your site visitors that will turn them into leads?

You don’t need to go crazy here; you can (and should) update and upgrade your site many times over the next few years. So don’t feel pressured to include absolutely everything now. Just take a few minutes to outline the big stuff before you commit to anything.

Study the Websites of the REAL Trends 500 & Take Notes

Before you dig in and invest the time and effort to build your own IDX website, take some time to research what it is you like about other real estate websites. To help speed up the process, we put together this comprehensive overview and ranking of the websites of the top 25 agents by volume for 2022 according to RealTrends (below).

What is it specifically about a top producer’s website that you like? Is it the overall look and feel, or something else? Does the site look great because they already had great branding they just plugged into a stock site, or is the overall design unique?

Navigation is another crucial element to consider. As you might imagine, most top producers’ websites have minimal navigation that leads visitors on a customer journey, so notice where and why you click on sites you like.

Step 2: Choose a Web Hosting Company & Domain Name

Before you even think about building a page for your website, you need to set up an account with a web hosting company. A web hosting company will provide a home for your website online and ensure it always loads quickly and reliably from any device.

For WordPress IDX websites, Bluehost is pretty hard to beat. Here’s why. First, at less than $3 per month, it is incredibly affordable, and second, it has a tool that lets you install WordPress with the click of a button. You also get five email addresses for you, your team, and maybe a few inside sales agents (ISAs), all for less than the price of a cup of coffee per month.

You can set up a quick account at Bluehost here and join us again later. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

Choose & Purchase Your Domain Name(s)

Luckily, choosing a great domain name is pretty straightforward. Just make sure it’s memorable, short enough to yell across a crowded restaurant, and ideally matches your name or personal brand. Unless you think you’re going to spend your entire career at your current brokerage, it’s probably best to avoid including your brokerage name in your domain name. After all, you’re an independent contractor, right? Be independent.

Generally speaking, .com is better than the alternatives, but if you have the perfect name, just can’t get the .com domain name you want, and no one else in your farm area is using it, then, by all means, go for another top-level domain (TLD) like .net, .bix, and so on.

Step 3: Install WordPress on Your New Domain

Now that you have a fresh new domain and web host, the next step to building an IDX website is to install WordPress. Since WordPress is open-source, it’s free to install and free to use. Not bad, right?

To install WordPress on your Bluehost account, log in to your Bluehost cPanel, click on the Website section, and then click on “Install WordPress.”

Next, click on “Marketplace” and find WordPress.

Then click on Install.

Next, you’ll be prompted to choose the domain name on which you want to install WordPress. Choose the domain name you purchased in the previous step, read through and accept the license and service agreements, and finally, click on “install now” to install WordPress on your site.

Congratulations! You now have your very own WordPress website ready to rock! Pretty easy, right?

Next, follow the prompts to connect to WordPress.com and create an account. Now that you have WordPress up and running on your web host, let’s move on to making your website look great and adding IDX so you can get MLS listings on your site.

Step 4: Choose Your Third-party IDX Plugin for WordPress

Before you get started building your WordPress IDX site, you’re going to want to pick out your IDX plugin—or at least research some good options. Luckily, with only a few IDX providers to choose from, your decision will come down to price, features, and compatibility.

What Is an IDX Plugin?

In WordPress, plugins are small add-ons that you can use to change how your WordPress theme looks or behaves. An IDX plugin translates the raw listing data from your MLS into code that WordPress can turn into attractive listings for your website. IDX plugins can also provide features like listings search, map search, widgets, lead capture, and more.

How Much Do IDX Plugins Cost?

IDX is a pretty inexpensive plugin for your IDX website. Generally speaking, you’ll pay between $50 and $99 per month for an IDX plugin. Most IDX providers offer much more than just a simple connection between your MLS and your website, so the cost is well worth it.

How to Choose the Right IDX Plugin

Since there is a lot of competition in this space, and only a handful of providers, take a quick run through the features each provides and then sign up for the one that suits your needs best. Here are the four most popular IDX providers for WordPress, along with some information to help you choose the best one for your needs:

IDX Provider Comparison Table 2022

Step 5: Choose & Install an IDX-ready WordPress Theme

Now it’s time to pick a WordPress theme that looks great, provides the features you want, and can work with your chosen IDX provider.

What Is a WordPress Theme?

A WordPress theme is a template or collection of templates that control how your WordPress site looks and acts for site visitors. If you’ve ever used a Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Google Slides template, a WordPress theme is pretty similar except that it’s far more powerful. Themes also generally include many different templates for everything from pages, headers, fonts, colors, backgrounds, and even lead capture and other advanced features.

How Much Do Real Estate WordPress Themes Cost?

Unlike your IDX provider, you don’t have to pay a monthly fee for your WordPress theme. Instead, you can just buy them. Good themes can run from $20 to $99. However, since this is a one-time fee, I would highly recommend not skimping here to save a few bucks. An extra $20 or $30 spent on your theme can make a massive difference in the quality and user experience of your website.

How to Choose the Perfect WordPress Theme for Your IDX Real Estate Website

Remember that back-of-the-napkin list of features and bells and whistles you want for your website? Well, here’s where it comes into play. Use the list of features you want to help you narrow down your choices when picking out a WordPress theme.

Here are a few critical (and not so critical) criteria to keep in mind when choosing a WordPress theme for your IDX real estate website:

1. Is It Compatible With Your IDX Plugins?

While most modern themes will be compatible with your chosen IDX plugin, it’s always a good idea to check.

2. Does It Offer Enough Customization Options?

One of the coolest features WordPress themes offer is templates with multiple page layouts and styles for different parts of your website. For example, a template might have four or more unique page designs just for the homepage, three for the About Us page, and three for the Contact Us page.

3. Which Plugins Come With the Theme?

While the vast majority of the plugins you’ll end up using for your IDX real estate website will be free apart from your IDX provider, it’s nice to get a bunch of useful plugins along with your theme. Visual Composer, Yoast, Mailchimp, Contact Form 7, and Slider Revolution are standard plugins commonly bundled with real estate WordPress themes.

4. Is It a Real Estate-specific Theme?

This one is less important than many people think. While real estate themes will commonly have agent pages, listings pages, and ways to set up listings, those listings will need to be manually added and will more than likely NOT work with your IDX provider. So don’t choose a theme based on whether or not it’s an actual estate-specific theme or not.

5. Check Out Reviews & Updates on Envato

Generally speaking, a great theme will have a good number of great reviews on the Envato market. It should also have a log of recent updates to ensure your site is always up to date.

Where to Buy Real Estate WordPress Themes

Here are a few places to check out and buy real estate WordPress themes.

Envato Market

Elegant Themes

Template Monster

Once you’ve picked out a theme you like with the features you want that support your IDX plugin, buy it, and then download the ZIP files for the theme.

Step 6: Install Your New WordPress Theme

Next, you need to install your new theme into your WordPress account. Here’s how to install it:

First, log in to WordPress, and then click on “Appearance” in the left column of your WordPress dashboard. Then click on “Themes.”

You should see the default WordPress 2022 theme already installed here. This is what The Close’s “Themes” page on WordPress looks like. Note that since we have multiple themes installed, there are a few other themes here besides the default WordPress theme:

To install your new theme, click on the “add new theme” button on the lower right side of the page. Then, navigate to the WordPress theme ZIP file you downloaded and install it.

Step 7: Install Your WordPress Plugins & IDX Plugin

Next, head back over to your WordPress dashboard and click on “plugins” on the left side menu, then click on “installed plugins” to check which plugins may have been installed with your new theme.

Make a note of which plugins are already installed, then click on “add new.”

Here you can search for and install any plugins that you want for your site.

A word of caution here: Since thousands of plugins are available for WordPress, it can be very tempting to load up on plugins. After all, more is better, right? Well, for WordPress, the opposite can be true. More plugins can = more problems.

Don’t worry; you’ll have plenty of time to find and experiment with plugins later on. This is half the fun of using WordPress. For now, here is a quick list of plugins you might want to consider that are useful for IDX real estate websites.

Yoast SEO (SEO Checker for Blog Articles)

With over 5 million downloads, Yoast is the most popular (and arguably the best) search engine optimization (SEO) checker for WordPress. Yoast reads the blog posts you’ve created and checks them for SEO best practices like keyword count, keyword usage, readability, and more. There is a limited free version of the plugin and a premium version for $89. Unless you’re very serious about SEO, you should be OK with the free version.

Download the Yoast Plugin (free)

Akismet (Anti-spam Plugin)

Akismet is a great anti-spam plugin for WordPress that protects against brute force attacks, and more importantly, spam in your blog’s comment section.

Download Akismet Anti-Spam (Free)

Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is a simple and easy-to-use contact form plugin that lets you create and edit contact forms on your website. You can use it to create lead capture forms for landing pages or general contact forms on your website.

Download Contact Form 7 (Free)

Mailchimp (or Whatever Email Marketing Service You Use)

Email marketing plugins allow you to use certain features of your email marketing software on your website. For example, you can include an email sign-up form right on your website to enroll site visitors to receive your drip campaigns.

Download Mailchimp (free-$17 per month)

Your IDX Plugin

Depending on what IDX provider you chose, you may or may not be able to install the plugin via the WordPress plugin manager simply. You will more than likely already have instructions from your IDX provider, but if you don’t, give them a call.

Step 8: Start Customizing Your WordPress Theme

OK, now you have a pretty-looking website set up, but it’s filled with dummy copy and stock imagery. The next step to building out your IDX website is to customize how your theme looks and behaves.

Unfortunately, most of these customization options are going to vary depending on what theme you chose. Here are a few basic things you can change with any advanced WordPress theme to get you started.

Your Logo

Once you add your logo to your WordPress theme, it automatically shows up on multiple pages on your website, and at the top of any new page you create.

Your Site Navigation

Like your logo, your site navigation will show up on every page you want it to and will also show up automatically on every new page you create. Even better, since you edit your site navigation in a single place, the changes you make there also get changed on every page on your site.

Your Footer

The footer area of your site will generally have social media contact information, phone numbers, and a sitemap, which is a list of all the pages available on your site. Like your navigation, your footer is universal and will show up on every page and any new pages you create.

Widgets

Widgets are small pieces of code that let you drag-and-drop site features like search bars, listings by price range, email capture, navigation menus, recent articles, and many more onto any page of your website.

Installing Demos

Most WordPress themes will come with multiple layouts called demos. Demos are fully finished design and layout variations available for your theme. Each one will make your website look very different. For example, the popular Houzez theme has 16 various demos with 16 unique layouts for your site.

Here’s a quick rundown of how to install a demo to change how your site looks. Go to your WordPress dashboard and click on “Tools,” then “Import.” Next, click on “WordPress” and navigate to the XML of the demo you want to install.

Change Hero Images, Slider Images, Logo & Contact Information

Once you’ve chosen a demo to install, you can start customizing it. You can change all of these site elements by going to your WordPress dashboard and clicking on “Appearance,” then “Customize.” Some themes might have different ways to customize site elements, so be sure to read the instructions that came with the theme.

Step 9: Start Building the Main Pages of Your Website

Now we’re getting somewhere. At this point, you should have a site that looks like you want it to and has your logo, images, and contact information ready to go. Next, we’ll start building the pages of your site.

Before we start, you need to understand the difference between pages and posts. Pages are the main pages of your site that don’t change very often. Things like about us, contact us, for sale, for rent, blog, and so on could be pages on your site.

On the blog page, you will have posts. Posts are the individual articles that are on your blog. For the most part, once you have your pages built, you shouldn’t have to change them very often. You should be adding new blog posts as often as you can. WordPress treats pages and posts differently, and you can set different navigation, sidebars, and other features for each.

Pages Every Real Estate IDX Website Should Have

Step 10: Write Copy for Your Website

Step 11: Set up Your Blog & Create a Content Runway

Step 12: Promote Your New IDX Real Estate Website

How to Use Your New IDX Real Estate Website to Get & Convert More Leads

Your website is the most powerful tool in your arsenal to both attract and convert leads. Even if you promote it all over your social media profiles, that’s still not going to be enough to get a decent flow of traffic to your new site.

In reality, you’re going to have to work hard to get people to visit your site and ideally leave you their contact information or reach out and call you. While we could write a book on all the ways to drive traffic to your site, just keep in mind that you now have a miniature Zillow with all the listings in your farm area. This is something that most people want to visit, so you’re really starting on second base.

Advertise New Listings on Facebook

Once you have your website with landing pages, it opens tons of new possibilities to advertise on Facebook. For example, you might advertise new or underpriced listings on Facebook and then send them to your search page or a landing page with your lead capture form on it.

Advertise Free Home Valuations on Facebook or Google

The best way to get seller leads on your own is to advertise free home valuations on Facebook or Google. You can then send the leads to your landing page with your lead capture form or sign up with a free automated home valuation service like Home Value Leads.

Advertise Free First-time Homebuyer E-books on Social Media

First-time homebuyers, especially millennials, are always looking for great educational content to help them navigate the homebuying process. To generate buyer leads, you can write an educational e-book or private blog post and then advertise it on social media. When buyers come to your page, they will be prompted to enter their contact information to download the content.

Over to You

What did you think of our guide on IDX real estate websites? Naturally, we had to leave a ton of information out—otherwise, this would have been longer than “War and Peace.” What are the topics that we missed that you think we need more coverage of? Let us know in the comments.

The post How to Build an IDX Real Estate Website in an Afternoon (2022) appeared first on The Close.

However, providing the necessary tech support to agents is costly, time-consuming, and difficult to do consistently, right? Not anymore. With Placester’s Agent Manager tool, you can exceed your agents’ expectations with less time, less expense, and in a consistent, replicable way.

Visit Placester

Why Do Most Broker-provided Real Estate Websites Suck?

Actually, they don’t. Most broker-provided websites are full-featured and IDX-enabled, and check the critical boxes for 90% of agents. If this is the case, why don’t more agents use them?

Support. 

It’s often not the websites themselves that drive agents to pay for an independent solution (even though they have one provided by their broker for free)—it’s the launch, the customization, the strategy, and the ongoing support.

Put yourself in the shoes of a new agent at your brokerage who needs to launch a website.  

When they officially sign on, they’re expected to launch their website, usually using some relatively outdated instructions or a walk-through from a three-ring binder, while remaining brand compliant, and customizing it based on their exact needs—usually with no web design or marketing experience. 

If you’re a new agent with (literally) a hundred different priorities, plus the ever-present pressure of lead prospecting, tapping your sphere of influence, and actually getting some transactions on the board, the appeal of concierge-level support from an independent website solution is obvious. 

Broker-provided Website Support: Not as Easy as It Sounds

Most of the brokers I know recognize this problem. In fact, over the last year, I’ve consulted with multiple brokers on this specific issue, and they’ve all outlined the same problems with providing tech support for their agents: 

• We don’t have the skill set: It’s often an office admin or the broker themselves who is tasked with this support. Many professionals in this space don’t come equipped with the specific tech-support knowledge needed to help agents with this. 
• We don’t have the time: Onboarding + ongoing support is time-intensive and unpredictable, which means that anyone who’s tasked with providing tech support will have a difficult time creating a schedule and getting away from day-to-day ad-hoc requests.
• We can’t scale this: Once you get a competent, available, consistent tech support person in place, they only have so many hours to give, so your agent onboarding and website support becomes limited, thus stunting your recruiting and retention.

Placester’s Agent Manager: The Tech Support Solution You’ve Been Waiting For

Placester, named The Close’s Best Real Estate Website Builder of 2022, is already a dominant force in the single agent and real estate team website space, but with the exclusive Agent Manager tool, they are now offering best-in-class options for brokerages as well. 

Not familiar with Agent Manager? Here’s a basic rundown of what this feature provides brokers and anyone managing the back-end for multiple real estate agent websites: 

Brokerage-specific, Brand-compliant Website Templates

Using Agent Manager, brokers, admins, and tech support staff can create unique, brand-compliant website templates, allowing their agents to launch their brand-specific website in a matter of minutes, simply by filling in their personal information, uploading a headshot, and hitting go.  

Why this matters: If every single agent starts from scratch with every single website build, you’re likely to encounter the same questions, roadblocks, and needs for support with every agent onboarding. Agent Manager allows you to shortcut this process for your team members, taking 95% of the website building process off their plate. 

A Single, Unified, Agent Manager Dashboard

On the Agent Manager dashboard, those providing support to their Realtors can see every single Placester website active under their umbrella. You can see important information like website status, activity levels, and more. From this dashboard, you can create new profiles, deactivate agents no longer with your firm, and make universal changes across your organization with a couple of clicks.

Why this matters: Tech support used to require an individual login and unique support experience, usually meaning anyone helping an agent would likely have to physically go to their office, then sit shoulder-to-shoulder with them to offer help and training. With the Agent Manager Dashboard, you can provide the lion’s share of this support from a single desktop, allowing workflows to be more efficient and speeding turnaround time on support requests.

  Pro Tip

The Placester Agent Manager Dashboard is a perfect solution for any brokerage that has shifted to a remote office since support can be provided from anywhere—an ideal solution for agents who don’t make many office visits.

A Universal ‘Source of Truth’

With Agent Manager, you’ve got a unified database of information that allows you to apply changes across your entire website infrastructure with just a couple of clicks. 

Why this matters: Let’s say you’ve got an agent in your brokerage who just got married, so she’ll be changing her last name and email address, as well as the office from which she works. Rather than having to make all these changes to the brokerage website, to the individual office website, and to the agent’s individual website, you can make these changes in one place. Placester’s Agent Manager Dashboard’s centralized database will automatically make updates across your entire ecosystem, all at once. 

Tech Support With vs Without Agent Manager

Placester’s Agent Manager is all about providing better service to your agents, in less time, and with more consistency. To illustrate this, let’s look at a typical day for a brokerage tech support person using Placester and Agent Manager versus someone who is working to support a run-of-the-mill, generic brokerage website for their agents.

Total Time Required With Agent Manager = 1.5 hours

Total Time Required Without Agent Manager = 7.5 hours

How To Get Placester’s Agent Manager

To activate and use Placester’s Agent Manager, you’ll need to be a Placester client with their Office Builder Plan ($240). This entitles you to:

• A complete brokerage website (with options for multiple offices) 
• Advanced websites with multiple templates for individual agents (each receive a Placester Advanced account, a $120 per month value)
• All the bells and whistles Agent Manager offers

More Perks of Using Placester for Your Brokerage Website

In addition to the massive time savings, productivity boost, and enhanced tech support for your agents provided by the Agent Manager tools, Placester users receive other powerful benefits.  

• Access to Placester Marketplace: Most agents only dream of an exclusive, creative support network like Placester’s website designers, graphic designers, search engine optimization (SEO) specialists, and more. Placester users can request help with individual, ad-hoc tasks through the Placester Marketplace—accomplishing everything from installing a Facebook Ad Pixel, designing a new logo, integrating your customer relationship manager (CRM) with your website’s lead capture pages, and more. 

• Exclusive brokerage support: Brokerages can take the Placester Marketplace concept to the next level, including creative and technical support for your entire enterprise (up to 100 agents), including original site design, branded site templates, and individual agent websites of up to 50 pages. 

• CRM access: Even though Placester’s bread and butter is websites, they also have some custom tools that Office Builder users gain access to, including a basic connected CRM to give your agents a way to better track, respond to, and nurture their leads.
  
  Placester’s CRM doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of some of the standalone products on our list of the best real estate CRMs, but it’s a great perk to have nonetheless.

Is Placester’s Agent Manager Right for You & Your Brokerage?

If you’re in the market for an enterprise-level real estate website solution, Placester is a very strong choice. They offer exceptional designs and templates, technical expertise, and the tools necessary to create a sustainable ecosystem. These power-ups will present your brand consistently, allow for easy scaling when new agents join your team, and make your IT support levels the envy of every other broker in your market. 

Visit Placester today to find out more about how they can be a part of your brokerage’s success.

Visit Placester

The post Improve Agent Support & Cut Your IT Hours in Half With Placester’s Agent Manager appeared first on The Close.

Without a high-performing real estate website, you’re leaving money on the table and missing opportunities to grow your business. Check out our six favorite providers to help you launch beautifully designed, functional, high-performing real estate websites for agents, teams, and brokerages.

Best Real Estate Website Builders for 2022

How We Chose Our Best Real Estate Website Builders of 2022

While there are other important considerations, we used the following elements as criteria for inclusion on our list of the best real estate website builders available today: 

• Price
• Templates and customization options
• IDX capability
• Lead capture options
• Built-in CRM (or easy connection capability)
• Customer support

For this list, we graded each of our chosen providers based on these criteria. How did they measure up? Check out our product reviews below.

1. Best Overall Real Estate Website Builder: Placester

Placester offers a balanced real estate website builder experience with a great price point and tons of features—making them an easy choice as leader of the pack.

Placester offers a discount to National Association of Realtors (NAR) members, and they’re the only provider on our list in partnership with NAR. These savings make their already affordable solution an even better value for cash-strapped agents and teams.

Placester Pricing

Placester’s pricing model depends on two factors: whether you’re a National Association of Realtors member and which package you choose. Their Starter Plan starts at just $64 per month for NAR members.

Here’s a breakdown of their pricing and what Placester offers at each tier of service.

Placester Pricing at a Glance—January 2022

Placester Package Options	NAR Members	Non-NAR Members
Starter Plan	$64 / month	$100 / month
Advanced Plan	$120 / month	$190/ month
Office Builder Plan	$240 / month	$240 / month

NAR membership has its benefits, especially when you’re building a real estate website. The prices listed above are for Realtors who opt for an annual commitment. If you go with this plan, Placester also waives your one-time setup fee.

Placester offers some a la carte add-ons that further enhance the platform’s value. For example, their Open House Pro Premium app is a fantastic, tablet-based service that provides more than just a digital sign-in option for your open house attendees.

Related Article

Placester Review + Video: Is It Really the Best Real Estate Website Builder?

The app syncs with your customer relationship management (CRM) software. All event attendees are automatically added to your database, giving you the ability to create customized marketing messages for each event you host.

For real estate professionals with a website they’re not happy with, Placester offers customized data migration services, allowing you to migrate all your hard work put in on another platform to the Placester platform.

Here’s a breakdown of the cost for each of those Placester add-on features.

Add-on	Price
Open House Pro Premium	$20 / month
Data Migration Services	Prices vary

Placester Marketplace: Our Favorite Placester Feature

Take it from someone who spends a lot of time working on content for websites—it’s important to know the limits of your skillset and when it’s appropriate to hire someone to give you a hand. The new Placester Marketplace is a perfect solution for someone who needs a little creative help but who doesn’t know where to start.

Suppose you want a basic website refresh or want to install site tracking tools like Google Analytics or Facebook Pixel. Or maybe you just want someone to help import your contacts into the Placester CRM.

You can hire a pro through Placester Marketplace to complete all those tasks for a reasonable price. Outsourcing will free up some of your time that could be better spent returning phone calls, showing properties, and handling other tasks that directly advance your business.

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Placester Templates & Customizability

• The Close Rating:
• 4.5 out of 5

Placester offers 24 templates for subscribing agents. Templates are mobile-responsive and they provide everything a real estate agent needs in a website, including IDX search integration, a blog platform, additional landing pages, and more.

The fundamental differences between the templates are aesthetic, for the most part, and since there isn’t an unattractive option, you really can’t go wrong.

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Placester IDX Capability

• The Close Rating:
• 4.5 out of 5

Since Placester is a real estate-specific tool, their websites are all IDX-ready. As with any similar platform, you’ll simply need to link your local MLS to their website. Next, you’ll need to verify your brokerage information and provide specific data from your local real estate board.

The Placester support team has expertise in this area and can provide live support if their extensive library of self-help resources doesn’t immediately answer your questions.

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Real Estate Lead Capture on Placester

• The Close Rating:
• 5 out of 5

Placester employs proven lead capture methods for your real estate website by providing a place for visitors to reach out and request more information, including a proactive, sitewide pop-up (shown above).

Pop-ups are very effective at focusing your reader’s attention on a single message, even if it’s for a short time. Pop-ups increase lead capture rates consistently, so they’re a great addition to your site.

If visitors overlook your pop-ups, Placester positions another contact form in the footer of every page and a button to click for more information on listings or services, thereby providing readers plenty of ways to reach out on their own.

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Placester CRM Capabilities

• The Close Rating:
• 3 out of 5

The Placester CRM doesn’t come with a ton of bells and whistles, but the features it includes are easy to use and work well. Our favorite part of the Placester CRM is the built-in integration with your website. When you get a lead through your site, Placester CRM automatically converts their inputs into a contact profile that includes all their website activity.

In other words, you get to see all the properties they view, the blog posts they read, and even the criteria they use to search for homes. Granular insider information like this can help you nurture your leads effectively—sending them just the right messages at just the right moment.

The Placester CRM also allows you to import leads from other sources, like Zillow or BoldLeads. Marketing to your contacts is limited to basic email drip sequences, but the system is streamlined and intuitive. If email marketing is all you need from your CRM, Placester is a great choice.

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Placester Support

• The Close Rating:
• 4 out of 5

Placester provides live, US-based phone support Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. We tested their phone support with some basic questions about the platform. Our friendly and knowledgeable phone rep helped immediately with exactly what we needed.

Outside of U.S. business hours, Placester offers support via email. We submitted a request for technical support at 8:00 p.m. on a Tuesday and received an email reply from a Placester representative by 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday. They provided specific information regarding our request and a link to an article in their library of support knowledge documents.

Overall, our experience with Placester’s customer support was very positive and helpful, especially when creating a new real estate website.

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Where Placester Comes Up Short

Although the design options available for Placester websites are very attractive and work for most agents, they don’t offer a ton of flexibility within those templates. Placester customers don’t have much control over how their website looks other than color schemes. They offer limited font choices and 24 templates.

For agents looking for a more robust design experience and total control over the look and feel of their website, you might consider a provider like Squarespace.

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Examples of Placester Real Estate Websites for Agents

Kim Spears Group, KELLER WILLIAMS® Treasure Coast

NoBedrooms, One Real Estate

Al Waddell, RE/MAX Metro Plus

Placester: The Bottom Line

Placester is a superior product for anyone looking to build a real estate-specific website. Placester knows what’s important to Realtors and has put those features front and center. Plus, their affiliation with the National Association of Realtors makes them a provider that Realtors can trust.

Check out Placester

2. Best Website + CRM Combo: Propertybase

Propertybase provides real estate professionals with a fantastic, all-in-one solution for client acquisition and nurturing with their lead generation, website, and CRM components all working together. Their websites are clean, customizable, and trusted by some of our industry’s most prestigious companies.

The Propertybase CRM is second to none as far as capabilities to keep your leads moving down the sales funnel.

Propertybase Pricing

Propertybase offers two different tracks for those seeking a real estate website. The first track is called Propertybase GO, and it’s designed for single agents, teams, and brokerages. The starting price for Propertybase GO includes the website and the highly regarded Propertybase GO CRM for $349 a month, with a one-year commitment.

We did an in-depth review of Propertybase GO if you want to learn more.

The second track, called Propertybase Salesforce Edition, is designed to be an enterprise solution for users across large organizations. Prices for this product vary case by case. Check out our Propertybase Salesforce Edition review for more information.

High-performing Landing Pages: Our Favorite Propertybase Feature

Not long ago, Propertybase acquired real estate lead generation platform BoldLeads, which has led to significant returns for landing page lead generation.

Using the BoldLeads system, you can place attention-grabbing ads on social media platforms and drive traffic to your landing pages. These have been endlessly tested and optimized for industry-leading conversion rates.

As a Propertybase website user, you don’t just access a fantastic lead-generating website—you also gain access to an amazing CRM and the BoldLeads lead generation system—a very effective 1-2-3 punch.

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Propertybase Templates & Customizability

• The Close Rating:
• 4 out of 5

Propertybase offers six real estate website templates for agents to customize and make their own. Though this might seem like a limited number of options, you can do a lot of customization. You have complete control over photos, videos, color schemes, and limited control over layout and display options.

The platform takes this customization to another level with what they call “agent stickiness,” a feature that uses website cookies to create an agent-specific experience on your website once a prospect has filled out a lead capture form.

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Propertybase IDX Capability

• The Close Rating:
• 4.5 out of 5

Like Placester and InCom, Propertybase websites are IDX-ready. All you have to do is turn on the feed from your local MLS.

Propertybase takes this a step further by fully integrating their CRM with the IDX information, allowing you to send listing information and see more about the properties your prospects are viewing on your website—all without having to tab over to another browser window.

[Related article: Still Using Your MLS for Search? Propertybase GO Says, ‘OK Boomer’]

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Real Estate Lead Capture on Propertybase

• The Close Rating:
• 5 out of 5

Lead capture on the Propertybase platform is powerful. Not only do you have the typical lead capture tools like form-fills and pop-ups, but you also have the power of the BoldLeads lead generation system behind your efforts, putting their high-performing landing pages at your disposal as well.

The BoldLeads options aren’t free, but their return on investment is typically so high that it becomes a no-brainer to employ them in your lead generation strategy. While you can use landing page templates from Propertybase for free (without the BoldLeads traffic boost), you’ll need to drive traffic to them on your own.

[Related article: BoldLeads Review: How Does It Work & Is It Worth It?]

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Propertybase CRM Capabilities

• The Close Rating:
• 5 out of 5

If this list were only about the capabilities of the CRM, Propertybase would easily be at the top. In fact, they’re on our list of the best real estate CRMs.

Propertybase is a CRM based on the Salesforce platform. They have full integration with your MLS via IDX, and they offer an intuitive interface, lead profiles that are automatically populated with your lead’s activity on your website, plus tons of automated communication options. You’ll also get customizations that show you exactly the information you want, right on your dashboard.

If email communication isn’t enough for you (spoiler alert: it shouldn’t be), Propertybase also offers some third-party integrations to allow you to automate SMS text messaging, and even a dialer so you can call your prospects right from your CRM.

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Propertybase Support

• The Close Rating:
• 4.5 out of 5

Propertybase provides a wide variety of helpful information in their support center, including a collection of articles and walk-throughs of the most frequently asked questions. If you aren’t finding your answers there, Propertybase provides 24/7 email support and phone support from Monday through Friday during business hours.

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Where Propertybase Comes Up Short

You get a ton of functionality with Propertybase, but with that comes a hefty price tag. Real estate agents who have a CRM that they love and who want a website are going to be out of luck here.

You really won’t get the most out of the platform unless you are using the website and the CRM together. It would be great to be able to just get the website and the BoldLeads integration for a lower price than $349 a month.

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Examples of Propertybase Real Estate Websites for Agents & Brokerages

Pink Realty

Colorado Group Realty

Ocean, Sotheby’s International Realty

Propertybase: The Bottom Line

Propertybase provides a customizable website with lots of great lead capture options, as well as the best CRM in the real estate industry. If you are looking for a powerful new way to grease the sides of your lead funnel and create more prospect conversations, you should check out Propertybase.

Check out Propertybase

3. Best Real Estate Website Builder for Agents Who Want Advanced Home Search Tools: IDX Broker

If you’re an agent looking for more control over your website visitor’s experience, IDX Broker is a great option. Loaded with all the options you’d expect to find in a real estate website provider, IDX Broker delivers on the must-haves for your real estate website while also providing ultimate flexibility.

With the ability to customize how aggressive your lead capture strategies are, you’re in charge of your visitor’s journey. You can allow site visitors to create accounts using popular social media logins, and even customize their user interface. They get to choose how they experience your site, and that information gets fed into your CRM for you to leverage later on.

It’s important to remember that IDX Broker is built on the WordPress platform, so you need to have some WordPress knowledge (or hire someone who does) to take advantage of what is being offered here.

IDX Broker Pricing

Pricing on IDX is complicated, but once you’re on their website, it makes sense. Pricing is divided into three tiers:

• Lite (starting at $50 per month)
• Platinum (starting at $80 per month)
• Home (starting at $150 per month)

After you’ve selected your tier, you have options for plans best suited for a single agent, a real estate team, or an entire office.

Each option within each tier offers an increasing number of features, but all the fundamentals are a part of every package—complete with all the lead capture options, search functionality, and so forth—plus a nice back-end CRM.

IDX Broker Lite Tier Pricing at a Glance

IDX Broker Plan	Prices Starting At
Agent	$50 / month
Team	$70 / month
Office	$100 / month

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IDX Broker Platinum Tier Pricing at a Glance

IDX Broker Plan	Prices Starting At
Agent	$80 / month
Team	$100 / month
Office	$130 / month

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IDX Broker Home Tier Pricing at a Glance

IDX Broker Plan	Prices Starting At
Agent	$150 / month
Team	$170 / month
Office	$200 / month

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Though the Lite tier does offer lots of value, most agents are going to find the Platinum tier to be the place they should start looking.

At Platinum, agents unlock features like automatic market reports, upgrade support and service, advanced map and polygon searching, home valuation tools, and more.

With the Home Tier, you get a WordPress website developed and maintained in-house by IDX Broker, rather than having to work with your own developer to build one with you. Basically, you take all the best parts of IDX Broker and add concierge-level support to it.

Customized Lead Capture Strategies: Our Favorite IDX Broker Feature

IDX Broker knows that not every market, office, and agent is alike. Some agents prefer a more aggressive lead capture style with required sign-ins, pop-ups, and more touches on the website with each prospect.

Some agents are looking for a subtler approach, preferring to let their prospects browse a little longer before asking for contact information. With IDX Broker, you can choose how aggressive you want your lead capture strategy to be, and you can change it whenever you want.

For example, maybe during the high season, when people are shopping for homes, you’re able to capture leads after asking for contact info just a few times. As such, you might want to dial back your strategy, making your visitors feel more like they are making the first move.

At other times, when there’s less going on, you may need to dial up the lead generation on your website, which is when you can really kick your pop-ups, email solicitation, and lead magnet promotion into high gear.

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IDX Broker Templates & Customizability

• The Close Rating:
• 5 out of 5

IDX Broker runs on the WordPress platform, so the number of customization options are virtually limitless. There are seven different themes you can choose from if you choose the Home tier, and you can have IDX Broker build your website for you.

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IDX Broker IDX Capability

• The Close Rating:
• 4.5 out of 5

Just the name of this company should give you an indication of IDX Broker’s strong IDX capabilities. The IDX Broker website experience is really centered around search. As such, they need a reliable and complete IDX connection to fill out their list of features.

We tested IDX Broker’s connection with a local MLS, and it connected with every major property category, making the search functionality on the agent website nearly identical to that of the local MLS’ own website platform.

Note: If you’re located in New York City, this platform won’t work for you, as IDX Broker doesn’t connect with REBNY.

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Real Estate Lead Capture on IDX Broker

• The Close Rating:
• 5 out of 5

As we mentioned earlier, the lead capture options on IDX Broker are our favorite part of the platform. You really can create exactly the experience you want for your visitors, such as including, eliminating, or requiring certain fields, pop-ups, social logins, and more.

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IDX Broker CRM Capabilities

• The Close Rating:
• 2 out of 5

IDX Broker doesn’t really offer a CRM for real estate agents. There are some limited real estate lead distribution tools, and some back-office management tools (available on the Team and Office plans). But this platform is designed to be easily integrated with another CRM, connecting with every one of the CRMs on our list of Best Real Estate CRMs for 2021.

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IDX Broker Support

• The Close Rating:
• 2 out of 5

IDX Broker provides standard email and phone support during business hours, and has a decent library of on-demand resources so you can help yourself, including an on-demand webinar section we found particularly useful.

Unless you choose the Home tier, IDX Broker doesn’t offer live support for WordPress-related questions.

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Where IDX Broker Comes Up Short

IDX Broker is great for agents who want a ton of customization, but it comes with the need to hire someone to help you with the WordPress work, unless you are getting the Home tier package or happen to be a developer yourself. It would be great if IDX Broker offered a prebuilt option for agents looking for the Lite or Platinum options.

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Examples of IDX Broker Real Estate Websites for Agents & Brokerages

Brace Homes, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Michigan

Mello Group

Hood Homes, Starpointe Realty

IDX Broker: The Bottom Line

If you want ultimate control over your website and your user experience, IDX Broker is definitely a provider to consider. Visit them today to see which tier, plan, and options are best for your business.

Visit REDX

4. Best Website Builder for Budget-conscious Agents Looking for Premium Marketing Features: InCom

InCom provides attractive websites for real estate agents that do everything you need them to do. They provide a place for people to search for listed property, give prospects an easy way to contact you, and provide a platform for them to consume your content online.

But the extras that InCom offers really set it apart from the rest of the providers on our list. These include a makeshift CRM, integration with social media platforms to make lead generation easier, and real estate-specific landing pages that will convert your incoming lead traffic better than a generic website landing page.

InCom Pricing

InCom pricing starts at just $39.95 a month for an annual plan, plus a one-time setup fee of $250. InCom’s pricing is very competitive, and unlike real estate-specific competitor Placester, nearly all the essential features of the platform are included in their monthly or annual rate.

InCom Pricing at a Glance—January 2022

InCom Offers	Price
IDX Website With Unlimited Content, Access to 6 Standard Templates	$44.95 / month (annually) or $49.95 / month (monthly)
Access to Additional Premium Templates	$4.95 / month
One-time Setup Fee	$250
Google Ad Words Management	$100 / month
Facebook Ads Management	$100 / month
ReCall Marketing - Silver Package	$45 / month + $125 setup fee
ReCall Marketing - Gold Package	$175 / month + $125 setup fee
ReCall Marketing - Platinum Package	$300 / month + $125 setup fee

All the integrations, page features, and offers from InCom are included in their base package. There’s no need to budget for add-ons unless you want one of the premium templates they offer or some of their premium marketing options.

ReCall Marketing: Our Favorite InCom Feature

One of the best parts of the InCom platform is access to their premium marketing features. Yes, you have to pay extra for these, but the upcharge on each of their offerings is significantly less than what it would be if you were working with a standalone marketing agency.

Our favorite is their ReCall Marketing strategy, InCom’s website retargeting service. If you aren’t familiar with retargeting, here’s how it works: When someone visits your website, a small piece of code (or “cookie”) is installed on their browser. Then, when they visit other websites on the internet, they are served ads about your business. These could be ads for particular properties, ads for your services in general, or even for an event like an open house you’ve got coming up.

InCom offers three different levels of ReCall Marketing, depending on how many impressions you want to make on your website visitors after they’ve left your site. While retargeting isn’t new, this is an easy, relatively hands-off approach for real estate agents, freeing up the time and energy of already busy real estate professionals to focus on other things.

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InCom Templates & Customizability

• The Close Rating:
• 2 out of 5

You don’t get a ton of templates to choose from with InCom, as seems to be the case with most real estate-specific website builders. With InCom, you have access to six standard templates, and for an extra fee you can get a few more in the “premium templates” area.

While the premium templates are nice, they really didn’t seem to add a ton of value above and beyond what the standard templates offered. All of the important elements are in place on InCom websites, though, so you don’t need to worry about missing an important feature.

Like Placester, website layouts aren’t very customizable and you can’t manipulate many features beyond color schemes and fonts. If you’ve got a particular vision for what a reader will find when they arrive at your site, InCom provides only limited design modifications.

One thing we really liked about InCom was that, unlike Placester, agents can have unlimited pages on their site. If you’ve got grand plans to become the content marketing wiz of your local market, you’re going to need a website that can host all your blog posts, neighborhood feature videos, and checklists for new homebuyers and sellers. InCom offers agents as many internal pages as they’d like to host all the content their heart desires.

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InCom IDX Capability

• The Close Rating:
• 4 out of 5

InCom’s websites are all IDX-enabled and ready to connect to your local MLS. This is definitely one of the benefits of working with a real estate-specific website builder, rather than going through a generic provider like Squarespace.

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Real Estate Lead Capture on InCom

• The Close Rating:
• 3.5 out of 5

InCom does offer a lot of lead generation opportunities through their premium services managing your advertising on other platforms, and they support that ad management with solid lead capture options on their sites as well.

When users are directed to your website, you can send them to one of your custom InCom landing pages, designed to capture lead data before a visitor can dig into what you have to offer. Or, you can send them straight to your site and trigger what InCom calls a “User Registration” after a certain number of properties or pages are viewed.

This strategy is more in-your-face than the optional pop-ups on other sites, but will also provide you with more qualified leads. Anyone who is willing to fill out a user registration form is more likely to be a serious shopper and not just someone who came to your site because they’re curious.

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InCom CRM Capabilities

• The Close Rating:
• 3.5 out of 5

InCom has a relatively limited built-in CRM to help you manage the leads you get from their website. It pales in comparison to the one from Placester or a dedicated real estate CRM product, so you’ll want to partner your InCom website with another platform.

One nice thing about the onboard CRM is that it allows for custom alerts to be sent to you whenever you’ve got lead activity on the site, making prompt follow-up easier.

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InCom Support

• The Close Rating:
• 4 out of 5

Customer support on InCom was easy to access and prompt in follow-up. They offer phone support during US business hours and 24/7 email support. We submitted a question via the email support system on a Tuesday morning at 10:00 a.m. and got an answer back within three hours, including an invitation to speak on the phone if our problem wasn’t resolved.

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Where InCom Comes Up Short

While InCom’s website templates were attractive and useful, their lack of design flexibility is challenging. For example, there is no template that adequately addresses the needs of small to medium-sized real estate teams—very common players in most real estate markets.

They have websites for brokerages and large teams, but no solutions that are ideal for three or four agents working together. They do have “partner” website templates that start down that road. However, customizing your website to highlight the strength of working with a team (rather than just a few agents) isn’t easily achieved using InCom.

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Examples of InCom Real Estate Websites for Agents

Michael Steinman, Forest Hill Real Estate Inc.

Mary Cerqua, Right At Home Realty Inc.

Steven Maislin, RE/MAX Realtron Realty Inc.

InCom: The Bottom Line

InCom offers a fantastic real estate website at an affordable price. For agents operating a one-person business, they provide all the elements you need to be successful, and their additional premium ad support and lead generation options are great ways to get your business into growth mode. Whether you’re a new agent or a seasoned professional, InCom is a great option for anyone looking for a real estate website builder.

Check out InCom

5. Best Real Estate Website Builder for Brokers & Teams: BoomTown

Larger organizations require a different approach with features like lead distribution, team tracking, pipeline management, and more. BoomTown offers all of this, taking the website building process out of the individual’s hands and making it an office solution.

BoomTown Pricing

BoomTown’s real estate websites for agents and brokerages start at $1,000 per month, plus a $750 onboarding fee for their Launch package, which is ideal for one to three agents.

The next step up is their Grow package at $1,550 a month plus a $1,550 onboarding fee, designed for teams or brokerages of three to 10 people.

BoomTown also offers a whole suite of other products, including a CRM, lead generation, marketing automation, lead qualification, and pipeline management.

Unfortunately, the prices for each of these products is not listed publicly and are subject to change based on the other products you purchase, so we weren’t able to get a clear understanding of all the different BoomTown product prices.

BoomTown Pricing at a Glance—January 2022

Package	Price
Launch (1-2 agents)	$1,000 / month + $750 onboarding fee
Core (2-5 agents)	$1,300 / month + $1,700 onboarding fee
Grow (3-10 agents)	$1,500 / month + $1,500 onboarding fee
Advance (11+ agents)	Call for pricing

Since BoomTown is geared toward brokerages and teams, the prices of their products are definitely in a different weight class than other real estate website builders on our list. However, BoomTown offers other perks you might not find elsewhere, giving you a serious bang for your buck. Some perks include access to a very competitive real estate CRM, lead distribution tools, and some brokerage-level marketing strategies.

Lead Generation Ad Management Included: Our Favorite BoomTown Feature

Even though the cost to get into the BoomTown club is significantly higher than the other real estate website builders on our list, membership does have its perks. Our favorite is that they include lead generation and ad management in their price.

Yes, that management is a little more automated, but you still have a person on the BoomTown end of things making sure that your ads are going in the right place and performing as efficiently as possible. This extra layer of support for lead generation for your entire team ensures that business is going to keep moving in the right direction and that leads are going to keep coming in.

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BoomTown Templates & Customizability

• The Close Rating:
• 3 out of 5

There are three different templates to select from when building a BoomTown website. Each of the themes is extremely attractive, focuses (smartly) on the local area of your business, and is a place where agents on your team can customize their personal web presence to add to the value of your brokerage.

Because BoomTown websites are designed for larger groups, your ability to customize them is somewhat limited. However, as with other real estate-specific website builders, BoomTown offers brokers and team leaders fine-tuning and aesthetic control over the details of their website—so getting your site to look a certain way is definitely within reach.

Though we’ll talk a little more about this in the “support” section of the BoomTown review, it’s important to point out that the conversations we had with the BoomTown folks were encouraging. It appears that if a team or brokerage has a specific request that couldn’t be achieved within the framework of the existing themes, BoomTown would work with you to try to design a custom solution.

While there would be a cost associated with that service, having a provider offer an exclusive solution to a problem is definitely worthy of mention and a big asset for those who are considering building a website for their brokerage—especially if you’ve got some unique marketing ideas in mind.

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BoomTown IDX Capability

• The Close Rating:
• 4 out of 5

Just like the other real estate-specific website builders on our list (Placester and InCom), BoomTown includes IDX in all their base packages.

Like you need to with any IDX integration, there are forms and contacts you have to make with your local board to authorize access to that service for your site, but BoomTown is trained to help you through that, so it’s an easy part of the setup and done during your initial onboarding.

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Real Estate Lead Capture on BoomTown

• The Close Rating:
• 4 out of 5

BoomTown offers standard lead capture options on each of their templates, including custom landing pages, pop-ups, lead capture forms, and the like. As we mentioned, BoomTown also offers ad management that will draw leads to your new website.

Where BoomTown stands out among its competitors, though, is in the distribution of these leads among your team members and your ability as the team lead to keep everyone on track.

With a sophisticated lead distribution and pipeline management system, BoomTown makes it easy to see how each of your teammates is progressing with each of their leads. This feature allows brokers and team leaders to provide timely coaching and counsel, upping your conversion rate with leads.

Once an agent has received a lead, it is automatically filed in the BoomTown CRM—a tool powerful enough to be considered worthy of mention as a standalone product. All in all, BoomTown is the most efficient lead capture platform on our list.

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BoomTown CRM Capabilities

• The Close Rating:
• 4 out of 5

BoomTown’s CRM provides a clean, easy-to-use interface for each agent or team leader, it offers their own version of predictive technology, helping agents determine who is a hot lead and who needs more nurturing, and probably best of all, it offers an interface with your MLS through IDX.

This last feature is especially nice—it allows you to create custom email updates for your leads when property of a certain criteria hits the market without having to leave your CRM and actually log on to your local MLS site.

You can do all the typical things a CRM offers: basic email marketing and automation as well as tagging and bucketing contacts, and since you’re linked up to your website, you can see all the activity your leads are engaging in on your site right from their profile.

Since BoomTown is designed specifically for teams, there are also some great lead routing options, team management, even training modules you can set up for new agents to reduce their learning curve and start producing sooner.

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BoomTown Support

• The Close Rating:
• 2 out of 5

BoomTown offers phone and email support during US business hours. We tried out both and had mixed results. We sent an email on a Wednesday morning requesting support on a website template and never received a message back.

Our phone support was a better experience, but there was no explanation as to why we didn’t get an email back on our question.

Other reviews of the BoomTown platform have echoed similar experiences. BoomTown does have a pretty extensive library of resources available to customers to help with questions, so we suggest you start there rather than jumping straight to the phone or email.

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Where BoomTown Comes Up Short

While BoomTown is the best option for teams or brokerages, it’s actually hard to see why at first, unless you really dig deep into BoomTown’s website and marketing materials. They are relatively opaque about their prices, and require a demo with a sales agent before you can really get your hands (or at least your eyes) on the products you’ll be using.

Brokers or team leaders who want to kick the tires on their own first are going to have a hard time here.

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Examples of BoomTown Real Estate Websites for Agents & Brokerages

Jim Allen, Coldwell Banker Howard, Perry and Watson

Ben Kinney Team, Keller Williams Western Realty

The Duncan Duo, RE/MAX Dynamic

BoomTown: The Bottom Line

If you need a real estate website solution for your brokerage or team, BoomTown is the best place to get it. Yes, it’s a little pricey, but you get a lot for your money, and even though there’s an investment to be made, running a business requires investment on a large scale if you’re going to support the success of multiple agents.

Check out BoomTown

6. Best Builder for Agents Seeking Attractive Templates & Flexible Design: Squarespace

Squarespace provides, far and away, the most templates, design flexibility, and options for anyone creating a website—including real estate professionals. To be totally clear, Squarespace is not a real estate-specific platform. As such, they’re missing a couple of website elements, like a built-in CRM and real estate lead capture landing pages that you’ll find on Placester and InCom.

However, the platform provides a wide array of website design options, and these integrate with nearly every major CRM and lead capture platform on the web. Any integration challenges can be overcome, especially if you have a specific vision for how you want your website to look, and you feel that you can’t achieve your goals using the relatively restrictive templates of the other providers.

Overall, Squarespace is an affordable, open-world option for real estate professionals who want total control over their website’s design and don’t mind integrating their website with other real estate products like a CRM or email marketing system.

Squarespace Pricing

Squarespace pricing starts at $12 per month when paid annually for their Personal Plan.

Though a well-appointed package, most real estate agents will find the Business Plan at $18 per month (when paid annually) to be the way to go. This plan allows better on-page lead capture, one year of free Google Workspace access, and other premium design elements.

Squarespace Pricing at a Glance—January 2022

Squarespace Package	Price
Personal	$12 / month (annually) or $16 / month (monthly)
Business	$18 / month (annually) or $26 / month (monthly)

Squarespace also offers pricing options for individuals looking to sell things directly on their site. While most real estate agents don’t need this feature, if you ever decide to offer professional real estate products like coaching or services, Squarespace lets you take payments and sell right from your site.

Awesome Design Flexibility: Our Favorite Squarespace Feature

Do you ever wake up with a specific vision for how a project should look, how your customers will interact with it, and ultimately, how you’ll manage it? When that happens, you want to have a platform that allows you to bring your vision to life.

Squarespace provides over 100 unique and beautiful templates to start building your website, and those templates can be stripped down, changed, and practically broken down to a white screen if that’s where you want to start.

Given the fact that you have dozens of design elements you can include—things like contact forms, photo carousels (perfect for featuring properties), blogs, video, and calendars for scheduling appointments, just to name a few—there are virtually unlimited ways you can put your Squarespace website together.

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Squarespace Templates & Customizability

• The Close Rating:
• 5 out of 5

As we just mentioned, the templates and customizability on the Squarespace platform are its strongest features. If you have an active blog with lots of content and content types, or if you’re a video wiz or you have some other advantage over your competition—you want a customizable website that will highlight those advantages.

Also, Squarespace offers 30 different templates for landing pages—perfect for pairing with your social media-driven lead capture efforts. These landing page templates are already beautifully designed. But you can tweak them to say exactly what you want and easily gather the right information from your leads.

Remember, these aren’t real estate-specific landing pages, so they are less of an out-of-the-box solution than you’ll find with providers like Placester. However, the customization options will let you shape your landing pages into exactly what you want.

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Squarespace IDX Capability

• The Close Rating:
• 2 out of 5

Squarespace offers full IDX integration capability. The big difference between the Squarespace IDX process and the included IDX integration in real estate-specific website providers like Placester, BoomTown, and InCom is that you need to first subscribe to an IDX provider like Ultimate IDX.

This provider acts as a bridge between your MLS and your website, providing a plugin that’s installed directly on your website. The plugin enables live searches and responsive design (meaning the interface will adjust to be mobile-friendly if someone is accessing your site on their phone).

In short, Squarespace’s platform allows for all the same IDX capability that you’d find on real estate-specific websites, but there is a little more legwork required at the outset to get it up and running.

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Real Estate Lead Capture on Squarespace

• The Close Rating:
• 3 out of 5

Since Squarespace isn’t a real estate-specific website builder, lead capture options here are a little more generic, but still effective. You can create lead capture forms and include them on every page of your site. You can utilize sitewide pop-ups to capture client information, and a handy Announcement Bar displays at the top of your site, visible no matter how someone scrolls on a page.

Since Squarespace isn’t designed just for real estate agents, it will be up to you to effectively manage the data that you capture here. While Squarespace provides easy ways to connect to CRMs or email marketing systems, those connections aren’t automatic like they are on platforms like Placester. You’ll need to ensure you’ve got your ducks in a row and your lead data is routed to the right place.

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Squarespace CRM Capabilities

• The Close Rating:
• 1 out of 5

Squarespace doesn’t offer an integrated CRM. This is definitely a drawback, as it means that all the leads you get through your website have to be transferred and managed somewhere else.

To be totally fair, this migration is pretty easy. Squarespace offers built-in integrations with Mailchimp for your email marketing and Zapier for your standalone CRMs. However, you don’t get all the benefits of having your website working directly with your CRM to track lead activity.

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Squarespace Support

• The Close Rating:
• 4 out of 5

The Squarespace account support team is very responsive and worked great for us. They don’t have dedicated phone support listed on their website, but offer live chat help from 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday. We tried the live chat help, and it was easy to understand. The person helping us was able to answer our question and fix something in our account very easily.

If you are looking for help outside of the live chat time frame, the email support is similarly responsive. We sent a request for help on a technical issue on a Monday evening at 9:15 p.m. and got an email back with an answer to the question by 12:00 p.m. the next day. Also, given how large and widely used Squarespace is, there is also an active peer-to-peer network of troubleshooting guides available through the Squarespace knowledge base.

We found answers to relatively obscure and complicated coding questions, innovative suggestions on how to customize our site, and much more on these forums. Definitely a standout resource.

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Where Squarespace Comes Up Short

Squarespace is a little frustrating when it comes to translating your designs to a mobile experience. We all know that the majority of web traffic is generated via mobile devices. We’re happy that every single template on Squarespace is mobile-optimized. However, the webpage we spent an hour meticulously assembling on our laptop was a little out of order and not as effective on a mobile device.

After we figured out what was happening, the problem was fixed. Ensuring that users will get an equally great experience on their phone and computer screen requires an additional step, which is less than ideal.

A more straightforward template like the ones provided on Placester, InCom, or BoomTown will eliminate this problem, so if these sorts of mobile optimization hurdles are a sticking point for you, consider those platforms as good alternatives.

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Examples of Squarespace Real Estate Websites for Agents

Linda Levin, Sotheby’s International Real Estate

Estates Business Group

Suzanne McMillan, Sotheby’s International

Squarespace: The Bottom Line

Out of all the website builders that aren’t real estate-specific, Squarespace is the clear leader. Their designs are beautiful, their options are virtually limitless, and their prices are very competitive. Though they lack some of the industry-specific touches that a provider like Placester makes available, they are still a very viable option for anyone needing to design a new online presence.

Check out Squarespace

Your Turn

Are there any real estate website builders that we missed? What other providers are worthy of review? Tell us which platform you use and what your experiences have been in the comments below.

Real estate websites are one of the many real estate marketing tools agents need to get more leads and promote their business. If you’re looking for more ideas to fill your lead funnel, make sure to check out our article 37 Underrated Real Estate Lead Generation Ideas for 2021.

The post The 6 Best Real Estate Website Builders of 2022 appeared first on The Close.

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Placester Marketplace is one of the reasons we named Placester as the Best Overall Real Estate Website Provider. Whether you need website setup or design, integration with your MLS, branding, or content marketing, we’ll walk you through the services, pricing, scope, and turnaround times you can expect when you hire pros on Placester Marketplace.

Read on for an overview of the Placester Marketplace, pricing, and a video detailing our first-hand experience with the platform. Ready to get started right away? Head to Placester now to start your free, 30-day trial (no credit card needed).

Visit Placester

What Services Are Available on the Placester Marketplace?

Placester Marketplace services are divided into five categories; Setup, Graphics & Design, Integration, Marketing, and Update. Here’s a breakdown of the specific services you’ll find in each one, who they’re suitable for, and their typical price points.

How Much Do Services on Placester Marketplace Cost?

• The majority of Placester Marketplace services cost between $60 and $100 each
• Core services range from $20 to $320
• Advanced or more involved services like enterprise-level website design can cost up to $1,350

Every Placester Marketplace service is priced individually—meaning, you pay for exactly what you need and nothing more. Unlike a traditional digital marketing agency that will give you an estimate for work based on how much time they think it might take, with Placester Marketplace, you know exactly how much something is going to cost before placing an order.

Bottom line: You’ll never be surprised by a Placester invoice.

Step-by-Step Breakdown: How Does Placester Marketplace Work?

No matter which services you’re looking for, using the Placester Marketplace is easy. Here’s how it works:

1. Choose a Task From the Services Marketplace

Browse the Placester Marketplace and choose a service that meets your needs. Anything from logo design to chatbot integrations to a full-on website design are available. Placester Marketplace offers more than 45 services at the time of this writing.

Clicking on a service will give you more information about what you get for your money and what your Placester creative assistant will need from you to get started.

2. Connect With Your Creative Assistant to Review Your Request

After you complete your order request from the Placester Marketplace, your request goes into a “review” stage where it’s soon accepted by a creative professional who will review it and make sure they have everything they need to meet and exceed your expectations. The turnaround time for this stage is quick, generally less than 24 hours.

3. Review Your Finished Work, Offer Revisions if Necessary

Your Placester Marketplace creative assistant will reach out to you on or before the deadline for project completion with their completed work. If you’re happy with where things stand, you can accept the work, or offer revision requests on items that need to be tweaked.

Most basic design services offer at least one round of revisions. With more intensive creative services, like a complete website design, you’ll be allowed multiple rounds of editing to ensure you’re getting exactly what you’re paying for and the end product is to your liking.

After you’ve accepted the final product, your Placester creative assistant will finalize your project, deliver the files to you, and make sure your new creative asset is live and functioning on your Placester website.

We Ordered a Service Through Placester Marketplace. Here’s What Happened.

It’s one thing to tell you all about what Placester Marketplace is and how it functions, but it’s another thing altogether to see it in action. We used Placester Marketplace to order a logo design for our fictional real estate business. Check out the video below to see our process.

Placester Marketplace FAQs

You know what the Placester Marketplace is, how it works, and how much it costs, but you may have some additional questions. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about this service.

Can I use Placester Marketplace without a Placester website?

No. To access Placester Marketplace, you need to have an active Placester website. Other platforms (like Fiverr) might provide similar services, but the providers won’t have platform-specific, Placester-trained professionals who are ready to address tasks on your Placester website.

How long does it take Placester Marketplace experts to complete services?

Since every task is different in size and scope, there isn’t a specific timeline for every project. However, in our experience, most basic tasks are completed within a week, and larger design tasks—like a complete website build—will take closer to a month.

What makes Placester Marketplace different from Fiverr?

The basic idea of Placester Marketplace is pretty much the same as the online services marketplace Fiverr, but with a couple of crucial distinctions.

First, creative assistants offering services on the Placester Marketplace have been specially trained in the Placester website infrastructure, ensuring that any work they do on your behalf is 100% compatible with your Placester website. Even an extremely talented designer on Fiverr wouldn’t be familiar with your Placester website’s requirements for images or content, making the work you contract from that Fiverr designer difficult to use or integrate into your site.

Second, Placester Marketplace is directly connected to your website, so your creative consultant can easily integrate whatever they’ve created for you onto your site. Their internal access to your website significantly increases the convenience of Placester Marketplace.

Can I order more than one service from Placester Marketplace?

Absolutely! Since their services are so affordable, completely modular, and on demand based on the needs of your business, you can order as many or as few of them as you’d like with no contract, no expiration date, and no limit. You can scale your use of Placester Marketplace with your business as it continues to grow and change.

Bringing It All Together

Placester Marketplace is an excellent resource for anyone who wants a next-level real estate website but doesn’t have the technical expertise or the time to make the necessary upgrades. The process is simple, the results are great, and you can’t beat the price. Click to learn more about Placester and what you can accomplish with Placester Marketplace.

Get Started With Placester

The post Placester Marketplace Makes Real Estate Websites Insanely Easy to Create appeared first on The Close.

Placester is a real estate website builder that promises a specialized, high-performing website that brokers, admins, and agents can create and manage without the help of a web developer. Lofty goals! Can Placester deliver?

In this article, we’ll take a dive deep into the Placester experience with a full video walk-through. We’ll show you how to build a Placester website, examine base pricing and extras, and ultimately, we’ll help you determine if Placester is the best choice for your business needs.

Placester: Pros & Cons, Features, Pricing & The Close Recommendation

Placester offers two core services:

1. Placester Website Builder
2. Placester Marketplace

After our careful review of the Placester’s capabilities, we present you with its pros and cons. Their website builder offers a “code-free” design experience that lets you create and manage your own IDX-enabled, mobile-friendly real estate website. You don’t need any special training or coding experience with their simple site editor.

1. Placester Website Builder: Plan Features & Pricing

Placester’s real estate website builder platform offers three plans. All three plans provide you with a fully customizable, IDX website that’s mobile-friendly. Also, each plan includes a simple CRM and autoresponders to beef up your communication with clients, no matter how small or large your team.

All plans offer the ability to create an unlimited number of site pages using their user-friendly site editor. You’ll be creating the pages using modules and widgets, so there’s no complicated coding necessary. All plans include special rates for NAR members.

Placester Starter Plan Features & Pricing

Placester’s Starter Plan is designed for budget-conscious real estate agents who may be looking for a quick and easy solution without a lot of bells and whistles.

• $64/month with an annual contract for National Association of Realtors (NAR) members
• $80/month with no annual contract for National Association of Realtors (NAR) members
• $100/month for non-NAR members

Placester Advanced Plan Features & Pricing

Placester’s Advanced Plan is for the agent, team, or small brokerage looking for more design and branding options. This plan includes everything in the Starter Plan, plus it offers more customization options.

• $120/month with an annual contract for NAR members
• $150/month with no annual contract for NAR members
• $190/month for non-NAR members

Office Builder Plan Features & Pricing

Placester’s Office Builder Plan is for larger brokerages. If your real estate business has multiple offices, the Office Builder Plan lets you created dedicated site pages for each one. If  you want to recruit and provide support for larger teams of agents, this is the right choice for you. You can supply agent webpages and even agent websites with this option.

• $240/month with an annual contract
• $300/month with no annual contract

2. Placester Marketplace Pricing

Placester Marketplace gives you access to on-demand creative services to help with tasks outside your skillset. Placester Marketplace is a convenient way for you to contract with creative and technical experts to customize your website design and take your lead generation to the next level. Creative and technical services include logo design and lead capture landing pages.

Prices on Placester Marketplace

• Range from $29 to $399
• Most services cost less than $60

The Close Recommendation

Placester is a multidimensional platform that offers a lot. Their website platform makes it easy for anyone who can operate a computer to build a website with little or no assistance. Their prices are very competitive, and while you do get what you pay for in terms of customer support and customization options in the Starter package, there’s a clear value proposition with Placester that works for realtors.

Add in the Placester Marketplace, and there’s a clear reason we’ve named Placester our best overall Real Estate Website Builder of 2022.

Visit Placester

Building & Maintaining a Website With Placester: A Behind-the-Scenes Video Tour

You could read about the Placester user experience or view our detailed walk-through video showing what you can expect when you become a Placester agent.

Getting Started With Placester

After signing up with Placester, it’s time to get started building your website. The Placester dashboard is your starting point and a hub where you’ll (eventually) see all the details about your website and access your customer relationship manager (CRM), email auto-responders, and the Placester Marketplace. You’ll also access back-end management tools for teams and brokerages on the Placester dashboard.

Choosing a Placester Template

Your first step in building your Placester website is to choose a website design template. Placester offers about 20 ready-made templates to choose from, though subscribers to the Starter plan will only have access to about half that number.

Choosing a template is easy. Simply click into each option, see a preview of a live site that uses each theme, and easily switch from template to template to get a feel for what might work well for your business.

Filling In Details

After choosing your template, it’s time to give Placester the information it needs to populate your website.

You’ll go through the typical onboarding for building a site like this: verifying your contact information, filling in links for your social profiles, and of course, adding a headshot. Placester will populate your chosen website template (often referred to as a theme) with the details you’ve provided, getting your site closer to launch readiness!

Customizing Your Website

The Placester site editing workflow will feel very familiar to anyone who has worked with other codeless sites like Squarespace or Wix. There’s an intuitive editing window on the left-hand side of the browser that lets you select the area of the site you want to edit. You can see the changes you’re making in real-time in the main display area, at right.

It’s clear that Placester is striving for a website design and editing tool that is as simple and streamlined as possible.

Choosing Your Overall Design

Your first task is to set your site’s overall design direction. Here, you’ll customize colors, fonts, your website header and footer, and more. It’s simple enough to do, and you can get set up very quickly. Then, should you wish to, you can tweak it over time.

Depending on how picky you are, it could take an hour or all day. Either way, the process is simple and easy to understand. You can make universal changes like site theme colors, but you can’t get much more granular than that.

Important to note: If you want pixel-level control, Placester does let you use custom JavaScript on your website. However, they are clear in stating that doing so will likely affect the performance of your site. Higher levels of customization are technically possible but a little risky.

Building Your Website

After you’ve got your primary design direction figured out, it’s time to customize your template to meet the needs of your specific business. You start by choosing the elements you want on your homepage and ordering them correctly. Placester calls these “modules.”

You’ve got nearly two dozen modules to choose from. Standard features include:

• Property Search
• Contact Us
• Call-to-Action

Some of our favorites are:

• Featured Listings
• Testimonials
• Blog
• Mortgage Calculator

You’ll need to build some site mechanics, including pop-ups, lead capture in the form of landing pages that aren’t connected to your site’s navigation, and more. You can easily accomplish these tasks in the Placester website builder area.

Managing Your Content

Once you’ve designed your site and set it up to your liking, it’s time to start managing your content. In other words, you’ll need to create all the different pages that will power your website experience. The more your website covers, the more work you’ll have to accomplish (and keep updated later on). Remember that the more content you have on your website, the more value you can provide to readers. Readers can turn into prospects, prospects into leads, and leads into clients.

Placester Marketplace: Answering All Your ‘What if I Can’t…’ Questions

Placester’s website design and maintenance functions are well-suited for use by non-web designers, so you can easily update your site on a daily or weekly basis. However, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t have either the time, patience, or confidence to execute all the tasks necessary to optimize your website, Placester Marketplace is your solution.

With Placester Marketplace, you can contract with experts in website design, marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and more to knock out specific tasks that might be holding your website back from greatness. This is a cool system and one of my favorite features of the Placester platform for a couple of reasons:

• Price: The price of these services is really reasonable, and most of them are less than $60. And, they’re not a bill-by-the-hour estimate. When you request a task, you know the price for getting it done, not just started.
• Timeline: Since these experts have also been trained by Placester on their specific platform, they know exactly what they need to do, where they need to do it, and can tell you exactly when it will be done—normally, within just a couple of days.
• Services: Though you can contract services like Website Design or Website Refresh, these aren’t the services I’m most excited about since the Placester platform is so easy for non-designers to use.

I love the fact that there are services like Facebook Pixel Installation, Logo Design, and Custom Branding and Style Guide available. These aren’t my strong suit, and I’m always grateful for help in these areas.

Placester Websites in Action

Reading about making a website isn’t quite the same as seeing live examples on the internet. Here are four of our favorite real estate websites built on the Placester platform.

Buy Sell Love Chicago | Chicago, IL

The Cape House Team, Katie Clancy, William Waveis Real Estate | Yarmouth Port, MA

Atoka Properties, Middleburg Real Estate | Middleburg, VA

CB&A Realtors | Houston, TX

Placester FAQs

Now you know how Placester works and the tools Placester users have at their disposal. But you may still have questions. Here are the most frequently asked questions we get about the Placester real estate website builder.

Is the Placester CRM any good?

OK, so this is a tricky question to answer because, ultimately, it depends on your needs. If you’re looking for a full-throated CRM with all the bells and whistles, including sophisticated automation, a dialer, and more, then no, this CRM isn’t going to meet your expectations.

On the other hand, if you want a place where you can simply track the leads coming in from your website, keep them organized, and get a basic understanding of what you should be doing with them next, then yeah, this CRM works.

The fact of the matter is, the Placester CRM isn’t going to win any beauty or functionality contests, but its features work. We’d suggest using another CRM, but if it’s a choice between Placester and nothing, choose Placester.

Is the Placester pricing a good deal?

Yes. When comparing what you pay vs what you get on Placester, there is a significant value on this platform. Yes, there are less expensive options out there, which are generic website builders. Those aren’t going to provide you with the specific tools realtors need to run their business. Based purely on strength-to-weight, the Placester pricing is a good deal.

How long will it take to build my Placester website?

You can have a basic website up and running with Placester in about 20 minutes, which, let me tell you, is FAST. Will it be completely optimized and ready for lead capture in 20 minutes? Probably not.

I’d say you’ve got about two hours of work to get your site launched—taking you from a brand-new agent to operating a fully functioning website that is firing on all cylinders. After that, you’ll need to dedicate at least an hour a week for regular maintenance and to continue to add details that will make your site super relevant on Google—including adding weekly blog posts, building out your geographic area features, and so on.

Does Placester have good customer support?

Yes, we were satisfied with the Placester level of client care.

If you’re a Starter plan agent, you have access to email support, which was pretty responsive and answered our question, though there was some lag time. Advanced plan members get upgraded to phone support. With the Office Builder plan, you’ll have a dedicated customer service rep to answer all your questions.

All in all, Placester passes the customer support tests. They answered all our questions, solved our website problems, and did so in a professional manner.

Bottom Line: Is Placester Worth It for Agents Looking for a Real Estate Website Builder?

Definitely. For agents looking for a cost-effective, powerful, easy-to-use website builder, Placester is definitely a winner.

Are they the only game in town? No. There are other website builders out there that offer quality products and services. But, the Placester codeless builder, the Placester Marketplace, and the fact that you can use Placester without signing a long-term contract—these factors combine to make Placester a winner in the race for the best real estate website builders.

If you’re eager to learn more about Placester, you can schedule a no-obligation demo to see the platform in action.

Visit Placester

The post Placester Review + Video: Is It Really the Best Real Estate Website Builder? appeared first on The Close.

There are lots of lead generators out there; Real Geeks is more than that. It’s a self-contained strategy. In this article, we’re going to walk you through exactly what Real Geeks is, how it works, how much it costs, and ultimately reveal whether or not you should consider it for your real estate business.

Let’s get started!

What Does Real Geeks Actually Provide for Real Estate Agents?

While nobody has rolled out a true end-to-end solution for real estate professionals when it comes to managing your entire business, Real Geeks is getting close. Their suite of offerings includes high-converting, IDX-powered websites, a customer relationship management (CRM) tool that integrates with their website to track lead activity, time-saving marketing tools, and lead generation strategies that will fill the top of your funnel.

Though there are a ton of different things that Real Geeks does for real estate agents, here are the five that, for our money, will have the biggest impact on your bottom line:

Check out the Real Geeks website to see their in-depth explainer videos about how the system all works together, or schedule a free demo.

Visit Real Geeks

Real Geeks Pricing

The price for Real Geeks starts at $299 per month for one or two users, plus $25 per month for each additional user. For this price, you get access to an IDX-enabled website, the Real Geeks CRM, and their vast library of how-to’s and strategy guides for effectively using their tools.

One of our favorite parts of the Real Geeks pricing model is the al a carte availability of extra services that you can add on as your business grows, allowing you to start small and add features as your real estate empire expands. Here’s a breakdown of those features and their costs:

Real Geeks Extended Pricing

Feature	Cost	Great For
Home Valuation Landing Pages	FREE w/ your base package purchase	Powering up your lead funnel and increasing your seller lead volume
Real Leads PPC & Facebook Marketing	$300 / month + ad spend	Real estate agents who want to integrate Google & Facebook Ads into their marketing strategy but don’t have the time to do it themselves

Curious about where Real Geeks stacks up against similar platforms? Check out the comparison table below:

Real Geeks’ Competitor Pricing Comparison

Platform	Users	Monthly Cost	Additional Cost per User	Setup	Commitment	Advertising
Real Geeks	1-2	$299 (some features are additional)	$25	$250	12 months	Additional
kvCORE	1-100	$499-$1,800	N/A	$900-$1,800	12 months	Additional
Chime	1-100	$299-$899	$15	Waived if prepaid	12 months	Additional
BoomTown	1-25	$1,000-$1,500	N/A	$750-$1,700	12 months	Additional

Going Deeper: A Closer Look at the Most Important Real Geeks Features

Now that you know the basics of what Real Geeks can do for you and how much it costs, let’s dig into the major features a little bit deeper. Here’s exactly what you need to know about our five favorite features of the Real Geeks platform and how they might help you close more deals.

Real Geeks IDX Websites: The Hub of Your Marketing Wheel

Your real estate website is the hub of your marketing wheel. This is where you direct traffic using other Real Geeks tools like Real Leads and the Facebook Marketing Platform, and ultimately, this is where that traffic turns into leads.

Real Geeks websites have all the features you’d expect, including a blogging tool, limited customization options, and lots of calls to action to convert your traffic into leads. Where Real Geeks stands out is their dynamic mapping functionality, the ability clients and prospects have to seamlessly transition from the desktop experience to a customized mobile app, and, of course, the direct link between the website and the CRM, transferring your leads’ activities straight into their contact profile, making meaningful conversations with them later easier.

For those of you who geek out (see what we did there?) over the details like we do, Real Geeks also offers really solid search engine optimization (SEO), A/B testing options for landing pages, an easy-to-use back-end interface, and a fully integrated IDX, not i-framed in. Not sure what all this means? Don’t stress. There’s a ton of resources on the Real Geeks website to get you in the loop on all your options.

The short version of the story is that the websites are set up for success from a client-facing perspective as well as behind the scenes.

Real Geeks CRM: Your Lead Nurturing Control Center

Your Real Geeks website is where your prospects, leads, and clients interact with the Real Geeks ecosystem, but the CRM is where you, as the agent, spend most of your time. Though the dashboard and interface aren’t anything fancy, the clean design and well-organized profiles are a breath of fresh air. We’ve test-driven a lot of CRMs; it’s easy to overwhelm a user with too much information in too little space. Thankfully, that’s not the case with Real Geeks.

You get standard CRM functionality here like custom email drip sequences, comprehensive lead profiles, and mass communication options. It also has a built-in SMS texting interface that allows you to communicate via text right from your desktop and schedule messages to go out whenever you want or as a part of drip sequences. The open and read rates for text messages can be as high as 98%, making this a powerful strategy, especially for the first contact with new leads from your website.

Speaking of websites, it bears repeating how powerful the linkage is between your Real Geeks website and the CRM. Not only do you have your leads’ website activity right in their CRM profile, but you can also use this information to schedule automated communication flows based on how often website visitors are viewing particular properties, saving searches, or favoriting homes for sale.

Real Geeks Property Valuation Lead Magnet: The Ultimate Conversation Starter

There’s a basic formula in real estate lead generation that just about every strategy uses: Entice leads with something of value, and before actually delivering it to them, require their contact information. When it comes to potential homesellers, there isn’t much they want more than an estimate of the value of their home. This is why, despite being relatively maligned by real estate agents everywhere, the Zestimate remains such a popular feature.

Real Geeks delivers on this desire with their customizable, unlimited home valuation landing pages, offering would-be homesellers an estimate on their home’s value and giving you the lead information you need to start a conversation.

You might be asking yourself, “Why would I need more than one home valuation landing page?”

Well, if you’ve read our article on real estate farming, you know that the more targeted your media and marketing is, the more effective it is. With unlimited options for landing pages, Real Geeks users can create a home valuation landing page for every major area of their market, allowing the ads they create using a Real Geeks service or their own strategy to be more targeted and therefore get higher click-through rates.

Real Geeks Real Leads: Harnessing the Power of Google for Lead Generation

What’s the most powerful website on the internet? No, it’s not Zillow, and no, it’s not your professional website (at least not yet). The most powerful website on the internet is Google; most people use this platform multiple times a day to search for what they need most. Real Geeks’ Real Leads platform lets you harness the power of this search engine and ad platform to show up in relevant search results every time one of your prospects is looking for real estate information.

A lot of real estate agents complain that they don’t have the time to learn Google Ads, and even those who do report the platform confusing and difficult to use, which is why for $574 a month plus your ad budget, the marketing experts at Real Geeks will manage your Google PPC campaigns for you. All you need to do is provide them with the information on who you want to target with the ads, where you want to send them (one of the home valuation landing pages or your website is usually a great start!), then you sit back and rake in the both buyer and seller leads.

We get it—$574 a month seems like a lot to spend on anything other than maybe a mortgage or a car loan, especially if you have to supply the ad budget on top of the monthly fee, but hear us out. A single listing that comes your way as a result of your PPC ads that sells for $200,000 (assuming a 3% commission) will get you a gross commission income (GCI) bump of $6,000. Just about any real estate agent in the country would happily agree to exchange $1,000 for $6,000, so, all you need is a single conversion per month to make this strategy wildly worthwhile.

PPC marketing shouldn’t be your only lead source; Real Leads should fit into your overall strategy for filling your lead funnel. For real estate agents who are looking to up their lead volume and diversify their lead sources, this is a great place to start.

Real Geeks Facebook Marketing Solutions: Turning Real Estate Agents Into Master Social Marketers

Successful social media marketing has two sides: organic and paid.

Examples of organic marketing include creating posts for your business page, going live at open houses and for property walk-throughs, and creating Facebook Groups for neighborhoods and communities.

Paid Facebook marketing is all about creating ads that will extend your reach beyond those who follow you organically and introduce your message to potential new clients. Facebook’s ad platform offers a lot of options for creating custom audiences, ad types, and delivery options. So many options, in fact, that many real estate agents find it overwhelming and difficult to use.

This is why the Real Geeks Facebook Marketing Tools are so helpful. Their self-serve platform streamlines and simplifies the ad creation learning curve, saving you up to 75% of the time you would be spending otherwise. If you want to get all the benefits of Facebook Ads but do none of the work, Real Geeks offers a concierge service similar to the sort of attention you get through their Real Leads platform that will do all the heavy lifting for you.

When leads come in from your Facebook Ads, they’re automatically populated into your CRM, allowing you to create communication drips so that contact is immediate and they’re directed down the lead funnel without you having to make a single click. Again, just like Google PPC ads, these should be a component of your lead generation strategy, not the whole kit and caboodle, but for agents looking to level up their game and become top producers in their market, diversifying their lead funnel with Facebook Ads is a must.

Where Does Real Geeks Come Up Short?

Real Geeks has a lot to offer, and we’ll be honest, we’re fans of their tools and all the ways they work together to create an overall strategy for real estate agents, but Real Geeks isn’t perfect. Here are some of the things we found left us wanting a little more.

Website Customization

Though there are some customization options, the Real Geeks websites are highly templated and there isn’t a lot you can do to create a customized experience for your visitors. For most agents, this isn’t a problem as long as the website is converting visitors into leads. But for real estate agents who have a very strong brand image and are looking for a specific aesthetic, layout, and design, you may run into some problems.

It’s worth mentioning here that most real estate websites struggle with this problem; this isn’t a unique issue for Real Geeks, so don’t discount this platform just because of this. If you feel like you need more customization options, make sure to check out our article on the six best real estate website builders of 2022.

Content Marketing Opportunities

Real Geeks’ websites have built-in blog sections, but the content management system, blogging resources, and strategies for content marketing are limited at best. For many agents, this isn’t a problem, but if you plan on leveling up your Google (and community) authority with an active blog to demonstrate your expertise in the real estate business, you’re not going to get many bells and whistles here.

For ardent content marketers, you’re probably going to be better off going completely custom; a WordPress site or even a site like Squarespace can provide you with the tools you need to get your content front and center.

Limited Agent Options on the Mobile App

Real Geeks offers a customized mobile app for agents to give to their customers and leads. Once logged into the app, the customer’s or lead’s experience is synced with their desktop website activity, importing their saved searches and favorited homes, now on a native mobile experience. This app is helpful, especially for clients who live in metropolitan areas where they may be frequently walking by real estate they want information on immediately.

However, the agent-facing mobile app—the one used to manage your CRM—is a little frustrating in its (lack of) capabilities, most notably the inability to respond to SMS messages in-app. Sure, you can switch over to the texting functionality of your phone for this, but not being able to respond in-app with a customer profile up in front of you is challenging.

Our Managing Editor, Emile L’Eplattenier, put together a list of the 29 Best Real Estate Apps for 2022. If you’re on the hunt for ways to improve your mobile real estate game, that’s a great place to start.

So… Is Real Geeks Worth It?

In short, yes. Real Geeks provides a comprehensive lead generation, website, and CRM strategy for real estate agents looking to break into the business, level up their game, or cement themselves as a top producer. There’s a decent monthly investment required in order to get the most out of Real Geeks, but agents who buy in will be rewarded with consistent positive return on investment (ROI).

That being said, Real Geeks isn’t a magic bullet. In order to get your money’s worth (and then some), you have to follow up relentlessly with your leads, stay top of mind with your current sphere of influence, and be proactive about expanding your reach beyond your organic following. Many agents who wind up frustrated with Real Geeks are so because their follow-up and lead nurturing game isn’t strong enough.

What Are Some Real Geeks Alternatives?

Real Geeks is far from the only provider of lead generation, website, and real estate CRM services. We suggest checking out our buyer’s guide for the Top 6 Real Estate Lead Generation Companies of 2022 as the best place to get started.

Where Can I Get Other Lead Generation Ideas to Use With Real Geeks?

Start by visiting our article, 37 Underrated Real Estate Lead Generation Ideas for 2022. Here, you’re going to get a fantastic overview of a ton of different ideas for real estate lead generation, including some great strategies to use on Real Geeks. After that, visit the popular How to Create a Real Estate Lead Generation Plan (+ Template) from real estate veteran Sean Moudry.

Your Turn

Have you used real estate lead generation platforms like Real Geeks before? Tell us about your experiences in the comments below, and if you’re sold on the platform, visit Real Geeks today to dig in.

Visit Real Geeks

The post Real Geeks Review: An In-depth Look at Pricing & Features appeared first on The Close.

Combining the state-of-industry IDX websites from Boston Logic, a rock solid and highly customizable Salesforce-based CRM, marketing tools, lead gen tools, and transaction management we think Propertybase is the new elephant in the room for real estate tech companies.

If you’re looking for a new CRM or an entire lead-to-close platform for an entire brokerage, then read our Propertybase review to hear what happened when we decided to kick the tires a bit.

Propertybase Pricing

Propertybase Salesforce Edition is ideal for larger teams and brokerages starting at $79/user per month with a minimum of 10 users. The additional IDX integrated website is an additional $299/month. You can also inquire about Propertybase GO—ideal for teams and brokerages of all sizes.

For the CRM this might be a little on the high end, but considering the features and quality of the platform we think it’s well worth the money.

For the entire platform CRM+IDX website, this is around the same price that competitors charge, that may or may not match Propertybase feature for feature.

The New Heart of Your Real Estate Business? A Closer Look at Propertybase’s CRM.

While it seems like everyone and their cousin is making a CRM these days, not all CRMs are created equal. Sure, you can get a CRM like Hubspot or Insightly that won’t cost you a dime, but at the end of the day you and your agents will find yourselves doing things the old fashioned way most of the time.

For example, will that free CRM talk to your MLS? Will it work with Zillow or BoldLeads without a liberal application of digital duct tape like Zapier? Can you build out pipelines and custom reporting? Will that effort have an ROI? Will it scale with your business as it grows?

If you’re going to take the time and effort to integrate technology into your business, you need a solid platform that can grow with you. Built on the industry standard Salesforce platform, Propertybase can do that and more.

Propertybase CRM Basic Features

One of the problems with choosing a great real estate CRM is that you sometimes don’t know what features you want until you start using them. That said, there are baseline features that every sales professional in real estate wants a CRM to do.

As you might imagine, Propertybase knocks the basic CRM features out of the park. Leads can be sent into Propertybase from pretty much anywhere, and can be segmented, set up on drip campaigns, and endlessly sliced and diced to match people with properties quickly and easily.

You can also create custom pipelines to track each stage of your deal from inquiry to nurture to close, and pull sophisticated reports to track your progress.

MLS Integration

Considering that Realtors’ primary role is to match people to properties, it boggles my mind that so few real estate CRMs manage to integrate MLS into their products. Instead, they expect their users to bounce back and forth between open tabs and copy/paste until their fingers get numb.

Sure, this isn’t really that big of a deal, but think of just how much time you spend juggling between your CRM and your MLS today. Most of you probably immediately tallied up a half hour or so, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case. Now, think about team leaders and broker owners. They need to multiply that haf hour by five, ten, or fifty. Suddenly, the money “saved” with a bargain basement CRM starts to evaporate. Quickly.

Propertybase allows you to manage MLS listings, search for and curate listings to add to drip campaigns, and more. Your agents might even start to abandon the MLS altogether.

Marketing Automation

While pretty much every CRM has marketing tools that can be automated, the vast majority of them seem to miss the mark. After all, a big part of matching people to properties is marketing those properties along with your brand. Here again MLS integration saves the day.

Bulk Email & Drip Campaigns

Want to automatically pull together a listing alert to send out to one lead or groups of leads? Well, instead of flipping back and forth between tabs, with Propertybase you can set these up automatically using any criteria your MLS allows. That means your leads will get basically custom listing updates without you lifting a finger.

Texting & Print Marketing

Since Realtors spend so much time texting back and forth with leads these days, having texting features in your CRM is a no brainer. While it doesn’t come as a standard feature for the CRM, Propertybase does offer texting that can be seamlessly integrated into your workflow for listing alerts, drip campaigns, etc.

You can even quickly design and send out flyers, letters, or other print materials right from the CRM. Once again, since you have MLS integration, you can automatically pull in listings instead of wearing out the control C and control V keys on your keyboard.

Reporting & Scalability for Teams & Brokerages

If you or anyone on your team is a numbers wonk, then you’ll find a lot to love in Propertybase. They seem to offer a widget, graph, or dial to display and compare pretty much any metric you or your team leader might want to see.

You can compare leads by source, total sales, response rates, conversion rates, and agent productivity at a glance. Even better, since Propertybase is on the Salesforce platform, you can set up your reporting and analytics dashboards to report on whatever it is you find important.

As far as scalability goes, Propertybase’s CRM is one you can use for the long haul. It comes standard with team features like listing management, lead assignment, and more. Combined with the IDX website and maybe a transaction management platform like their own Backagent or Dotloop, you can happily run a team or any size brokerage.

Ease of Use & UX Design

Like most CRMs on the market today, Propertybase is pretty easy to use once you get some guidance or spend some time poking around. Of course, since they offer so much to customize and an almost endless number of integrations from Salesforce, it’s also easy to fall down a rabbit hole. If you want to get the most bang for your buck, you’re going to need onboarding.

As far as UX design goes, Propertybase is a nice place to spend time and a joy to use. The layout is clean, friendly, and intuitive, and response rates are as snappy as you’d expect from enterprise quality software.

By the way, if aesthetics aren’t near the top of your CRM wishlist you might want to reconsider. First, think of the hours and hours per day you and your agents are going to spend staring at your CRM. Do you want to spend hours in an ugly, unprofessional looking workspace?

Lead Generation

With their recent acquisition of BoldLeads, Propertybase can now offer powerful purpose-built lead generation software to their already strong toolkit. They can generate buyer leads and seller leads with the added benefit of exclusivity. They’ve also seamlessly integrated BoldLeads into their system so no need to worry if your CRM has a BoldLeads integration.

Propertybase’s IDX Websites: Pretty, SEO Friendly, and Optimized for Lead Capture

Next, let’s take a look at the place where most all-in-one platforms let Realtors down. The IDX websites. Yes, they all technically have MLS listings and a place to hang your digital shingle, but like CRMs, not all websites are created equally.

Aesthetics

The biggest problem with most all-in-one platform IDX websites is that most of them look like what they are. An off the shelf solution they “customized”. Propertybase’s websites on the other hand look bespoke.

They offer excellent layout and typography, as well as the bells and whistles customers expect from high-end brands like parallax scrolling, video hero images, and professional looking lead capture.

SEO Friendliness

Yet another area where these packages fall short is SEO. Many Realtors think they’re going to rank on Google just for having a website. These days this couldn’t be further from the truth. It can take years of hard work to rank on Google at all, and if you don’t have the right strategy the chances of capturing leads from Google is pretty much zero.

Propertybase solves this by having great widgets and pages that can be customized with content and auto populated listing to laser target micro neighborhoods, types of homes, or even just sought after blocks or subdivisions. It can also generate custom market reports for the site or to send out to leads on a drip.

While ranking on Google will still take a lot of planning, time, and effort, the tools Propertybase offers give agents, teams, and brokerages a nice head start.

Lead Capture: Contact Forms, Pop-Ups, Landing Pages, & More

The days of using your website as a static brochure for your business are long gone. These days, if your website isn’t set up to capture leads you may as well not even bother. Propertybase websites offer lots of ways to capture leads.

You can set up landing pages for social media ads, home valuation, or pretty much anything you want. There are also lead capture forms that can be dropped into any page and feature any agent on your team.

Finally, you can set pop-ups to trigger when your visitors search for a certain length of time, or whenever you think they’ll be most likely to enter their contact info.

Live Example Websites

Want to see what a few good Propertybase websites look like in the wild? Check out these examples below.

• https://www.oceansir.com/
• https://www.flavinrealty.com/
• https://www.pinkrealty.com/
• https://www.coloradogrouprealty.com/
• https://www.nantucketrealtyadvisors.com/

Propertybase: The 30,000 Foot View

As a relatively new all-in-one platform Propertybase will tick pretty much every box that today’s Realtors, teams, and brokerages have. It combines a rock solid Salesforce-based CRM with MLS integration, and killer IDX websites that work together seamlessly. Throw in an available transaction management platform and you may not need to buy any more software ever.

The post Propertybase Review: The (Old) New Kids on The Block Get Serious appeared first on The Close.

Firepoint, a newer real estate CRM with integrated lead generation IDX website did just that. The buzz in the industry piqued our curiosity, and the impressive list of features and agent centric-design sealed the deal.

Below is our deep dive on what Firepoint offers individual agents, teams, and brokerages.

Stay tuned for our roundup at the end of the year where we compile our list of all the real estate CRM’s we’ve reviewed and pick our overall winner for the year!

Firepoint Pricing: How Much Does Firepoint Cost Agents, Teams & Brokerages?

Somewhat surprisingly, Firepoint offers a good value for individual agents, and a great value for teams and brokerages. Here’s a quick rundown of Firepoint’s pricing:

For Small Teams	For Large Teams
$350 per month for 1-5 users	$900 per month, 16-50 users
$500 one time setup fee	$500 on time setup fee
$50 per month each additional user	$10 per month each additional user
Month-to-month agreement	Month-to-month agreement
One MLS Integration: $50 per month, $100 one time set up fee	One MLS Integration: $50 per month, $100 one time set up fee
Dialer and texting: $50 per month for the whole team	Dialer and texting: $50 per month for the whole team
PPC Management: 10% of your ad budget	PPC Management: 10% of your ad budget

Smart CRM & Lead Ponds

While websites and auto dialers are great, the true game changer for most struggling agents or teams is a well designed CRM.

Even if (especially if) you attract clients like a magnet, you’ll never truly take your business to the next level until you can effectively capture and nurture leads.

The truth is that you’re never going to be able to answer your emails, texts, and phone calls instantly for every single lead. That means you’re leaving money on the table regularly.

Worse, once you get a lead, you’re going to have to nurture them until closing and follow up regularly to get referrals. No matter how good you are, a great CRM will make you better. Much better.

Since it was designed by successful brokers, Firepoint’s integrated CRM is a just that. A great CRM. It was designed to seamlessly smooth over agent and team pain points and it shows.

A Nice Place to Spend Time

Even we started digging into features, we were instantly impressed with the look and feel of Firepoint’s CRM. The layout and design elements seemed well planned and visually appealing.

While this might not seem like a big deal to some agents, remember that you will be staring at this screen hours and hours a day for the next few years. Whether you like it or not, design matters and will affect how you feel about the software. Brokers take note: for new agents, especially millennials, that might translate into how they feel about their career choice.

The interface was also very intuitive, and Firepoint wisely chose to avoid using weird proprietary names for their tools and features. If you’ve worked in real estate, you can likely get yourself up and running in Firepoint rather quickly without a walkthrough.

Robust CRM Features Without the Feature Creep

Unlike some CRM’s that cram their software with poorly implemented versions of every new bell and whistle under the sun, Firepoint offers features your agents will actually use.

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the agent and team friendly features Firepoint offers.

As soon as you log into Firepoint, you’ll notice that the dashboard is all business. Across the top you have lead status reminders that you can check at a glance. How many leads are new, how many have no saved searches, etc.

To your left you have your tasks pane which shows you the most important tasks you’ve been assigned for the day, overdue tasks, and upcoming tasks.

Then to the right you have your recently active leads and most active leads. This shows you which leads have been actively searching or browsing on your website. More on this later.

Drip Campaigns

Like any good CRM Firepoint offers customizable drip campaigns that can include tasks like phone calls, automated emails, and more.

They also include 17 pre written email drip campaigns to get you started nurturing your new leads right out of the box.

Our favorite drip campaign is an automatic new listings email that can be sent to users based on search criteria, or sent directly to individual leads that are looking for unique properties.

SMS Autoresponder & Texting Tools

Since studies have shown that time to lead is crucial and that engagement and response rates from texting beat email every day of the week,texting features are crucial for a CRM.

Firepoint offers instant text autoresponders for initially reaching out to new leads. These can be customized for each agent on your team.

While they don’t offer mass texting options or the ability to fold texts into drip campaigns yet, you can also schedule tasks to reach out to leads with pre-written or customized texts right from the CRM. Merge tags can instantly add first names or other lead info to your texts.

Integrated Dialer & Call Recording

On of the coolest features Firepoint offers is an integrated dialer and call recording. There is no better way to train new agents or hone your own skills than listen back to your calls for an objective critique.

Even better, agents can tag brokers, lenders or or team members to invite them to come listen to the call to answer a client’s question or offer advice.

Lead Ponds, Advanced Lead Distribution, & Activity Feeds Make Team or Brokerage Management Easy

One of the most challenging aspects of management is ensuring your team is working to their full potential and growing their skills, without being an overbearing micromanager.

Firepoint is a god send for tweaking and streamlining how your team works with and shares leads.

Lead Ponds a creative and fun way to make sure older leads never slip through the cracks and newer agents can never say they have no leads to call.

Using sophisticated tagging features, agents and team leads can assign leads based on a round robin system, specific criteria like location and price point, or even whether or not they’re hitting their targets with the leads they are getting.

If an agent is not hitting targets or doesn’t have the time to work a lead, they or a team lead can put it in a lead pond for anyone to claim and start working whenever they want. If an agent doesn’t work the lead, they lose it and it goes right back into the pond.

The idea here is that even amazing agents will have a hard time working more than say, 100 leads effectively. Using lead ponds, team leads and agents can be forced to decide what leads they can really work and what leads they can’t. When they go over 100 leads, their older leads will be automatically get put back in the pond for newer agents to work.

Activity feeds are a great way for teams to share information or for brokers or lenders to check in with individual agent’s progress. They work something like Slack or Trello, and offer a snapshot of an agent’s work as well as the ability to loop in other team members for advice or assigned tasks.

Turnkey IDX Websites

In addition to their CRM, Firepoint offers agents and teams slick, well designed IDX websites that are designed for one purpose; to generate leads.

The websites are well designed and offer visitors a chance to search IDX listings, get a home valuation, or check out your blog, reviews, and team pages. You can even add mutliple MLS’ for an additional fee.

Let’s tackle these one at a time.

The bread and butter for any lead generation site is their IDX listings. Like their closest rivals Real Geeks, Boomtown, and Chime, Firepoint presents visitors with an intuitive and well laid out IDX search.

Visitors can favorite properties, search by any criteria they like, or sign up to the site to get email updates and start working with an agent.

What’s really great about Firepoint’s IDFX website is that it is so tightly integrated with the CRM. For example, once you’ve captured a lead, you can spy on what they do each time they come back to the website. You can see what listings they clicked on, what they searched for, saved, or spent a long time looking at.

Armed with data like this it’s easy for agents to offer leads timely information at exactly the right time.

Home Valuation Landing Pages

Their instant home valuation page makes an ideal landing page for generating seller leads. It also offers an instant evaluation which has been shown to increase click through rates over pages that just offer a phone call.

Click below for a live example of an IDX website built with Firepoint:

https://www.mainehomeadvisors.com/

PPC Management (Done for You Social Advertising)

Firepoint wouldn’t be a truly turnkey platform without offer PPC (pay per Click) management.

If you’re new to online marketing, this means that for a small maintenance fee plus a monthly ad spend, Firepoint will run ads on social media on your behalf to generate buyer leads.

For many agents this is an ideal way to advertise. First, they don’t have to spend time A/B testing and running ads, and second, they can rely on seasoned experts to design and run their ads for them.

This means they don’t have to waste money testing new techniques and can just sit back and work on what they do best, nurturing and closing leads.

Drawbacks: No Facebook Seller Lead Generation

The only real drawback with Firepoint’s PPC management is that for the time being they only offer Google Adwords advertising and not Facebook or Instagram. That means you’re really only getting buyers leads.

They have good reasons for this, namely that targeting ads to sellers has become incredibly costly and difficult since the recent data scandals, but we’d like to see them offer native Facebook advertising in the future.

Biweekly Reports & No Monthly Minimum Spends

One thing we loved about their PPC management is that they have no monthly minimum spends, and offer customers a bi monthly status report so you can see how and what they’re doing.

Reporting & Analytics

Another great feature Firepoint offers is their reporting and analytics. You can drill down and look at ROI from different lead sources, call data, email data, CGI vs net profit, and more. Even better as a team lead you can do this for each team member for a quick and easy way to find out which agents need improvement and with what.

Customer Support

When it comes to customer support Firepoint is pretty amazing. They offer customers a monthly strategy call where an expert goes through what they could be doing better after analyzing data from their team.

They also regularly offer webinars on demand, trainings, and walkthroughs that are easily accessible right from Firepoint.

Integrations

Firepoint offers integrations with Zillow, Zendesk, BombBomb, Trulia, Realtor.com, Ready Chat, Mojo, Happy Grasshopper, Agentology, Agent Legend, Vyral Marketing, Rockrbox, and Ylopo.

The only integration we’d really like to see is with Dotloop or another transaction management platform. While Firepoint offers basic transaction management features, many teams get Dotloop for free so might already be used to the platform, or have managing brokers who demand they do.

Over to You

Do you currently use Firepoint as a CRM and IDX website? What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Firepoint CRM and IDX Websites Review: By Agents, For Agents appeared first on The Close.

These sites offer new agents a turnkey solution that offers pretty much everything they need to get started generating leads online.

The only problem is that with so many options, choosing the platform isn’t easy. In order to make your life easier, we did an in-depth comparison of four of the leading real estate agent website options available today; Chime, Easyagent PRO, Real Geeks, and Boomtown.

Before we dive in, here’s a quick comparison of pricing and main benefits for each platform:

Real Estate Agent Website	Best For	Pricing
Chime	Best looking websites	$218—$338 per month (+$218—$338 setup fee)
Easyagent PRO	Best lead capture	$159—$259 (+setup fee)
Real Geeks	Best for Teams	$299 + $25 for each new agent
Boomtown	Best for Brokerages	$350—$999 per month (+$199—$499 setup fee)

Best Looking Real Estate Agent Websites: Chime

A Real Estate Operating System 

Offering a fully featured CRM, lead generation, an IDX website, and even basic transaction management, Chime is positioning itself as a “real estate operating system” offering almost everything an agent or team needs right out of the box.

Amazingly, according to users we spoke with, Chime manages to package all of their tools in a well designed, easy to use package that is very new agent friendly. Everything they offer looks great, is intuitive to use, and even better, comes with an actual app instead of a mobile website.

For today’s mobile only agents and leads, having an app that just works is a huge selling point. This will increase agent adoption, and help individual agents integrate the system into their daily workflow.

Pricing for Chime is also pretty reasonable for what you get. PPC advertising for lead generation is also fairly and transparently priced starting at $500 per month+ 15% ad management fee.

Gorgeous IDX Websites

Although many might disagree with us, we thought that Chime offers the nicest looking IDX websites of the four platforms. Layouts are clean and well organized, and best of all, great looking. Check out California’s the Boyenga Team’s site for an idea of what we’re talking about.

Unique Features:

Since most of the platforms offered somewhat similar functionality for their CRM and IDX websites, here are a few standout unique features for Chime:

Dialer

Chime’s dialer let’s agents click to call their leads as well as leave voicemails, send pre written texts and more. It even offers suggested scripts for reaching out to the leads it suggests for you every morning.

Transaction Management

Another cool feature Chime offers is transaction management. You can create custom automated workflows, store documents, team management tools, and basic accounting tools.

Chime also integrates with Dotloop if you’re already using Dotloop or plan to in the future.

Chime Pricing for Website & CRM (+onboarding)

	Professional	Accelerator	Enterprise
Price	$218 per month + $218 setup fee	$338 per month  + $338 setup fee	Call
Discount	10% discount for Professional package if paid for year up front	15% discount for Accelerator package if paid for year up front	15% discount for 10 or more seats

Chime Buyer Lead Generation Tools	Chime Seller Lead Generation Tools
IDX Website	Home Evaluation Landing Page
Example Chime IDX websites: http://janetbesheer.com/ http://www.bistateteam.com/ https://www.boyengateam.com/	Example Home Evaluation landing Page: https://www.morrisonteam.com/evaluation

Chime PPC (Pay-Per-Click)Lead Generation Pricing (They advertise on social media for you)

Buyer Lead Generation	Seller Lead Generation
16-20 leads: $500 per month +15% ad management fee	6-8 leads: $500 per month +15% ad management fee
32-40 leads: $1000 per month +15% ad management fee	12-16 leads: $1000 per month +15% ad management fee
48-60 leads: $1500 per month +15% ad management fee	18-24 leads: $1500 per month +15% ad management fee

CRM Capability and Lead Nurturing

Professional	Accelerator All above features+
Bulk email	Round Robin and Blast
Bulk texting	Action Plan Library
Custom sales pipeline	Smart Dynamic Lead Scoring
Mobile CRM	Full Funnel Business Forecasting
Automated smart actions	Team Performance Analytics

Integrations

Mail Chimp, BombBomb, Zapier, Dotloop, Brokermint, Zillow, Realtor, Trulia, (Skyslope and ziplogix coming soon)

Customer Support/Training

Phone support: Monday-Friday 9-5 EST

Email: 24/7

Visit Chime

Best Real Estate Agent Websites for Mobile & Lead Capture: Easyagent PRO

Mobile First Design

One of the best things about Easyagent PRO is that their IDX websites are not only great looking, but have a mobile first design.

Fonts are big and easy to read, layouts make perfect sense on mobile, and everything just seems more mobile focused that the other platforms. It’s so mobile focused that some design elements look a little bit odd on a desktop.

Considering a huge number of buyers are switching their home search to mobile, this is hugely important.

Unique Features:

Done for you blogging

One of the coolest features that Easyagent PRO offers for the leadsites are “done for you” blog posts. The team at EAP will write two posts to your blog every week. For busy Realtors who don’t have the time or resources to blog, this is a great feature.

Automatic Text Followup

Using EAP’s Texty app, you can send automated text messages every time a lead opts in on one of your landing pages or lead capture form. Text messages are a great way to get your leads attention.

Unlimited Landing Pages — point and click editing

EAP also offers the ability to create unlimited landing pages with their point and click landing page creation tool. You can even add a tracking pixel to show ads to leads who didn’t sign up across the web.

Easyagent PRO Pricing for Website and CRM (+onboarding)

	Leadsites	Leadsites Plus
Price	$159/month (CRM not included)	$259/month (CRM not included)

Easyagent PRO Buyer Lead Generation Tools	Seller Lead Generation Tools
IDX website	Home valuation landing page
Example Easyagent PRO IDX Websites: https://lasvegasrealtyreport.com/ https://bartleyrealty.com/ https://thejacobsrealty.com/	https://thejacobsrealty.com/home-value-analysis/

PPC (Pay-Per-Click)Lead Generation Pricing (They advertise on social media for you)

N/A

Features: CRM Capability (N/A) and Lead Nurturing

Automated text messaging

Integrations

Liondesk, Mailchimp, Top Producer, BombBomb, Hubspot, Realty Juggler, Follow Up Boss

Customer Service/Training

Phone: M-F 9-5 MST

Incredible training and “office hours”

Visit Easyagent PRO

Best Real Estate Agent Websites for Teams & Value: Real Geeks

Great Value for Solo Agents and Teams

Starting at just $299 per month for 2 agents and just $25 extra per new agent, Real Geeks is a great deal for growing teams. While Easyagent PRO comes in at a slightly more affordable $159, they don’t offer a CRM, and the site is designed for one agent only.

They also offer a ton of team friendly features like round robin lead assignment, idle lead reassignment, text autoresponders, and the ability to text with multiple leads in one window with auto replies.

You can send out a mass text, then carry on multiple text conversation from your desktop with those that reply.

Home Valuation Tool & Market Reports

Although the other platforms also offered variations of home valuation landing pages, Real Geeks is the only one to offer instant valuations. The other platforms just ask for leads to wait for a call or email from an agent.

This is important because many seller leads just want to get a quick valuation. They’re also perfectly willing to give away some contact info for that valuation.

However, many are not willing to offer contact information just so an agent can call them for a home valuation. Using Real Geeks, you can capture partial lead info, e.g. just an address that you can send postcards too.

The site will also create and send out market reports to nurture seller leads. Like Easyagent PRO, you can also create unlimited market reports.

Unique Features

Facebook marketing tool

Real Geeks Facebook Marketing Tool let’s agents easily and quickly create Facebook ads right in the Real Geeks platform. It helps agents create Facebook ads through their website, and also allows them to easily include a tracking pixel to advertise to site visitors across the web.

Idle Lead Reassignment

Another cool feature offered by Real Geeks is their idle lead reassignment feature. If a lead is assigned to an agent who doesn’t take an action in a specified time frame, that lead gets sent to the next agent in the rotation.

That means ALL leads in your system have a much better chance of being followed up with quickly. No more micromanaging. Just tell your junior agents that Real Geeks will reassign the lead if they don’t act.

Real Geeks Pricing for Website and CRM (+onboarding)

	1-2 Agents	Addititional Agent
Price	$299/month (2 users incl.)+ $250 onboarding fee	+$25 for each agent

Buyer Lead Generation Tools	Seller Lead Generation Tools
IDX website Market report drip emails	Home Valuation Landing Page (instant)
Example Real Geeks IDX websites: http://www.thebarticgroup.com/ http://www.dallashomerealty.com/ http://www.chinattirealty.com/	Example home valuation landing page: https://www.hawaiianrealestate.com/cma/property-valuation/ Market report drip emails

PPC (Pay-Per-Click)Lead Generation Pricing (They advertise on social media for you)

Google PPC: Starts at $300 per month + ad spend

Real Leads Facebook Marketing: Starts at $300 per month+ ad spend

Features: CRM Capability and Lead Nurturing

Email & SMS notifications	Prioritize Leads' Motivation
Live Feed	Lead Scoring
Track Lead Activity	Automated Email Drip
Email Integration and Sync	Email Blasts
Lead SMS Autoresponders	Social Profiles
Agent Activity	Lead Source Tracking
Advanced Search Filtering	Email Templates
Agent/Lender Lead Routing	Mobile Optimized
Idle Lead Reassignment	SMS Templates
Follow-ups and Reminders

Integrations

Zillow, Realtor, Bold Leads, Lion Desk, Zapier, Wise Agent, Dotloop, Mojo Dialer, Riley, Velocify

Customer Support/Training

Email and phone
8 am CST – 11 pm CST, 7 days a week

Visit Real Geeks

Best Real Estate Agent Websites for Brokerages: Boomtown!

Highly Flexible Sites for Brokerages

Designed (and priced) with growth in mind, Boomtown is a great option for larger teams and growing brokerages. Big names like Adam Hergenrother, and Pearson Smith Realty rave about the robust features that Boomtown offers their brokerages.

Unique Features

Agent subdomains

One of the coolest features Boomtown offers for teams and brokerages is the ability to create agent subdomains right from the platform. Being able to offer custom websites (on your domain) can be a huge selling point for recruiting new agents or team members.

Data gathering popups

Boomtown also put a lot of time, testing, and effort into creating popups that don’t just try and gather contact information, but useful data as well. For example, one popup discreetly asks site visitors for their time frame for buying a home.

This means more data to segment leads and less time spent qualifying leads. Instead, you can route leads to the right agent quickly and easily before they’ve been screened.

MLS Hotsheet

The MLS hotsheet is a feature that all CRM’s with MLS integration should offer. It shows your agents the “hot” new listings in the system that are getting a lot of attention. This means less time spent on your clunky MLS interface and more time in Boomtown.

Boomtown Pricing for Website and CRM (+onboarding)

	Launch	Grow	Advance
Price	1-3 agents: $750 + $750 onboarding fee	3-10 agents: $1500 + $1500 onboarding fee	Price varies by number of markets

Buyer Lead Generation Tools	Seller Lead Generation Tools
IDX website	Home Valuation Landing Page (limited)
Example Boomtown! IDX Websites https://www.i35group.com/ https://jray.keatyrealestate.com/   https://www.analuxuryhomes.com/	https://www.irealtyar.com/sell/

PPC (Pay-Per-Click)Lead Generation Pricing (They advertise on social media for you)

15% of Marketing budget ($250 minimum spend, $750 minimum spend for AdWords and Social)

Features: CRM Capability and Lead Nurturing

Actionable Insights	Lender Access
Hot Sheet with MLS Updates	Lead Routing
Smart Prospecting Tools	Drip System
Automated emails, texts	Marketing Automation
Lead Scoring	Email Templates
Property Alerts	Email Templates
Predictive Intelligence
Listing Analytics

Integrations

Zillow, Trulia, RPR, Mojo Dialer, BombBomb

Customer Support/Training

Email and phone

8 am EST – 8 pm EST,
7 days a week

Visit BoomTown

The 30,000 Foot View

Choosing the right real estate agent website builder for you or your growing team or brokerage is not easy. However, most of the platforms on offer today offer something unique that might help you close more deals. Chime, Easyagent PRO, Real Geeks and Boomtown all offer a great combination of features at several price points.

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