Placester Takes Aim at Zillow, Slashes Prices for Its Real Estate Websites | Placester

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Boston, MA, November 4, 2014 – Placester has announced a major price reduction for its real estate website and marketing platform. Previously priced at $45 per month, Placester’s agent websites will now start at $10 per month, making Placester the most affordable website product on the market.

“This is more than just a price drop,” says Placester CEO Matt Barba. “It represents a significant milestone in our ongoing mission to to give every real estate professional a presence online.”

With its suite of websites and marketing tools, Placester hopes to challenge the real estate technology model of national sites like Zillow. “Big real estate portals have thrust themselves between agents and brokers and the consumers they’re trying to reach,” Barba says. While this trend has made the technology of online search more convenient, it has also hurt real estate professionals’ ability to build direct relationships with consumers. “Real estate is still personal, and agents and brokers need to create personal connections with their customers in order to be successful. The first step to doing that is building a great website that’s entirely your own.”

The price reduction arrives on the heels of a completely redesigned version of Placester’s website and marketing platform, which is built for any real estate professional to create a website quickly and easily. “Most website platforms are geared toward the ‘one percent,’ a small minority of power users,” Barba says. “We’re interested creating a platform for the 99 percent, with technology that’s easy to use and has all the functionality agents need to be successful online.” The new interface includes a simpler setup and launch process, along with a streamlined maintenance dashboard offering the most essential features in a format anyone can understand and implement.

Placester’s mission to get every agent online began with the company’s push for nationwide IDX coverage. To date, Placester now supports IDX search and data for over 95 percent of MLSs in the United States, representing nearly one million agents. With its new pricing, the company will attempt to address yet another obstacle for real estate professionals: the high cost of doing business online. “A website is no longer a luxury: it’s a necessity,” Barba says. Despite this, however, many real estate professionals continue to pay luxury prices to build and manage their websites, while others avoid digital marketing entirely.

By streamlining its platform, Placester has reduced costs dramatically, enabling the company to offer websites at an extremely affordable price. Now, the company wants to change the conversation about real estate technology, creating tools that empower agents to take ownership of their online marketing. “If having a great website is a given, then affording a great website should be too,” Barba says. “We strongly believe this is what it should cost to build and run a quality real estate website. Anyone charging more doesn’t have the best interests of real estate agents in mind.”

Each Placester agent website comes with responsive templates, IDX integration, hosting, blogging capabilities, and support by phone and email.

About Placester

Placester is a real estate website and marketing platform that helps real estate professionals grow their businesses online. Through data partnerships with over 95 percent of MLSs in the United States, Placester provides cost-effective real estate websites with IDX search, modern design, and advanced lead capture. In addition to offering websites for agents and brokers, Placester also provides websites and search technology for local media companies and publishers, including Hearst Corporation’s nationwide network of daily and weekly newspapers.

Finally, Placester connects real estate professionals and media outlets to create an advertising marketplace for real estate, allowing agents and brokers to easily purchase and place digital ads with a variety of local and national publishers.

Placester was founded in 2010 by Matt Barba and Frederick Townes. The company has raised nearly $10 million in total funding to date, and is backed by leading investors, including Romulus Capital and Techstars.