It’s technically impossible to find two exactly the same website builders for real estate on the market. All of them are designed in a way that meets different expectations and needs. This is why, before you bet on one tool or designer you need to ask yourself: Why do I need a branded real estate website?
Generating more income is not a sufficient answer here - you have to know how you want to do it and then choose the real estate website builder that will help you achieve your goal. Think about your purpose: do you want a new website to capture new buyers or sellers leads, showcase your property listings, boost communication with your existing clients, build your personal brand, use Instagram and Facebook marketing potential or grow your brokerage and find new real estate agents? You will also have to determine your target audience: is it clients from your hyperlocal area or the whole state? Do you want to work with luxury listings or are you interesed in distressed properties? If you have more than one goal, try to make a list with your priority goals and the ones that currently are less urgent. Having such a list will help you find the best solution for your real estate business.
The next thing you will have to understand is the difference between approaches and level of digital competencies that you’ll need to have (or maybe you will need none - depending on what you choose!). Website builders are typically codeless, which means you don’t need any coding knowledge or experience. However, you will still need to know (or want to learn) how to navigate the builder and update your website with new information. If you have no time or skill to do any of these - it’s an important thing to take into consideration while researching the real estate website builders.
Another thing is - how big do you want your size to be? What information do you want to include there and how often will it need to be updated? If determining this feature seems hard at this early stage of planning your website, you can research your competitors’ websites and see which of their qualities would work for your business.
A Sedan is not better than an SUV or a Coupe - provided that they are driven on the roads that they’re designed for. The same is true when it comes to real estate website builders. It is really hard to choose one best real estate website builder for all the purposes that an agent or a brokerage might have. Every realtors’ expectations are different so here we've taken a closer look most popular real estate website builders and all the features they offer. All the website builders have different UVPs which will be crucial in your decision-making process.
Best overall: Placester
Best price: Agent Image
Best templates and customization: Luxury Presence
Most accurate: Agent Fire
Best Mobile App: Real Geeks
Best Support: Placester (again!)
Placester offers a twofold approach to real estate website building. For those who are too busy (that’s understandable! Real estate is not all beer and skittles!) to design, create and update their websites on a regular basis, Placester has created a product that requires minimum involvement from the realtor’s site, guaranteeing a customized site at the same time. How’s that possible? All arrangements are done through completing a wizard and a scheduled meeting with a Placester designer. It will take only 48 hours for you to have the website preview ready for you to see. After the process is completed, you have the access to an unlimited number of on-demand changes and updates done by a designated expert.
If you like to dabble and work with the builder by yourself, that’s an option, too. In every plan, Placester gives you access to all the tools that allow you to put your website together.
Placester is a great solution for both individual agents and whole teams whose goal is to generate new leads and capture new audiences, as well as those who want to build a personal brand and draw buyers’ and sellers’ attention on Facebook and Instagram using engaging content.
DIFM experience
On-demand experts
Very easy to navigate
30-day free trial
No app
Placester has three plans ranging from $79 to $319 monthly (+ one-off custom setup fee in every plan) for NAR members who choose to buy an annual subscription.
The $79 basic DIY (Do It Yourself) plan includes the Website Builder & CRM (customer relationship management) and IDX Integration.
The second, most popular plan amounts for $119 for DIFM (Do It For Me) if you are a NAR member who chooses to buy an annual subscription. The main feature of the plan is the fact that you will have your website done 100% by Placester designers, based on your preferences and needs. Apart from Website Builder & CRM and IDX integration, the plan includes access to designated website experts that will run your website for you and update it on your request.
You will also find a third plan in the Placester offer: DIFM Content Pro, that includes everything above, enhanced with online content creation: blog posts, professional real estate website articles, Facebook & Instagram posts.
Placester has a wide offer of service tasks that cover almost every aspect of marketing through a website: a chatbot installation. Writing your bio, writing singular e-mails or various integrations. Apart from that, Placester has the Agent Manager tool that helps brokers manage their backoffice, divide tasks and onboarding.
Placester offers several solutions for lead capture, starting with custom lead capture forms and popups that allow you to personalize copy and all the fields, to custom made property and landing pages dedicated for lead generation. Choosing the DIFM Content Pro plan, lead generation potential expands with social media activities - both organic and boosted posts.
Check our article: Real Estate Lead Generation Ideas for 2022
Check also: 107 Outside-the-Box Real Estate Marketing Ideas & Tips (With Examples)
CRM and autoresponders are available in all the plans and it includes Email drip campaigns and Email blast campaigns.
IDX integration (Multi IDX capable, Save listings & save search, Map search, Property alerts) is included in all of Placester’s plans.
Placester builds its clients success stories basing on relationships with them and responding to their needs. From the very start, you will work with a designated expert that will give you all the support you need during the process and update your website on your every request - the number of changes is unlimited and website updates are not billed annually.
For those who like to have things under control and run their real estate website on their own, Placester has created a robust resource library with articles and video tutorials on how to get the best effect with Placester website builder tools. If you lose the way anywhere in the process - you can simply reach out our staff and have all our questions answered.
If you decide on creating your website by yourself, Placester offers various ready-to-use real estate templates that include everything your site needs to be useful for users.
The builder is easy and intuitive and no prior experience is needed to quickly learn all the tricks. To make it even easier, Placester has a knowledge base with plenty of resources and helpful tutorials that will come handy whenever you find yourself stuck.
Website examples
With the DIFM and DIFM Content Pro plans, Placester has created a unique offer that helps Realtors get the website they want for them without having to supervise every step of the process. Instead of a tool-oriented approach, Placester has a client-oriented product that is based on customization aimed at boosting your real estate career.
At every step of the way, you will get to work with a responsive team of real people who are motivated to create a stunning real estate website and help you get the results you’ve always wanted.
Agent Image is one of the most popular and trusted real estate website builders with idx that has been recognized and endorsed by real estate celebrities and well known brokerages such as the Oppenheim Group, Jills Zeder Group and so on. Similarly to Placester, they offer three different subscription plans
Affordable monthly fees and a satisfying price-quality ratio
Wordpress site ownership
Quite expensive setups and a lot of upfront costs
Low quality IDX available only in the 3rd plan
No CRM
This might come as a surprise that we've chosen Agent Image as the cheapest real estate website creator. Although there are some significant upfront and setup costs that might discourage many agents, Agent Image has a relatively low monthly maintenance fee ($99) compared to other website builders and the price-quality ratio speaks in its favor.
Marketplace
Agent Image offers several digital packages designed at enhancing real estate professionals' brand awareness and lead generation. Among others: social media packages (various plans covering different media and areas within them), SEO packages (three different plans), PPC package, Content Development and Blogging packages.
Source: Agent Image
Agent Image has various forms for lead generation that you can include on your website no matter what your subscription plan is. These are:
Agent Image doesn’t have a built-in CRM which is probably its biggest drawback, but it integrates with the most popular CRMs
For AgentPro and Semi-Custom plans, IDX integration (powered by iHomefinder) is an additional feature, whilst it is included in the Imagine Studio plan.
Agent Image has 4,9 start on Google and their support receives plenty of positive comments regarding effective cooperation with their staff.
There are several templates you can choose from depending on your plan. If you choose the Semi-Custom plan, you’ll get a customized homepage, while choosing Imagine Studio will allow you to get three customized subpages as well.
https://www.thealtmanbrothers.com/
Agent Image will be great for agents and brokers whose purpose is to strengthen their brand, boost their marketing strategy and showcase their listings on their real estate website. However, the lack of CRM doesn’t make lead curation easiest, so it's best that you already work with your own CRM.
Moreover, Agent Image offers quite a robust resource base that will help you run your social media and be up-to-date with the newest digital and real estate industry trends and tools.
Agent Fire is a real estate website builder offering three different subscription options for agents and small real estate teams that focuses on realtors’ hyperlocality and building credibility. It offers template-based, semi-custom or custom websites and it has a wide selection of additional features available in its marketplace.
IDX available in every plan
A lot of add-ons
Limited number of changes to your website in plan 3
Only one theme in the plan 1
No built-in CRM
Agent Fire has a wide range of marketing tools and services in its marketplace for general online marketing and accessibility like Hike SEO, Logo & Branding Design, Page Content Writing, ADA Protect and those which support agent’s hyperlocal expertise: ClickMaps, Find Your Neighborhood, Home Value and others.
Agent Fire offers a library of engaging CTAs, landing pages and guides but, at the same time, a limited number of form templates and no pop ups that nurture lead generation.
Agent Fire doesn’t have its own CRM built in but it does integrate with various 3rd party CRMs.
IDX search is included in every plan.
You can get in touch with the support team via telephone or contact form. Apart from that, they have a quite robust knowledge base which goes beyond traditional FAQ:
You can build a template-based website by yourself or choose to work with a designer who will create your customized real estate website for you. The template-based process consists of 5 steps where you choose fonts, colors and add your logo and photos. Unfortunately, you won't find a library of various templates to choose from.
Thanks to its various add-ons, Agent Fire will be a go-to solution for hyperlocal agents and small brokerages that operate locally. The builder is easy and intuitive so it won’t require you to have any previous experience with web building tools.
Similarly to Agent Image, the lack of a built-in CMR will require you to integrate the site with your own CRM and already have a lead management strategy.
Real Geeks is an all-in-one real estate platform that focuses primarily on lead generation and lead management, as well as facilitating everyday tasks of teams of agents and brokerages. Although they do offer a website builder, it is based mostly on automation and less on design.
Advanced CRM
Lead Capture
Client Facing App
Great tools for mobile devices
Plenty of educational materials
AI autoresponders
Not many templates to choose from (only a typical IDX website)
There are no different plans available
Real Geeks doesn't have different subsription plans. Their whole solution costs $249 per month for two users (every new user adds $25 to the bill) with a one-off $500 implementation fee.
Real Geeks sites are equipped with various solutions for real estate lead capture: interactive maps, tagging, saving favorite properties and multiple searches, lead forms. Moreover, Real Geeks specializes in Facebook and Google PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns that drive traffic to your website.
Another useful quality is the possibility to have your own app for your clients (integrated with your MLS) that is included in the cost of the platform.
RealGeeks offers advanced CRM and lead management tools that track lead activity (live feed) and enable auto responses. Using profiling, the tool will help you create more personalized messages to your prospects and target them successfully.
IDX search (updated every 15 mins) is integrated with Real Geeks sites.
Rated 4.8 stars on Google, Real Geeks receives a lot of positive feedback about their trainings and support for clients.
Unfortunately, Real Geeks doesn’t have plenty of templates to choose from or custom design options and the personalization options are very limited - they are typical IDX websites where you can modify the menus and add pages, but all in all, they are all very similar.
https://www.greenvillescrealestate.net/
Real Geeks will be a good choice for tech savvy realtors who enjoy marketing automations and prefer to focus on keeping their prospects up-to-date and nurturing leads more than building a personal brand and having a personalized design.
Luxury Presence is one of the best known estate website builders on the market. It specializes in sophisticated and elegant designs and content-driven marketing strategies provided for agents and brokers.
Various integrations
Social media and SEO content plans and paid ads to choose from in building your strategy
Customized websites
No crm
No subscription plans
Easy platform
Luxury Presence doesn’t have subscription plans and the cost is given individually to every client. Their pricing varies from $500 for a setup and launch up to $6 000 depending on your needs and tools that you will want to use on your website (the number of subpages is unlimited).
Marketplace
Luxury Presence doesn’t have separate add-ons in its marketplace (every website is designed individually) and instead of products, it offers several marketing solutions: social media management, content marketing, Search Engine Optimization services or a CMA & presentations builder.
Apart from lead forms and pop ups, property websites and traffic-driving content, Luxury Presence has a strong social media offer that includes content, paid campaigns and geo targeting.
Luxury Presence doesn’t have a built-in CRM but it integrates with various 3rd party CRMs - Contactually, Follow Up Boss, Sendgrid and Zapier.
Luxury Presence sites integrate with your MLS, as well as they have their own IDX home search tool.
Luxury Presence has 4,4 stars on Google - although most of the reviews are positive, you will find some words of dissatisfaction with their support.
Templates and Customizability
Luxury Presence’s platform Presence™ is easy in use and requires no prior experience with website builders or CMS. However, Luxury Presence sites are not based on templates so you won’t be able to browse through readymade sites and make them your own.
UVP
Luxury Presence will be enjoyed by agents and brokers who want to develop their personal brand and brand awareness through original design, content marketing strategy and social media profiles.
No built-in CMR and significantly less marketing automation means that you will need to already have an established lead management strategy.
There are several ways in which you can build your own real estate website. You can have it done for you by a free web designer/web developer or a website company, but given the fact that there are several things that are unique to real estate business which you definitely need to have integrated (your MLS search, IDX home search, contact forms, maps, CMR and so on) it is best to rely on a company that provides such services specifically to realtors. This way, you can be sure that they know what you’re talking about!
It is advisable for an agent to have a real estate website (as well as social media profiles). Even if it requires you to invest a lot of money into it, it’s worth it in every case: your business will grow as buyers and sellers will be able to find and contact you online.
Every licensed agent can have a website but it will be necessary with every website builder to provide the license number before the process starts.
When it comes to real estate websites used by non-professionals, the most popular are Zillow, apartments.com and Trulia.
The best real estate website builders for agents and brokers are: Placester, Agent Image, Real Geeks, Luxury Presence, Agent Fire.
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