Real estate agents have so many options when it comes to online website builders. You are spoilt for choice, so let’s look at two website builders and see which one is a better fit for your real estate business: Luxury Presence or Placester.
Features and Functionality
Luxury Presence
Luxury Presence websites are developed using a combination of custom coding and a lightweight version of WordPress as the backend framework. While not every image is custom-coded, they employ an engineered approach to ensure efficient functionality. It means a tailored website, but you can’t make any changes yourself (even minute ones), so you must contact the Luxury Presence team each time.
Placester
Placester is a leading real estate online website builder that provides highly affordable DIY websites. More than 20,000 real estate websites are created with Placester across the US. Clients can integrate Placester with many third-party tools and software, and there is also an extensive range of built-in add-ons. Placester is built for scalability, and its features reflect that.
Top functionalities:
- Code-free site editor, making website building accessible to anyone in the Do It Yourself (DIY) package
- Options for unique content creation and social media posting
- Dedicated CRM is included with every package
- Unlimited updates and maintenance forever with the Do It For Me (DIFM, DIFM+content) packages,
- Great website features (Property Search, Featured Listings, Testimonials, IDX Listing Display Tools, Mortgage Calculator, Lead Capture Forms, Area and Community Pages, Sold Listings, Blog, etc.).
Placester Designs
Pricing
Luxury Presence
- Pricing isn’t revealed on the website, and you must book a DEMO call to find out how much packages cost.
- According to third-party sources, the average price for a customer is $500 monthly at the lowest package. That’s only a licensing fee, and if you want more customized services, it’s very easy to get up into the $2000-$3000 a month price range. Typically, service fees are in a ballpark of $5000-$15,000. It’s much too expensive for a broker, so they rather not sell to them.
- Any website customization requires the work of the IT team because it is an engineer-coded website. Each package has a certain number of IT hours, but if you need more complicated enhancements or do them regularly, it takes more time to complete the work. That’s why you can easily rack up a bill of a few thousand dollars a month as pay for packages of working hours of the team of engineers.
Placester
- Pricing is transparent: you can see how much you pay directly on the website: /pricing.
- There are no hidden fees or payments and a 20% discount on annual plans.
- Placester offers 3 plans:
- An IDX is optional, so the lowest package refers to the website without an IDX (you can add it for $25), but the price is very low as for the market standard.
- There is a 30-day free trial in the Do It Yourself (DIY) plan (you don’t need to provide your credit card details), and you have 7 days free that will be spent on building your website by our experts if you choose one of the DIFM (Do It For Me) plans.
- If you decide to move your website to Placester on DIFM (Do It For Me) plan, you pay only $500 of a one-time setup fee, and get 3 months for free. The best thing is that the transfer is smooth and hassle-free and Placester does it for you, so you don’t need to worry as every bit of your content is migrated and your website isn’t down.
If we were to compare apples to apples, the Luxury Presence base hosting fee would be sort of comparable to what you get with Placester’s DIY plan. We are talking about the difference between roughly $500 a month (Luxury Presence) and $79-$119 (Placester). Of course, you can make your calculation to see the price difference. Use the Calculator to see possible savings.
If you want a customized website done for you, you should compare the Placester one-time $500 setup fee with a minimum of $5000-$6000 setup fee in Luxury Presence.
It’s an enormous price difference. If you multiply it by 12 months, it is a staggering sum of money you could invest in your team or spend with your family. In Placester, your website can be built for a fraction of that price with no monthly “maintenance fee.” It is one of the lower-price spectrum solutions on the market right now.
Contract terms
Customer support
User Reviews and Reputation
Luxury Presence Reviews
There are reviews from Capterra (3 reviews with 2.7-star rating), and Upcity, but Google is the primary source of reviews with a 4.5-star rating from 400 reviews (July 2023). This is a good result, but let’s dig into the details.
Most reviews state the quality of the product (hence the 4-star opinions), but there is negative feedback regarding customer service, onboarding, and response time, coming from 1-3-star reviews. Lock-in contracts and expensive maintenance are also sources of customer dissatisfaction.
Luxury Presence has been growing quickly. That’s probably why many 1-star reviews have occurred in the last few months and refer to poor customer service. The conclusion is that less flashy clients suffer from a lower support standard.
Placester reviews
Google is the main source of Placester reviews (there are also reviews from G2, and Trustpilot), where there is a whooping 4.9-star rating from 600 reviews (July 2023). The highly positive reviews cite the most significant values of the company: responsive customer service and professionalism.
More than 70 reviewers on Google commented that the Placester team was helpful and “got all of my questions answered confidently.” According to them, responses were quick, polite, and knowledgeable.
Furthermore, 51 customers highlighted the patience and politeness of support, and 22 people stressed super fast response time and how helpful the chat feature was. They also mentioned friendliness and lack of distance or formality: their issue was treated as very important and dealt with asap.
Summary of pros and cons
As people often say: there are horses for courses, and surely both Placester and Luxury Presence will find both supporters and opponents. If you’re an established brand and can afford around $5000+/month for the first year and about half of that after, then you’re in a prime position to boost your branding, and Luxury Presence deserves your attention. If you are after flexibility, scalability, saving money, and getting things done quickly and efficiently, then Placester is your best choice.
Placester means “Your Personalized Agent Site Made Easy!” – without the complexity, hefty expenses, or technical headaches. You can focus on what you do best – connecting with clients and closing deals – while effortlessly maintaining an impressive online platform that reflects your expertise and style.
