Your real estate website is the hub of your marketing strategy. It’s where all your lead generation efforts are focused and where prospects become your clients. Without a high-performing real estate website, you’re missing out on opportunities to grow your business.
If you’re in the market for a new real estate website, we’ve done all the hard work for you. We’ve pulled together the six best real estate website builders, kicked the tires for you, and selected the best options for just about every agent, brokerage, and team. Here’s what we found.
2021’s Best Real Estate Website Builders
| Real Estate Website Builder | Best For |
|---|---|
| Placester (Best Overall) | Agents seeking a real estate-specific website builder with lead generation tools |
| Propertybase | Agents looking for a great real estate website plus CRM combo |
| IDX Broker | Agents who want advanced tools to help their prospects navigate their home search |
| InCom | Budget-conscious agents looking for off-site marketing and advertising solutions |
| BoomTown | Brokers or real estate agents managing a team |
| Squarespace | Real estate professionals seeking intuitive design and a wide array of 100+ templates to choose from |
Updated April 2021
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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 Placester an easy choice as leader of the pack.
Placester offers a discount to National Association of Realtors (NAR) members since they’re the only provider on our list in partnership with the 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 pricing and what Placester offers at each tier of service.
Placester Pricing at a Glance—April 2021
| Placester Package Options | ||
|---|---|---|
| Starter Plan | ||
| Advanced Plan | ||
| Office Builder Plan |
Membership to NAR 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 this 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.
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 | |
|---|---|
| Open House Pro Premium | |
| Data Migration Services |
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 skill set 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 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 someone 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.
Placester Templates & Customizability
Placester offers 12 templates for subscribing agents. Though this number of template options is relatively low compared to others, it’s clear that all these templates have been finely tuned to maximize every inch of your site’s real estate.
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.
Placester IDX Capability
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.
Real Estate Lead Capture on Placester
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 option to have on 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.
The lead capture strategy further provides an option to gate some features, like the mortgage calculator with an email address input.
Overall, the Placester lead capture options are robust and provide plenty of chances to turn your readers into clients.
Placester CRM Capabilities
The Placester CRM doesn’t come with a ton of bells and whistles, but the features it does include 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, 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 times.
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 option.
Placester Support
Placester provides live, U.S.-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.
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, limited font choices, and the 12 available 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.
Examples of Placester Real Estate Websites for Agents
Here are some great examples of Placester websites in action.
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.
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 and 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’ve got a review of Propertybase GO if you want to learn more.
The second track is called Propertybase Salesforce Edition, and is designed to be an enterprise solution for users across large organizations. Prices for this product vary from case to 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.
Propertybase Templates & Customizability
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, as is evidenced by the distinctive Propertybase sites above. 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.
Propertybase IDX Capability
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.
Real Estate Lead Capture on Propertybase
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.
Propertybase CRM Capabilities
If this list were only about the capabilities of the CRM, Propertybase would easily be at the top. In fact, they already were when we ranked 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.
Propertybase Support
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, there is email support available 24/7 and phone support available Monday through Friday during business hours.
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.
Examples of Propertybase Real Estate Websites for Agents & Brokerages
Here are some Propertybase websites in action.
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.
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 for you. 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), and Home (starting at $150 per month). Then, 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 | |
|---|---|
| Agent | |
| Team | |
| Office |
IDX Broker Platinum Tier Pricing at a Glance
| IDX Broker Plan | |
|---|---|
| Agent | |
| Team | |
| Office |
IDX Broker Home Tier Pricing at a Glance
| IDX Broker Plan | |
|---|---|
| Agent | |
| Team | |
| Office |
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 without having to ask for them more than a couple of times. In a time like this, you might want to dial back your strategy, making your visitors feel more like they are making the first move.
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.
IDX Broker Templates & Customizability
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 have IDX Broker build your website for you.
IDX Broker IDX Capability
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.
Real Estate Lead Capture on IDX Broker
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.
IDX Broker CRM Capabilities
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.
IDX Broker Support
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.
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.
Examples of IDX Broker Real Estate Websites for Agents & Brokerages
Here are some examples of IDX Broker websites in action:
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 place to check out. Visit them today to see which tier, plan, and options are best for your business.
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 sets it apart from the rest of the providers on our list, such as 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—April 2021
| InCom Offers | |
|---|---|
| IDX Website With Unlimited Content, Access to 6 Standard Templates | |
| Access to Additional Premium Templates | |
| One-time Setup Fee | |
| Google Ad Words Management | |
| Facebook Ads Management | |
| ReCall Marketing - Silver Package | |
| ReCall Marketing - Gold Package | |
| ReCall Marketing - Platinum Package |
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.
InCom Templates & Customizability
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.
Similar to the customizability of the Placester offerings, the actual layout of the websites themselves is pretty tough to manipulate beyond color schemes and fonts. All of the important elements are in place on InCom websites, so you don’t need to worry about your website missing an important feature. However, 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.
InCom IDX Capability
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.
Real Estate Lead Capture on InCom
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.
InCom CRM Capabilities
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 does allow for custom alerts to be sent to you whenever you’ve got lead activity on the site, making prompt follow-up easier.
InCom Support
Customer support on InCom was easy to access and prompt in follow-up. They offer phone support during U.S. 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.
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 not really any solutions for three or four agents working together. They do have “partner” website templates that start down that road, but customizing a site to really highlight the strength of working with a team and not just a couple of agents isn’t easily achieved.
Examples of InCom Real Estate Websites for Agents
Here are some examples of InCom websites in action.
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.
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, 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—April 2021
| Package | |
|---|---|
| Launch (1-2 agents) | |
| Core (2-5 agents) | |
| Grow (3-10 agents) | |
| Advance (11+ agents) |
Since BoomTown is geared more toward brokerages and teams, the prices of their products are definitely in a different weight class than the other real estate website builders on our list. However, included in these prices are perks you don’t get otherwise, including access to a very competitive real estate CRM, lead distribution tools, and some brokerage level marketing strategies, giving BoomTown a serious bang for your buck.
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.
BoomTown Templates & Customizability
As of this writing, there were 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, just like on other real estate-specific website builders, brokers and team leaders have fine 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 direction, 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.
BoomTown IDX Capability
Just like the other real estate-specific website builders on our list (Placester and InCom), BoomTown is natively set up to include 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 the 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.
Real Estate Lead Capture on BoomTown
BoomTown offers standard lead capture options on each of their templates, including custom landing pages, pop-ups, lead capture forms, and the like. As mentioned above, BoomTown also offers ad management that will draw leads to your website in the first place.
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 doing with each of their leads. This feature allows brokers and team leaders to provide timely coaching and counsel, upping your conversion of each of those 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.
BoomTown CRM Capabilities
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.
BoomTown Support
BoomTown offers phone and email support during U.S. 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.
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 in deep to the BoomTown 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 actually be using. Brokers or team leaders who want to kick the tires on their own first are going to have a hard time here.
Examples of BoomTown Real Estate Websites for Agents & Brokerages
Here are some examples of BoomTown websites in action.
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 here, running a business requires investment on a large scale if you’re going to support the success of multiple agents.
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 aesthetic 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—April 2021
| Squarespace Package | |
|---|---|
| Personal | |
| Business |
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.
Squarespace Templates & Customizability
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.
Squarespace IDX Capability
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.
Real Estate Lead Capture on Squarespace
Since Squarespace isn’t a real estate-specific website builder, lead capture options here are a little more generic, but still very 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 does provide 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.
Squarespace CRM Capabilities
Squarespace doesn’t offer any sort of 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.
Squarespace Support
The Squarespace account support team is very responsive and worked great for us. They don’t have dedicated phone support listed on the 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.
Where Squarespace Comes Up Short
Squarespace is a little frustrating when it comes to your designs translating 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.
Examples of Squarespace Real Estate Websites for Agents
Here are some examples of Squarespace real estate websites in action.
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 the 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 presence online.
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 are 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.”
Good luck with that Squarespace real estate website, lol
My company provides KvCore and will be starting to use this CRM. I have a couple domains I want to use to increase my options and one of my domains I am considering using Real Geeks and another was for something where I can have more flexibility to create customized content for videos and blog posts as well as community information. I was thinking of pointing this site to my KvCore site to do the home searches. Any suggestions or opinions would be welcomed appreciated.
Hi Horace –
Thanks for the comment. It sounds like you’ve got a lot of moving parts here. There is always a danger of creating complexity that doesn’t actually add productivity, just work. If I were in your shoes, before putting any of these systems in stone, I would do an audit of the time in / leads out, understand your budget allocation as a function of commissions produced, and make sure you’re getting enough juice for each of these squeezes.
I know, probably not the answer you were expecting, but it is always a good idea to measure!
Good luck!
Chris
This is a really great article and thank you for the Real Estate specific insight, which is typically lacking in these types of reviews.
I’m a Real Estate agent, with a background in technology, but not so much in web design-I can manage the backend operations on a technical level, but I need a lot of help in the design dept.
I had a subscription to Placester up until about two years ago, but the spam I was getting increased weekly and then daily. When I spoke with their customer service/tech support and asked if they offered a basic option like Google reCAPTCHA to help reduce the spam, they said “no, and we don’t have any plans in the future”. So here I was staring at the Placester CRM tool filling up with bogus accounts and I starting spending my Real Estate hours on managing spam. Not good.
Sooo, I quit Placester and have been looking for something affordable ever since, but with the options you have covered here. Any idea if Placester has gotten any better with spam controls? Perhaps this might be something you can add to your reviews, because it is a nightmare managing this stuff on the backend.
Thank you…
Hi Alex –
Thanks for the comment. This isn’t a critique that I’ve heard about Placester before, but I will definitely check it out. And yes, the next time we do an update on this article, I will certainly consider that as criteria.
Thanks!
Chris
Thank you for the reply!
I can see how people wouldn’t say anything, because they probably haven’t realized many of signups are bogus. The type of spam I was getting appeared to be legitimate people, until you started really looking at the details of email addresses and the names of the people. Once you spot it, there is no question that you are getting bots signing up instead of people. And like spam, once you reply a few times, the pace of increase gets pretty fast.
I should have mentioned that overall I really, really enjoyed Placester, but the spam bots became too much of a hassle so I went to Squarespace, built my own site, and plugged in Google reCAPTCHA. ZERO spam after that.
Sorry for the long-winded reply. Thank you so much…
now I am residing in India. now I would like to work as a property broker and insurance agent as individual. for this purpose which is the best website creator company for so purpose? and web creator cost of site will be in Indian currency. the area will be limited only.
Hello!
Unfortunately, I don’t have the background to say which product is going to be the best for use in India. Sorry about that, please keep us in the loop on what you decide though!
Chris
Hi Chris,
I’ll be honest, I made an attempt at using Squarespace DIY and found myself frustrated. If I wanted to turn over the complete design, with strong lead generation and IDX access capabilities and preferably with robust CRM, who of the 6 above would you recommend or would your recommend another option other than 1 of the 6? I don’t have the skill set or patience to DIY. Greatly appreciate your feedback.
Hi Chuck –
Thanks for the question. My go-to recommendation here is Placester, but the addition of a robust CRM as a need makes Propertybase or Boomtown your best bet. The thing is, neither of those options are cheap for single agents, so you’re definitely going to pay a premium, but you’re going to get exactly what you’re looking for – which sounds like the concierge-level service.
Good luck!
Chris
What do you think of Webflow?
Hi Eric –
I don’t have any personal experience with this company, but they look cool! Any time you have a non-real estate specific product, you’re going to run into bells and whistles you aren’t going to need to ring (in addition to some lacking features you wish you had), but if you are familiar with this approach or are interested in trying them out, I’d say go for it.
Chris
Hi Chris,
After reading all the helpful info in your article who would you recommend to cater for a small boutique real estate company in Auckland New Zealand for a Website & CRM. Budget conscious to begin with later additional options we can add.
Thanks
Phil
Hi Phil –
Thanks for the question. Honestly, I’m not well-read when it comes to most options outside of the US, so I am not sure how much help I can be here. Feel free to email me directly at chris@theclose.com, let’s start a dialogue there.
Chris
Hi Chris, I was wondering if you think that Propopen would be a good addition to this list?
Hi Owen –
Thanks for the message. I am not familiar with Propopen, but I will take a look! Thanks for the tip.
Chris
What do you guys think about using WordPress?
Hi Alexiz –
I love WordPress. A TON of the internet is built on the WordPress platform, including The Close, but the problem here is that WordPress requires a certain level of expertise and time that most busy Realtors don’t possess. With WP, you are programming essentially from scratch, and while that does provide you with the ultimate level of customization, most agents don’t need that level of customization, they just want a website that is going to convert their leads.
Chris
I found Placester to be pleasant to the eye but totally lacking as far as service & tech support. It was years & years where they couldn’t get one of the largest MLS’s to work with their product. Every time you’d turn around the IDX didn’t work. Why else would a buyer show up? It got to a point that I just gave up. Don’t waste your money either! Learn from my mistakes.
Hi Lyn –
Thanks for the feedback, we’ll definitely look into it!
Chris
What about Website box?
Hi Patri –
That’s not a provider I’m familiar with. Are you using a website through them?
Chris