LionDesk is the real estate CRM version of a great screwdriver … It does one thing really well, it’s affordable, and it’s essential for doing your job properly. Pretty much everything you want from a great tool to close more deals with less stress. Did I mention LionDesk starts at only $25 a month?
Check out in-depth review of LionDesk below, or hop on over to the LionDesk website to start a free trial.
How Much Does LionDesk Cost?
Amazingly, LionDesk is affordable enough for pretty much any serious agent. For all the features in this article, you’ll only pay $25 per month. That’s it. There’s a more souped-up version with a custom phone number, 2000 texts per month, and video texting for $49.
LionDesk also offers slightly modified versions of its CRM for teams and brokerages which cost around $20 per agent per month. That said, they’re not offering any special features, just upping the maximum number of contacts you can bulk text or email. Considering the current limit is 500 people, very few agents will ever need the extra capacity.
Organization, Outreach, and Nurturing: What More Do You Need?
Founded in 2014 by serial entrepreneur David Anderson, LionDesk was built to offer agents, teams, and brokerages a tool to get organized, stay top of mind with leads in all stages of the sales funnel, and nurture closed leads for referrals.
On paper, this sounds pretty simple—obvious even. The problem is that instead of offering you a great screwdriver at a great price, too many software companies try to offer you a Swiss army knife—a bloated tool with a dozen blades and tools, none of which work very well.
We won’t name names, but we’ve all seen CRMs with landing page builders, “AI” (which is almost never actual AI), IDX websites, and everything but the proverbial kitchen sink.
Some platforms manage to pull off being all things to all Realtors, but they charge accordingly. Turnkey CRM systems that include IDX websites are going to run you anywhere from $250-$1500 per month. LionDesk costs only $25.
Even if they were priced well, these all-in-one systems have another sometimes fatal flaw: What happens when someone comes out with a slick new app that replaces one element of your expensive platform?
Ease of Use: A Mild Learning Curve & Intuitive Interface
When you first launch LionDesk you’ll find yourself in the dashboard view. If you’ve ever used a CRM before, you’ll feel right at home.
On the left you have a simple, easy to read menu bar that gives you a quick shortcut to the main functions of LionDesk.
To the right, you have the “Daily Vitals” view which gives you a quick snapshot of how you’re doing with outreach. It keeps a running tally of outgoing and incoming calls, texts, and emails.
This is a great way to visually encourage agents to push past their comfort zones to take their business to the next level. Only called three leads today? You’ll see that number every time you log in to your CRM.
You also have recent contact activity, tasks due, and a visualization of expected total sales and your activity for the year.
Getting (and Staying) Organized With LionDesk
If you click over to the Contacts tab, you can quickly add or edit a current contact, or bulk upload contacts from another platform with a CSV file, or direct import from platforms like Gmail.
Even better, when you click on a contact you are immediately presented with a wealth of information. You can see emails they’ve last opened, previous calls or texts, and as much biographical or deal data as you have on them.
You can even add custom fields for your contacts if you want to, say, add how many children they have, what kind of dog they have, or what baseball team they follow. All of this granular data can come in very handy when it comes time for outreach.
If I had one complaint about LionDesk’s contacts view, it’s that they try to pack a lot of information into a small space. While I get the strategic reason why they would do it, it means small fonts and small buttons which can be tricky to click quickly.
That said, it’s a well-designed interface and I think I would rather have too much information displayed on one page than have to dig through endless menus to edit information.
Outreach: Bulk Emails, Texts, Calls & Video
Outreach in LionDesk is very straightforward. You can either click to call, text, or email individual contacts, or send bulk emails, texts, and even video, based on which campaign you have them on.
You can even set rules for leads from different sources. For example, you can set LionDesk to trigger a specific text message or video text message for leads you get from Facebook ads.
Bulk Emails
LionDesk also makes it easy to send bulk emails to your contacts. For example, you can blast out a new listing to buyers, a quick intro video to new contacts, or even a holiday video to your entire list. You can even include videos in your emails without using BombBomb.
Bulk Texts
Or if you want the higher open and response rates you can get from texting, LionDesk lets you set up mass text campaigns just as easily as email campaigns. Want to send out a hot new pocket listing to your hottest buyer leads only? Why not send out a quick text? Oh, and you can send video texts right from LionDesk as well.
Video Emails & Texts
One of the coolest features of LionDesk is the ability to record and send video directly from the platform, and send it out to your leads via email or text messages.
Since texts get high open and response rates, and videos are more personal, why not combine the two and text out a walk-through of that pocket listing before it even hits the market?
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Automating Marketing With Blended Drip Campaigns
If you’ve ever set up a drip campaign before, you might be tempted to skip this section and just assume that you can send out emails in sequence with LionDesk. Well, you can do that, but you can also send out emails, texts, videos, or even have the system prompt you to call with a certain script on a certain day.
LionDesk calls this “Blended Campaigns” and as every salesperson knows, trying to reach leads with email alone might have worked in 2003, but it is very unlikely to work in 2018.
Instead, why not mix things up a bit and send emails when you think they’ll respond to emails (Monday morning) texts when they’ll respond to texts (weekend afternoons) and videos when you think they’re receptive to videos?
Of course using LionDesk you can tailor this outreach for different types of clients or contacts, or just set up prompts to call at regular intervals for your best leads.
Crowdsourced Blended Campaigns Mean You’ll Never Run Out of Inspiration
If you’re new to the industry or just looking to shake things up a little, LionDesk offers prewritten blended campaigns designed by the 9,000+ dedicated LionDesk users on their Facebook mastermind group.
Or, if you come up with a killer campaign, why not spread the love and share it with our fellow LionDesk users?
Video Text and Email
You can’t even glance at a technology or marketing blog these days without someone telling you that the future of the internet is video. They’ll talk your ear off about engagement, and click-through rates, and personalization.
While we’re somewhat agnostic on the matter (we happen to think the death of text is greatly exaggerated) we can’t argue with the numbers. Video emails have higher engagement rates than text emails and are much, much more personal.
That’s why LionDesk’s video functionality is so great. You can record a video of, say, an open house walk-through straight from your CRM, then save it, and send out in a blended campaign to your best leads.
Even better, why not save that video and send out via a text message? You get the increased open rates of text messaging and the increased engagement rates of video in one shot. Not bad right?
The Power Dialer
LionDesk’s power dialer will let you upload and cruise through a list of FSBO or EXPIRED’S in one power session. While cold calling isn’t for everyone, you can also use this feature to follow up with your sphere of influence once a month to shake up some referrals.
That said, the Power Dialer is not included in LionDesk’s already very tempting base price as not every agent will need or want it. Instead, they offer the Power Dialer for heavy duty cold callers for a very reasonable $49-$59 per month depending on the package.
Text 2 Sell
One of the more unique features LionDesk offers is Text 2 Sell. Using your provided LionDesk phone number, you can encourage leads to text you for more information about a listing, a special buyer’s guide, a foreclosure list, or anything else you can think of.
Once they send the text, LionDesk will automatically send them the file, and take their phone number and contact information to add to your database.
This is perfect for sign riders, flyers, or postcards where you want to offer an alternative to calling and still track the effectiveness of your ads and get phone numbers instead of emails.
Team Features: Lead Distribution
LionDesk also offers round robin lead distribution for teams and small brokerages—perfect if you want to outfit your entire team with leads without breaking the bank.
Transaction management
Finally, LionDesk offers basic transaction management features so you can track deals, save documents, and keep clients or other parties up to speed.
While this is not a fully featured accounting package, it gets the job done.
Or, if you’re already using DotLoop, LionDesk has an integration that lets you plug DotLoop right into your workflow.
Broker Functions
LionDesk also has great broker features available in its enterprise version. Brokers can view advanced reports on leads, build drip campaigns you can assign to individual agents, and have a global view of all deals in the office.
Integrations & 3rd Party Lead Importing
LionDesk also auto imports leads from Zillow, Realtor.com, Trulia, and Zip Realty automatically which is nice. You can also set up blended campaigns for leads from each source which will be a huge help since leads from online portals need to be reached out to immediately.
Facebook Leads Are Also Imported Automatically
You can also pull in leads directly from Facebook as LionDesk is an approved Facebook CRM partner. So if you’re doing a lot of Facebook advertising, LionDesk is a great choice of CRM for you.
Document Management
If you’re the type of agent who tends to accumulate PDFs (who isn’t?) luckily you can store documents right into LionDesk so you can access them from everywhere. No more Dropbox or Google Docs, so one less app you’ll need to use on a daily basis.
The 30,000 Foot View
If you’ve been putting off trying LionDesk you’re missing out on a fully featured and powerful real estate CRM that’s perfect for keeping in touch with your sphere and leads without overwhelming agents with the feature creep so common in the industry.
Instead of being stuck with one turnkey system, you can start with LionDesk then plug in an IDX website, transaction management, or other marketing software as your needs and budget grow.
I have Contactually and LionDesk running side-by-side and there is absolutely no comparison. Contactually really blows it out of the water. LionDesk is very clunky and the lack of clear segmentation of contacts is a showstopper. It is nice that video email is an option yet not enough so to deal with all of the other hassles. Again, just go with Contactually and call it a day. It is easy, intuitive and ridiculously powerful.
Hey Chris,
I hear what you’re saying, but you have to remember that Contactually is also more than double the price of LionDesk…
LionDesk presented at our CRMLS tech focus group. I was impressed in terms of bang for the buck. I was impressed that they are willing to listen to features suggestions. They are very API oriented, which is great in my eyes.
Hey Roland,
I always say that the feature creep and competetion in the CRM space is amazing for end users. Fairly sure that most of these guys aren’t taking VC money either. Can’t wait to see what we’ll get for free in a few years…
Liondesk is great when the features are working. The text2sell on my account quit years ago and still does not work. Sometimes Liondesk sends duplicate emails to the same person also.
Hey Peggy, thanks for this feedback. Have you addressed this issue with Liondesk?
Question !
I am searching for a CRM that is user friendly for the real estate industry. I presently use my companies CRM for all real estate transactions and communications which various people have access to. I will continue to their system but am looking for something for myself to use in addition to theirs. Upon looking at the reviews and information that is available I feel the Lions Desk,will fill my needs.Looking for feedback.
Thanks
Hey Ed,
I always say the best CRM is the one you use regularly. You might be surprised at the number of extremely successful agents who use decidedly low tech solutions for outreach and lead nurturing. As long as you’re hitting the right lead with the right message at the right time you will close deals. If you want a head-to-head comparison, check out our CRM buyer’s guide here: https://theclose.com/best-real-estate-crm/
Liondesk is by far one of the easiest to use real estate CRM on the market.
Yeah, that’s one of the things we really liked about it. It’s designed for agents to use, not computer programmers!
I moved back to LionDesk just before the first of 2020. Super disappointed. Over half of my emails bounce. I have had some serious issues and support failed to respond for over a week and then just said it was probably operator error. Issues like people getting multiple emails of the same email when it was not set up that way. I also had people continue to get emails after they had unsubscribed. Big No No.. At that point I shut down all drips. They are also moving to a new version. With the move they are loosing a lot of functionality that people are used to. Change is hard but people are finding that they only find out the loss on their own. It has great ideas and functionality but the execution failed. Unless you want to geek it out all day and play with it, it just does not work as advertise. They do have a great Facebook group but if you have a problem and go there, you are attacked if it is perceived to be negative toward LionDesk. You better only have praise if you want to use the group.
Hey Will,
Thanks for your input here. When you say your emails bounce, what do you mean? Are you working with an older list? Who provided it? To my ear it sounds like you have a large list that might need pruning. Sometimes duplicate emails, or contacts with the same email end up in your list if you auto import and don’t manually check it. When was the last time you pruned your contact list?