
LionDesk’s $25 per month entry-level plan is one of the best values in real estate software. Period. Though it lacks the seemingly endless integration options that Follow Up Boss offers, we think LionDesk’s video and text emails, extensive library of pre-built email and text campaigns and built-in auto-dialer more than make up for it.
Available upgrades such as their single and multi-line dialers, landing page builder, and Facebook ads tool will delight agents who don’t mind getting their hands dirty prospecting for leads instead of just buying them. Of course, those upgrades come at a price — the single line dialer alone is a $99 upgrade from the base plan — which we can’t help but think was designed to entice agents to step up to the $83 per month CRM Premier package that includes the dialer.
Starting at $58 per month, FUB hits the sweet spot between problem-solving and affordability for most agents. For that price, Follow Up Boss has enough organization, nurturing, and marketing features to keep most agents happy without overwhelming you with a bunch of bells and whistles you don’t need. As one of the most popular real estate CRMs on the market, there is also a massive community of users to help you solve problems quickly.
While more expensive platforms offer more advanced marketing, advertising, and lead-nurturing features, Follow Up Boss provides built-in integrations so you can plug in new software as your business grows. Two standout integrations for us were two-way contact sharing with KW Command for Keller Williams agents and Altos Research to help you create data-rich market reports.
If there is one thing we would change about Follow Up Boss, we’d add more online lead generation features — but most users rely on other platforms like Zurple, Ylopo or Market Leader to generate leads and then feed them into Follow Up Boss to nurture and close them.
Starting at $49 per month, Wise Agent packs in prospecting and online lead generation features that other CRMs charge a premium for. If you’re the kind of agent who wants to prospect and generate leads right from your CRM without spending a ton of money, Wise Agent should be at the top of your list.
You’ll get tools to create digital and print marketing materials, an AI lead nurturing assistant, and available upgrades such as Facebook ad creation tools and a landing page builder. Choose from three auto-dialer options for an additional monthly cost.
While Wise Agent doesn’t offer done-for-you lead generation, they give you the tools you need to prospect and generate online and offline leads without paying for additional software. While their marketing materials won’t win any design awards, the fact that they’re included in a real estate CRM that costs less than $50 a month is a win in our book.
Starting at $129 per month, Top Producer is an excellent choice if you want a CRM that generates leads and nurtures them for you on auto-pilot.
Founded in 1982 and reimagined in their X upgrade in 2019, Top Producer might just be the most well-known CRM in real estate. Top Producer offers agents and teams a powerful suite of lead generation and nurturing tools at a surprisingly affordable price.
Instead of relying on integrations, Top Producer offers agents a la carte solutions that include automated market reports, done-for-you lead generation, IDX websites, predictive analytics-driven seller lead generation, and an intuitive CRM platform to nurture leads.
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Starting at $400 per month, Sierra Interactive is an ideal CRM for top-producing agents and teams with large databases seeking automated tools to keep leads warm until they’re ready to transact.
Sierra Interactive stands out as one of the best real estate CRMs for its advanced marketing automations. Sierra’s automated marketing campaigns blend text messages, ringless voicemails, and emails based on your lead’s behavior. Team leaders praise Sierra’s advanced lead routing and reporting capabilities, which make tracking agent performance easy.
Sierra Interactive’s core package starts at $499 per month for five users.
Visit Sierra InteractiveReal Geeks can be a game-changer for solo agents and small teams, offering a dynamic real estate CRM and fully integrated IDX website platform at a more affordable starting price (of $299) than competitors like kvCORE, CINC, and Boomtown.
We love Real Geeks for its full array of organizational and marketing tools, including an IDX website, Estate IQ home valuation tool, AI chatbot, Facebook ad creation tool, and more.
Founded in 2007, Real Geeks’ CRM has evolved using two decades of industry research and customer feedback. Its CRM offers real-time client activity monitoring, advanced search filtering, immediate notifications, and social profile integration — all designed to enhance agent productivity.
CINC’s focus on hyperlocal marketing, behavior-driven follow-ups, and extensive lead routing and team management features make it a top CRM for teams and boutique brokerages.
CINC stands out for its advanced demographic targeting, leveraging Google and Meta (Facebook and Instagram) for precision lead generation. CINC’s organizational features ensure leads never slip through the cracks. The drawback? CINC’s relatively high price point (starting at $899) puts it out of reach for some solo agents. The silver lining? CINC’s pricing includes hyperlocal leads generated by their in-house PPC advertising team.
CINC starts at $899* per month.
*Leads are included in all CINC pricing plans. The company does not sell their CRM software without done-for-you lead generation.
Visit CINCIf you’re just looking for a bare-bones CRM to organize your leads, track your deals, and send bulk emails, Hubspot’s free CRM is hard to beat. There are, of course, significant limitations, but if you’re a brand new agent who finds themself choosing between paying rent and shelling out $25 a month for LionDesk — our best overall value CRM — Hubspot’s free CRM is better than no CRM at all — as long as you actually use it. There, I said it.
The free version allows you to create custom fields to segment your leads, send bulk emails (with a catch), create one custom sales pipeline to track your deals, create up to five email templates, and even create basic landing pages using Hubspot’s drag-and-drop editor. The catch? All of your emails and chats will have “powered by Hubspot” in the footer, and upgrading to a paid plan is simply not worth the money when LionDesk can be had for $12 more per month.
Hubspot’s entry-level package is free. Upgrades start at $20 per month, but we don’t recommend them for agents when there are real-estate specific options like LionDesk for just $25 per month.
Visit Hubspot Sales HubA good CRM will help you stay organized enough to nurture your leads and keep your deals from going off the rails. A great real estate CRM will do all that and help you market and grow your business two years from now. The difference is everything.
To help you find that diamond in the rough that can solve your current and future problems, here are the six most important factors to consider when choosing a CRM:
At a bare minimum, your CRM should work with the tools you’re currently using. Replacing all the different software you use with one Swiss army knife platform might sound appealing, but it can also create more problems than it solves. For example, many CRMs include IDX websites. What happens when you want to replace your website but still want to use your CRM? This is why we recommend starting slow and finding a CRM that works with your existing tools.
If you’re a new agent or even an experienced buyer’s agent trying to become a listing agent, your CRM needs to be able to grow as your business grows. Here’s why: while switching CRMs is easier than it was in the past, you will still have to learn an entirely new platform. That means you’ll be spending more of your time learning software and less time closing deals. If you have an opportunity to stop spreading yourself thin, why not take it?
Your CRM should also have the features you need to make your business run smoother, not just today, but down the road. While you can (and should) consider affordable platforms that allow you to plug into other tools via integrations, at a bare minimum, your new CRM should have enough features to solve your current problems. Here are a few to consider:
This might sound obvious, but your CRM needs to work when you need it to. Slow, buggy interfaces or outages mean wasted time, slower speed to lead, and maybe even lost deals. No software is 100% bug-free, but at a minimum, the company that makes your CRM should have a dedicated and competent team making it work 24/7 and ensuring problems are dealt with quickly.
Generally speaking, the larger the software company, the fewer bugs and downtime their products have. Of course no software works 100% of the time. Outages and hiccups are inevitable. The goal is to reduce them to near zero.
Your CRM should have enough customers nationwide to make troubleshooting and finding new ways to use it easy. The more users your CRM has, the faster you’ll get answers to your questions and discover new ways to use it to close more deals.
Like any good software, your CRM should offer an intuitive (and pleasant!) user experience (UX). The CRM’s most used tools should be front and center in the dashboard. Lesser used tools should be accessible in two clicks, maximum. A great CRM should also look and FEEL good. Staring at ugly layouts and clunky design 6 hours a day is a bummer. Your CRM should make you feel energized and confident while you use it.
An intuitive and attractive UX might not make or break your business, but if you actually LIKE using it, you’ll spend more time using your CRM. It’s basic psychology! How much more money will you make this year if you spend an extra hour working in your CRM every day? How much will you lose if you don’t because the overwhelming UX gives you a headache?
While an intuitive UX will help make your CRM easier to use, today’s platforms offer sophisticated customization options that often come with a steep learning curve. Seriously. Today’s CRM platforms can be like NASA mission control compared to older software. This is why onboarding, training and customer support are crucial to get the most out of your new CRM.
As you might have already guessed, the more you pay for a CRM the better the quality of the onboarding, training and customer service experience. With a free CRM like Hubspot Sales Hub, you’ll be pretty much on your own. A sophisticated CRM platform like CINC gets you a dedicated specialist to help you set up and get the most from your CRM. This is where a large and active user base comes in handy. Hubspot has almost 250,000 users. With that many users, odds are someone else has solved the problem you’re facing. That means the solution is a quick Google or Perplexity search away.
Unless you have a photographic memory, an IQ of 175 and work 8 days a week a CRM will help you close more deals and make more money. Period. They allow you to gather reams of useful data about your leads and customers — their birthdays, budget and timeline for moving to name just a few — and match that data to available properties.
Even a bare bones CRM will help you reach your leads, clients and customers with the right marketing message at the right time. This is key to building relationships that last longer than a quick sales call.
CRMs increase speed to lead, and more importantly, speed to service. When that hot new pocket listing lands on your desk, a CRM will tell you exactly who might want to see it — even if you haven’t talked to them in years.
The short answer? Maybe. If you’re on a team and they’re offering access to a high-end, third-party CRM platform like Boomtown, then it would be foolish to pass up the opportunity. Teams and brokerages often get significant discounts on software, so you’ll have access to expensive tools for free.
But if you’re working at a brokerage that uses an in-house CRM platform like KW Command, you might want to consider getting your own CRM. Here’s why: when you decide to switch brokerages, it might be difficult to bring your leads and all the data and segmenting you have for them to your new brokerage. If you leave on bad terms, you might not get it at all. Purchasing your own real estate CRM, even a cheap one, allows you to own your leads and data.
While we generally don’t recommend trying to save a few dollars a month by using a CRM that isn’t designed for real estate agents, our answer to this question remains the same as it was 10 years ago: even a bad CRM is better than no CRM!
Generic sales CRMs like Hubspot or Pipedrive may be cheap or even free, but as the old saying goes, you get what you pay for. While these CRMs might work in a pinch to keep you organized, you’ll need to upgrade to paid versions to get the very basic features you’ll need for real estate.
For example, the $14 per month, entry-level plan for Pipedrive doesn’t even include basic email drip campaigns. For that, you’ll need to shell out an eye-watering $29 a month — that’s more expensive than LionDesk, a full-featured real estate CRM that includes pre-built email and text drip campaigns.
Our take? AI certainly has the potential to revolutionize the CRM space, but as of this update, we’re still not convinced. Uness we’re talking predictive analytics, AI features are helpful, but not game changers for CRMs — yet. That said, older real estate CRM software companies have an unfair advantage. They can use millions of (or even tens of millions) of historical data points from buyers and sellers who interact with their CRM as training data for their AI.
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