6 Best Real Estate Lead Generation Websites for 2018

Real estate lead generation websites help agents generate, collect, and convert leads in their farm area, freeing up their time to focus on their clients. We looked at the leading lead generation websites and compared their features, price points, and usability to help you choose the best option to maximize your conversions.

Top 6 Real Estate Lead Generation Websites for 2018

How We Evaluated Real Estate Lead Generation Websites

We evaluated real estate lead generation websites by primarily comparing available features and price. Real estate agents have specific needs that differ from standard websites, such as IDX integration and lead capturing. Examining basic features specific to agents, along with the cost of the website, were important in determining return on the agent’s investment.

These are the specific criteria we used to review each of the websites offered.

• IDX Integration – Integrating IDX was considered an essential component of lead generation, and the ability to search for homes on the site was noted.
• Mobile Responsiveness – Every website was evaluated for mobile-friendliness and any mobile features given the increase in real estate searches via mobile by consumers.
• CRM Integration – Customer relationship management (CRM) tools can be an essential component for nurturing leads and relationships, and were considered in our review.
• Email Lead Tools – Email drip campaigns and other lead generation functions through email were considered in our review.
• Lead Capture – Onsite lead capturing abilities such as forms, pop-ups, and home valuation tools were noted in our review.
• Blogging Ability – Agents can generate traffic and secure leads through their blogs. We considered website blogging ability as one component to lead generation.
• Marketing Availability – Many companies we reviewed offer important lead generation boosters to their sites, such as pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns and Facebook Marketing, and these were considered in our review.
• SMS Functionality – Most agents find texting functionality can be an important part of lead nurturing and communication, and so was reviewed in our assessment.
• Third-Party Integrations – Many lead generation websites will help you integrate your leads from other sources to help drive conversions, so this was a factor in evaluation.
• Price – Price point was considered in evaluating lead generation websites.
• Customer Service – Websites will only be as good as your ability to use their features, and so we considered customer service an important factor.

Best Real Estate Overall Lead Generation Website: Real Geeks

We recommend Real Geeks as the best overall real estate lead generation website because they were cost effective, had scalability in their PPC marketing and managed Facebook marketing, allowed significant integrations, and offered tools that helped busy agents nurture leads, like the SMS autoresponder with templates.

Real Geeks Pricing

Real Geeks offered an impressive price point for the array of lead generation tools available, plus the ability to add more tools or increase your lead generation ability through ads or managed campaigns as you need. The only lead generation website to beat this price point was Placester, which offered fewer lead generation features and limited ability to scale.

*Note that marketing services by the Real Geeks team is at an additional cost. PPC campaigns start at $500 per month and Facebook marketing by the Real Geeks team is $300 per month, plus your ad spend.

Real Geeks Features

Real Geeks was able to integrate many lead generation features into their website design and offer ancillary features that support and direct to that website. For example, you can have the team at Real Geeks run Facebook or PPC campaigns that further enhance your lead generation.

Real Geeks includes an impressive range of functionality in their websites. For example, IDX integration functions smoothly, and updates every 15 minutes to capture any new listings added. This was the fastest that we noted, with BoomTown having automatic updates to their MLS every 30 minutes.

For teams, a particular feature we liked was the ability of the lead capture mechanism to assign idle leads and place it within their own CRM so that you can set your system to nurture and respond to leads automatically through email or SMS. There are a variety of templates for email and SMS to make the process easier, and the integrations allow for leads from a variety of sources like Zillow.

Real Geeks also offers a Facebook marketing tool, which is not offered by competitors like BoomTown or Placester, that helps users create Facebook ads and track them. Real Geeks also offers social sharing buttons and the ability for users to find you across platforms, which was common across lead generation websites we reviewed.

Lastly, we liked the additional features that Real Geeks offers to generate and nurture leads. Real Geeks offers PPC/AdWords and managed Facebook campaigns with their in-house team for an additional fee. If driving traffic yourself, Real Geeks gives users the opportunity to set email or SMS campaigns with their CRM to nurture leads and provides templates to automatically respond through either method to incoming leads to make the process easier.

What’s Missing from Real Geeks

Our review of Real Geeks struggled to find anything missing from their lead generation services. While they were missing some of the more unique features of other services, such as the “done for you blogging” that Easy Agent Pro offers, this is a relatively minor feature that most users won’t miss.

One thing we did think Real Geeks could improve was the appearance of their real estate lead generation websites. While there was no critique of functionality, their website designs could be improved as well as the customization options expanded. Agents are now competing with others that have chic custom websites, so our only critique is that Real Geeks offer some expansion on what agents can do to enhance the appearance of their lead generation website.

Visit Real Geeks

Best Real Estate Lead Generation Website for Agents Who Prefer Basic Lead Generation Features: Placester

Placester was our recommendation for those who prefer more basic lead generation features to help save costs. Placester offers a mobile-friendly real estate lead generation website that is easy to set up. It includes features like CRM functioning, email automation, and property searches to get you started in lead generation without anything complicated to navigate or set up for half the monthly price of Real Geeks.

Placester Pricing

Placester offers the least expensive pricing we reviewed, but also has the most limited lead generation functionality compared to Chime and others. For an agent who wants basic lead generation, Placester is simple to set up, simple to execute, and provides good quality leads.

*Note: As of the time of this article, a basic agent website with Placester was free to NAR members. Contact for details and features is available through that offer.

Placester Features

Placester offers an easily constructed and beautiful website that is mobile-friendly and offers solid lead generation features. Their CRM and website are mobile-friendly, and they integrate some useful lead generation features such as their home valuation page, which was an additional $50 for Real Geeks. This is just one way that Placester made lead generation simple, straightforward, and easy for both visitors and the agent to navigate.

Placester offers some useful features for the agent looking for a solid real estate lead generation website at a great price. Email lead tools allow you to segment, target, and automate emails. Although there is no additional marketing from the team of Placester that we noted, it may not be necessary for someone not interested in managed Facebook or AdWords campaigns or for someone skilled enough to run their own. Other companies that offer managed ad campaigns, like Real Geeks or Zurple, have higher price points. We appreciated that you can text directly from the app, which allows you to respond to leads quickly through the CRM.

What’s Missing from Placester

Placester is missing the services that go above and beyond a basic lead generation platform. Almost every company we reviewed tended to have some services that make their particular real estate lead generation website services stand out. For example, Chime offers transaction management as part of their platform and Real Geeks allows for idle lead reassignment.

The strength of Placester, its simplicity, is also its primary weakness. While they provide a solid basic lead generation platform at a fantastic price, the base features may not offer enough for some in real estate. For example, some realtors may genuinely appreciate the Facebook marketing tool of Real Geeks that allows them to create and track ads, or having a company completely manage a campaign on their behalf as Real Geeks also offers.

Visit Placester

Best Real Estate Lead Generation Website for Personalized Lead Capture at a Reasonable Price: Easy Agent Pro

Easy Agent Pro was the best for agents who wanted personalized lead capture but at a reasonable price point. Easy Agent Pro offers features that go beyond the basics of lead generation, such as their automated text follow-up, and have some unique offerings like their “done for you blogging” that give agents a lead capture with a feel of personalization, all at a cost that was the second least expensive option we reviewed.

Easy Agent Pro Pricing

We found Easy Agent Pro to be a great value for the services offered through their real estate lead generation websites. While not as inexpensive as Placester at $99/month, it was the second least expensive of those we reviewed at $159/month, and included significant features that can make the experience feel personalized to potential clients.

Their Leadsites package for individual agents starts at $159/month plus a one-time initial set-up fee, and does not include a CRM (although it integrates seamlessly with most).

Easy Agent Pro Features

Easy Agent Pro offers a mobile-first design, fantastic “done for you blogging,” unlimited landing pages, tracking pixels, and automated text message follow-up that help it stand out from the crowd. While real estate lead generation sites like Zurple offer no blogging ability, Easy Agent Pro will actually have their team write two posts a week on your behalf.

The mobile-first design of Easy Agent Pro was noticeable at first glance. The websites appear crisp and almost better on mobile than desktop. Clearly, Easy Agent Pro is designing with mobile in mind, where many users are looking. While every company we reviewed offer real estate lead generation websites that are mobile-friendly, a mobile-first design was noticeable.

Every time a potential client opts into a lead capture form or other lead generation tool on the site, you can have an automated text message sent to follow up. Easy Agent Pro also offers a tracking pixel that will show ads to potential clients who did not opt to sign in to your lead capture forms.

Another unique feature we loved about Easy Agent Pro was the unlimited landing pages. No other lead generation websites we reviewed offered this feature, and because Easy Agent Pro allows you to have a drag-and-drop design, the landing pages are quick and easy to launch.

What’s Missing from Easy Agent Pro

Easy Agent Pro is missing a CRM and email lead generation opportunities. While we appreciated the personalization and time saving nature of blogging, as well as the tracking pixels and mobile-first design, these are some significant areas that could be improved upon.

All other real estate lead generation websites we reviewed contained a CRM, such as Zurple, that even contained automated lead nurturing based on behavioral triggers. By not including a CRM, Easy Agent Pro misses an opportunity for further lead management. However, because Easy Agent Pro does integrate with almost any CRM we could think of, this may not be a large problem. For someone who already has a CRM they love, Easy Agent Pro could be a solid real estate lead generation website.

Another area we saw for improvement was in email lead generation options, which are currently limited. While Real Geeks offered automated email drip campaigns, email blasts and templates, this is an area Easy Agent Pro could improve.

Visit Easy Agent Pro

Best Real Estate Lead Generation Website for Large Brokerages: BoomTown

We recommend BoomTown for large brokerages that want a lead generation website that is poised for high volume and can easily scale with the growth. BoomTown offers some unique features that brokerages will appreciate, like MLS hot sheets that immediately direct attention to the hot new listings getting attention on the MLS, and an amazing “share library” for users that capitalizes on what works for email campaigns.

BoomTown Pricing

BoomTown was the most expensive option of the real estate lead generation websites we reviewed. While BoomTown offers some nuanced features that others do not, their entry level plan starts at $1,000/month. The next closest in price was Zurple at $349/month. BoomTown offers three plans, all with a yearly contract.

*Note: Each plan has an additional one-time onboarding fee, to be determined.

BoomTown Features

BoomTown has some features that make them particularly well-suited for larger brokerages. One example is that they offer individual agent subpages that can be customized to each agent’s needs. This means each agent on a team can send clients to a personally-branded BoomTown page, not just to an overall team page.

BoomTown offers an amazing sharing library that capitalizes on “what works,” graded by open rates. While a number of real estate lead generation websites offer templates, such as Real Geeks, this collection is far different. The library has dozens of email drip campaigns designed and written by other BoomTown users and, with open rates already established, you can be sure you are selecting one that makes a big impact on your leads. If you want to go it alone and design your own drip campaign, you can certainly do that, but using others can save you time and testing.

At the Grow and Advance tiers, BoomTown’s CRM is second to none. Billed as a “predictive CRM,” it allows you to not only segment leads and design drip campaigns, but to offer leads something of actual value: homes that are a great fit for their needs. While many services like Placester offer drip campaigns, BoomTown’s advanced fit score algorithm will assign properties a number score from 1-100 that determines how good of a “fit” they are for a given lead. They also offer what they call a visual hot sheet that shows new listings, price changes, or other changes tailored to each lead’s criteria.

What’s Missing from BoomTown

While BoomTown offers more features than Real Geeks or Zurple, and has a CRM that’s more advanced, the price point of BoomTown is significantly more expensive than any of the real estate lead generation websites we reviewed.

While it can be argued that solid lead results more than justify the price for an individual agent, we recommended BoomTown specifically for brokerages where the cost could be shouldered more readily and the features likely justify the expense.

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Best Real Estate Lead Generation Website for Automation: Zurple

We recommend Zurple as the best real estate lead generation website for busy agents who would benefit from increased automation. Zurple saves agents time in the lead nurturing process by its ability to automatically engage with the lead and the ability to look for behavioral cues. Zurple will even send a notification to agents if a lead exhibits behavior that indicates they are serious buyers rather than casual browsers, and it was this type of ability that impressed us.

Zurple Pricing

Zurple had the second-highest price point for lead generation websites, coming in well below BoomTown but significantly above Real Geeks.

Zurple pricing is $349/month for agents plus a $199 to $499 one-time onboarding fee.

Zurple Features

A feature unique to Zurple, and not available on Real Geeks or Boomtown, was that it engages leads with automatic emails and texts in response to 25 separate behaviors. For example, if a lead favors a property or visits the same property multiple times, different emails will be triggered and sent to them.

Zurple helps busy agents in their lead nurturing. For example, not only will they send an agent notification if a lead is a serious buyer, they will nurture leads on behalf of agents. This means that you can have dozens or even hundreds of leads being nurtured and managed at the same time by the system.

This type of parsing and automation frees agents from busy work and pursuing leads that go nowhere. Not only does Zurple actually engage and nurture leads on an agent’s behalf, like a virtual assistant might, but it allows the agent to step in and take over for warmer leads and keep colder leads on the automated lead nurturing program until they exhibit more serious buyer behavior. This meticulous detail to the automation of lead nurturing was not found in any of the other real estate lead generation websites we reviewed.

What’s Missing from Zurple

The two primary downsides to Zurple are the lack of a blog and the lack of customization ability on your lead nurturing emails. While Easy Agent Pro even has “done for you” blogging, not having a blog at all can make the site feel impersonal to a visitor. For some, the lack of a blog is not a deal-breaker, but if blogging is a way you personally speak to your audience, Zurple does not allow you that option.

The second drawback to Zurple is that their automated emails offer very limited customization options. For example, you can add your email signature to emails so they sound like they’re coming from you, but aside from this, your customization ability on email is very limited. How individual agents speak might greatly vary, and not having the ability to reflect your own style could be difficult for some agents and may come across as impersonal to potential clients.

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Best Real Estate Lead Generation Website for Small Boutique Firms: Chime

We selected Chime as providing the best real estate lead generation website for small boutique firms because of their beautiful design that appeals to boutique clientele as well as high lead generation that gives the brokerage the functionality they want. In addition to providing all of the lead generation tools you’d expect from your website, we also appreciated the additional transaction management capabilities that would benefit a small firm.

Chime Pricing

Chime offers middle-of-the-road pricing compared to other real estate lead generation websites. While it is more expensive than Real Geeks or Placester, it remains far less expensive than BoomTown, even in its more advanced service. Chime offers three monthly plans, all of which receive discounts if you pay for the entire year in advance.

Chime Features

Chime brands themselves as “a complete real estate solution” because they offer lead generation websites and tools, an integrated CRM, and collaboration tools you can use with your team. While other services have tools that take teams into account, such as the idle lead reassignment of Real Geeks, no one offers the transaction management component that Chime does.

The transaction management features allow you to create workflows for yourself or your team, have paperless file management, and have basic accounting throughout the process. For small brokerages, a broker could also access the closing data, revenue, and other metrics of the entire firm.

The CRM for Chime is one of the most mobile-friendly we reviewed. While Easy Agent Pro has a clear, mobile-first design that allows your website and features to function and appear seamless on a phone, Chime has a distinct app for their CRM that allows everything to be managed on your smartphone. One of the benefits of the Chime CRM is that it doesn’t require a desktop at all. You can chat with other agents or team members through the CRM and collaborate as need be.

What’s Missing from Chime

Chime would benefit from improved hours in their phone customer support service, improved automated lead nurturing, and perhaps some services offered outside of the platform by the Chime Team. For example, Easy Agent Pro offers “done for you blogging” twice a week and the ability to create unlimited landing pages, both of which Chime does not offer.

While Chime does offer some lead nurturing, like suggesting leads to follow up with and scripts for texts, it did not provide the automation we saw with some others that could save agents time. For example, Zurple had automated lead nurturing based on behavioral triggers and continued the process until an agent elected to take over. While Zurple certainly had the most advanced automated lead nurturing process, an increase in this ability would certain add to Chime’s offerings.

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The Bottom Line

Selecting the best real estate lead generation website to move your business forward is a big decision and large investment. Reviewing the price point, features, and calculating which serve your needs best will determine which service is right for you and your team.

We have reviewed the best six real estate lead generations for you to select from. While Real Geeks offered the highest functionality and options for the price point, there are many options available that might be the best option for you.

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