The Best Real Estate Crm For Every Budget In 2024

Top Producer review: Features, pricing & alternatives

The 7 best real estate lead generation websites for 2024

The best real estate software for 2024: 17 top picks for agents + teams

Sierra Interactive: Best marketing automation for teams

Overall Rating: 4.8 out of 5

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.

Features

• Fully integrated dialer and texting with Sierra AI for quick response times
• Customizable action plans for automated sequences of emails, texts, and voicemails
• Extensive activity tracking and tagging system for detailed lead management
• Search activity monitoring to understand lead preferences
• E-alerts and market updates for keeping leads informed and engaged

Pros & Cons

• Extensive marketing automations including ringless voicemails
• Intelligent lead routing to distribute leads effectively among team members
• Advanced reporting tools to track ROI and monitor agent performance
• Comprehensive lead follow-up and nurturing system with automated action plans and workflows
• Mobile app for managing leads and tasks on the go, with bulk actions and smart filters

• May not be the most economical option for solo agents
• Some customization may require third-party assistance
• Websites have limited customization options

Pricing

Sierra Interactive’s core package starts at $499 per month for five users.

Real Geeks: Best All-in-one CRM platform for solo agents

Overall Rating: 4.8 out of 5

Real 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.

Features

• Customizable to optimize real estate workflows
• Real-time activity monitoring for immediate lead engagement
• Comprehensive lead filtering options
• Integrated notifications for prompt follow-ups
• Social media integration for enhanced lead understanding and engagement

Pros & Cons

• Live feed feature allows agents to monitor real-time activity, identifying active leads for timely contact and outreach
• Advanced search filtering based on various criteria, including user behavior and geographic areas, for targeted follow-ups
• Immediate email and SMS notifications when leads enter the system, enabling quick response
• Automatic discovery of leads’ social profiles, aiding in more personalized engagement

• AI-created SEO content might not rank well on search engines
• IDX websites are not as sleek as higher-priced competitors

Pricing

• Establish: $299 per month (12-month contract), $499 per month (six-month contract)
• Grow: $599 per month (12-month contract), $799 per month (six-month contract)
• Expand: $999 per month (12-month contract), $1,299 (six-month contact)
• Conquer: $1,599 per month (12-month contract), $1,899 (six-month contract)
• Free trial: Not offered

CINC: Best all-in-one CRM platform for teams & brokerages

Overall Rating: 4.9 out of 5

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.

Features

• Hyperlocal marketing strategies for an in-depth understanding of client preferences
• Seamless integration of targeted leads with DX websites and CRM
• Marketing automation with behavior-driven follow-ups
• Smart suggestions for optimizing communication and conversion strategies

Pros & Cons

• Leads included in the monthly price
• Comprehensive CRM system for detailed client management’
• Sophisticated AI lead nurturing tools 
• Advanced demographic targeting for hyper local lead generation
• No contract required, providing flexibility
• Guaranteed ROI in the first year, appealing to ambitious agents and teams

• Not the best fit for newer solo agents
• CRM software platform not available without leads

Pricing

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.

Hubspot Sales Hub: Best free CRM for new agents

Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5

If 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.

Features

• Zero cost CRM
• Mobile app
• Email reply tracking
• Customizable fields
• List segmentation
• Facebook Messenger Integration
• Basic Facebook ad management
• AI blog post generator

Pros & Cons

• Free
• Basic lead segmentation and organization tools
• Bulk email sending (with a catch)
• Email templates (with a catch)

• Emails are branded with “powered by Hubspot”
• Cannot call leads from the CRM
• Very limited integrations with real estate apps
• No drip campaigns
• No texting features
• No AI features
• No email or text campaign libraries
• No ad creation or marketing tools

Pricing

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.

How to choose the right CRM for your real estate business 

A 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:

1. Integrations: It should work with the tools you’re already using

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.

2. Scalability: It should grow as your business grows

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?

3. Features: A CRM should solve today’s (and tomorrow’s) problems

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:

• Lead management features: Easy and intuitive lead segmentation, custom workflows, click-to-call features, daily task reminders, daily hot sheets, basic transaction management
• Marketing features: Direct mail marketing, social media marketing, and IDX websites
• Prospecting features: Auto-dialers, PPC ad builders, automated home valuations, done-for-you lead generation
• Lead nurturing features: Email and text drip campaigns, AI chatbots, automated market reports
• AI features: AI text messaging assistants, AI writing assistants

4. Stability: It needs to work 24/7 with no bugs

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.

5. A large established user base: More users = more ideas to solve problems

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.

6. An intuitive user experience (UX) that’s customizable

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?

6. High-quality onboarding, training & customer support 

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.

Best real estate CRM: FAQs

Why do real estate agents need a CRM anyway?

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.

Should I use the CRM my brokerage provides?

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.

Can’t I just use a cheap or free non-real estate CRM like Pipedrive or Hubspot?

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.

Are AI features important for a CRM?

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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