5 Best CRM for Real Estate Agents

After thorough analysis completed over the past five years, Startups’ team of experts can unveil our podium of the top CRM systems for real estate agents:

• Zendesk Sell has internal texting and call-making capabilities – brilliant for teams needing organised and accessible information on the go
• Jupix is a specialist estate agency software that has tools for everything from landlord communication to recording maintenance jobs
• monday.com features world-class design and template features that make it ideal for tracking property sales throughout their uniquely long lifecycles

Few transactions take longer than buying a house. Lengthy processes often lead to miscommunication, delays, and customer dissatisfaction, which makes CRM software immensely valuable for streamlining the process.

But when you’re running a busy real estate agency, how do you find the time to research an overpopulated market like CRM?

Below, Startups has done 90% of the work for you. Read on to find out what our top real estate CRM recommendations are based on precise pain points for the property market.

Or, to save time, use our specially-designed online quote-matching tool. It’s 100% free and will find you the best provider to suit your agency’s unique needs in just one minute.

Zendesk Sell for remote working

Best for: firms based in remote locations

It’s rare for an estate agent to spend a lot of time at the desk. More often than not, you’ll be on the road conducting property visits or showings. Agents therefore need a CRM that supports remote work.

Zendesk Sell is the unbeaten software champion for this purpose. As an intuitive and easy-to-use tool, it’s a great solution for tracking and facilitating client meetings, house viewings, and valuations.

The app boasts an internal text messaging (SMS) function to help you quickly touch base with prospects and customers for appointments. Handily, you can also make and receive calls inside the app plus easily schedule visits with Zendesk’s calendar and reminder functions.

It doesn’t end there. The smart ‘geolocation’ feature allows agents to search for nearby prospects or customers and get directions. That’s why we recommend Zendesk as the number one choice for agencies based in remote locations, as a CRM that supports working from anywhere.

Zendesk Sell is also perfect for sales monitoring and lead generation. Our research team is a big fan of the system as a strategy for boosting agent efficiency, thanks to its ‘Smart Lists’ feature. It took our testers just one minute to build an entire email list of contacts.

Zendesk Sell pricing

At £19 per user, per month, Zendesk Sell is slightly higher on the cost spectrum for CRM than brands like monday.com. This price tag might invite scepticism, but it’s actually excellent value for money.

Jupix for landlord management

Best for: lettings agencies

Jupix’s modern file management system keeps multiple properties spinning at the same time. We recommend it to letting agencies needing to deal with lots of renters, as it can help with tasks like monitoring safety certificates or overseeing maintenance issues.

Lettings agents are also legally required to store hundreds of legislative documents concerning letting and managing a property. Jupix’s Document Editor module allows a user to create, edit and delete documents from inside the software.

Whether it’s a contract, tenant financial statement, or record of viewings, employees will be able to easily access and manage the entire file system at the click of a button.

Jupix pricing

Easily Jupix’s worst trait is its impossible-to-find pricing information. For a full cost breakdown, users need to speak to the sales team via an ‘I’m interested’ button on Jupix’s website.

From user reviews, we estimate Jupix starts at around £75 per month. This makes it a premium product compared to Pipedrive.

Lack of transparency is unfortunately an issue with a lot of business software tools. That’s why we designed our online comparison tool. It’s 100% free to use and gives you direct quotes from the top providers on the market – a much quicker way to compare costs.

monday.com for customisation

Best for: end-to-end property management

If there’s one area where monday.com really excels, it’s managing workflow. The app’s feature-set is geared towards customisation and design, perfect for creating a centralised, visual sales pipeline.

Using monday’s vast library of preset templates, create a dashboard to manage all of your properties at every stage of the purchase cycle. These are tailorable with:

• Custom fields
• Custom forms
• Custom task types

If you have a separate board cataloguing your buyers, you can then ‘link’ the two together to illustrate how many interested parties a property has at any given time.

Thanks to monday’s collaboration tools which permit you to delegate work to other users, you can also assign properties to different agents in your firm. You can also store contracts and images in shared folders, and keep track of all the closed deals.

Plus, a big appeal of the platform is its colour-coded formatting. Identify problem areas at a glance with its simple ‘traffic-light’ task ranking system (pictured below).

monday.com pricing

monday.com has a slightly confusing cost structure. Our full pricing review has more information, but essentially you’ll pay for users in the below increments:

• 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 100, 200+

Users pay for the upper limit that accommodates the size of your team. So, if you have 13 people on your team, you’d have to select 15 seats. The closer you are to the upper limit, the better value your plan will be.

monday.com Basic is the app’s lowest-priced tier. It permits unlimited users for just £7 per seat.

HubSpot for social media

Best for: agencies based in sought-after regions

Given the huge competition in the UK property market at the moment, agencies need to find clever ways to stand out.

Particularly in sought-after areas – like holiday favourites Cornwall or Richmond – HubSpot is the ideal way to engage in low-cost guerilla marketing and differentiate your agency’s offering from the market.

On just its free plan, you’ll get more social media integrations than any other platform we looked at. There’s also

• Webforms
• Chatbots
• Email editor
• Website visitor tracking

All of the above create a unique arsenal with which to publicise your agency and stand out from the competition.

Combined with HubSpot’s list segmentation tools, you’ll be able to organise your contacts and properties by age, location, budget, or any other detail. Savvy agents can then use this information to curate personalised campaigns with HubSpot’s specialist email editor.

HubSpot pricing

We allocated full marks to HubSpot for pricing, largely due to its generous free plan. However, you’ll have to put up with HubSpot branding on all marketing materials.

For a more professional finish, we recommend HubSpot Marketing Hub. It costs £38 per month (billed annually) for the Starter plan.

Pipedrive for collaboration

Best for: large agencies with 3+ service departments

More established estate agencies have lots of agents and service departments. Without the right team-oriented tools, this can lead to miscommunication or delays.

If your agency fits this description – or is aiming to grow its service offering in the future – Pipedrive is an outstanding option. In fact, because Pipedrive houses an unparalleled list of communication integrations, siloing is barely an obstacle to consider.

Use the app’s WhatsApp integration to review your calls and messages and organise them by client and property. Download email integrations like Gmail or Outlook integrations to examine email chains and issue follow-ups after a client appointment.

Users can also record discussions before you forget and access property details, as well as getting automated reminders so you never miss a client meeting.

Because they deal with personal information like addresses and bank details, real estate agencies have to remember that cyberattacks are a big concern.

Thankfully, Pipedrive is our highest-scoring CRM for security tools.The app offers security emails in case of suspicious customer activity, along with multi-factor authentication. There’s even user hierarchies, so you can limit which agents can view or access personal information.

Pipedrive pricing

The platform’s lowest-tiered plan, Pipedrive Essential, costs £14.90 per user, per month (billed annually).

Read our full Pipedrive pricing review to get a full breakdown of the app’s pricing, plans, hidden fees and best alternatives.

How do I choose the right CRM for my real estate business?

To reach these results, we first identified four of the biggest real estate CRM pain points, and considered how well each of our top CRM platforms for small businesses could alleviate them.

They are:

Brand recognition

The country is currently experiencing a property boom that shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, according to Halifax, the price of the average UK home rose by just over £28,000 in the past year alone.

Being able to successfully market your properties and business is hugely important in such a competitive market.

Remote working

Estate agents spend a lot of their time away from the desk, travelling back and forth from house viewings and valuations.

CRMs like Zendesk Sell, which has a mobile app, are a good way to input and view customer data without having to take a full-size office with you everywhere you go.

Scalability

As the market develops, so too will your business. You want a software brand that adapts to new hires and manages more sales so you’re not missing out on growth opportunities.

Look for a scalable solution, like monday.com. Its pricing plans are calculated by the number of seats, rather than users. Move to the next tier without risking a huge amount of capital.

Database management

Real estate professionals are 26% more productive with a CRM for real estate. Largely, this is due to data management tools.

Property inquiries and valuations, buyer info, and maintenance records are just some of the many details estate agent CRMs help to keep updated in your database. Advanced filtering tools, automated dashboards and charts, and custom fields will also save time.

Verdict

Zendesk Sell is our ultimate recommendation for real estate agencies as a system. Its popular mobile app and tracking tools make site visits effortless for agents.

Our runner-up is Jupix. It's jam-packed full of expert real estate features, and its landlord portal makes it particularly hard to beat for letting agents.

Given the huge number of CRM platforms available on the market, we’re loath to say that our recommendations will be right for everyone. To minimise the chance of a bad investment, make sure you compare quotes from any CRM platform before purchasing.

It doesn’t have to be an in-depth research project that takes half a decade – we’ve already done that for you.

Instead, use the Startups exclusive online CRM comparison tool. Based on our results, we’ll help you quickly find the provider and pricing that best fits your unique business strategy.