Real estate agents juggle several lead-generation campaigns simultaneously – from the company’s website, social media platforms, and open houses, among others. With leads pouring in from these sources, things can get out of hand quickly. That’s where customer relationship management (CRM) software comes in.
CRMs can help you track where your leads come from and prioritize the most valuable ones. They can also automate your marketing and sales processes, taking a load off your shoulders. But if you’re new to the real estate industry, you might not have a budget for a CRM yet. Fortunately, there are free real estate CRMs you can leverage to grow your business.
HubSpot
HubSpot can be a powerful lead-generation tool for real estate professionals. You get a generous helping of features with its free version, including unlimited users and a whopping 1 million contacts. The best part is you can manage all your data from wherever you are via HubSpot’s user-friendly mobile app.
HubSpot offers various outreach options, making it easy to talk to existing clients and generate new ones. You can integrate it with your email service provider to send emails from your dashboard. You can also automate your emails and track their progress through detailed analytics.
That said, you can only schedule individual emails with the free version, making it challenging to execute mass email campaigns.
Aside from robust communication tools, you also get a real-time snapshot of your sales pipeline and comprehensive sales reports. You can track each contact and see where they are in the funnel. In addition, it’s impressive how much you can customize without spending a dime. You can add as many as 80 fields under each contract, most of which are responsive.
HubSpot is a comprehensive platform for lead generation and nurturing. It’s one of the best free real estate CRMs, ideal for real estate professionals ready to scale up their operations.
Agile CRM
If social media is integral to your real estate marketing strategy, Agile CRM is the no-brainer software for you. It has an impressive social media integration system, allowing users to gather their leads from Facebook, X, and other platforms in one place.
Using widgets, you can add your social media contacts to your dashboard and interact with them from there. The free version supports a maximum of 50,000 contacts.
Agile CRM makes it easy to observe social media trends. You can track brand mentions, see what influencers in your niche are doing, and learn about customer needs and concerns. When you can see how your leads behave online, you can use those insights to create better social media marketing strategies. That can translate to more real estate business for you.
Agile CRM puts a fun spin on its user interface. It gamifies the sales process, providing an element of competition to motivate users. It’s easy on the eyes, too, using bold colors and attractive graphics to showcase your progress at a glance. Its lead scoring is another standout feature, which you can automate according to your preferred triggers.
While the free version is robust enough, you only need to pay $9 monthly to access all features. That makes Agile CRM the perfect choice for those seeking a cheap CRM for real estate.
Freshsales
If you have a hands-on approach as a real estate professional, Freshsales can help you nurture and follow up with your leads efficiently. Its free version already has countless communication channels, including phone calls, texting, and emails. You can store unlimited contacts and build workflows that help you keep track of prospects as they move along the funnel.
However, its most exciting feature would be the AI chatbot. You can program it with FAQs and templated answers to make it sound on-brand with your business. The chatbot can be your sales sidekick, keeping your leads engaged and increasing the chances of conversion.
As advanced as these features may sound, you don’t have to worry because the Freshsales interface is user-friendly. Another advantage is that Freshsales is part of the Freshworks ecosystem. You can integrate it with platforms like Freshservice, Freshmarketer, and Freshchat to create a seamless work experience for your real estate business.
The only downside of the free version is that you’re limited to three users. But that shouldn’t be a problem if you’re a solo real estate agent. If you’re working with a big team, you can pay $15 monthly, which is reasonable for such a comprehensive CRM.
Hotsheet
If you spend too much time on lead management and not enough on closing deals, Hotsheet can help put your priorities in order. It lessens your manual work, offering an efficient way to track leads and manage client interactions. You can monitor up to 1,000 contacts in the free version with unlimited follow-ups.
It’s not an all-in-one CRM, but that might be its best advantage. It offers a straightforward, clutter-free approach, letting you focus on the most valuable conversations. It also has helpful scheduling tools that ensure nothing falls through the cracks. You’ll get your notifications via email to keep you updated with top-priority leads and urgent tasks.
If you have room in your budget, you can pay a small monthly fee to enjoy Hotsheet’s most outstanding feature: its agent-to-agent referral system. Your chances of snagging referrals increase dramatically with this feature.
It alerts you whenever there’s a new referral on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. It’s on a first-come-first-serve basis, so you need to act fast.
One downside to note about Hotsheet is that it doesn’t have a mobile version. That can be limiting for real estate professionals who are always on the go.
Bitrix24
Managing a large real estate team on top of clients and leads can be overwhelming. If that’s your situation, Bitrix24 can help streamline your processes. It’s a collaboration platform that allows for efficient group communication. It also doubles as a CRM that can lend itself well to the real estate industry.
With the free plan, you get advanced project management tools that can help you support your team’s progress. You can add unlimited agents and monitor their client interactions. In addition, you can assign unlimited tasks to them and manage infinite contacts and deals. That’s hard to beat for a free platform. It’s the perfect solution for real estate teams that rely heavily on internal communication.
The best part about Bitrix24 is that you don’t have to switch to other platforms to talk to your clients and leads. Its intuitive interface lets you switch between your agents and clients. Whenever there’s progress with a client, you can easily update your agents and communicate your strategies with them.
Something to consider about Bitrix24 is that it uses a cloud system. It can be hard to access information and documents if you’re on the go and don’t have internet access. Also, the free version only comes with 5 GB of storage, which can be limiting for a big team.
Insightly
If you’re a data-driven real estate professional, Insightly has a lot to offer. You can learn from various insights, including opportunity reports, contact reports, and other performance metrics. Insightly also provides email open rates and recipient details like location and what OS they’re using.
With access to helpful data, it’s easier to analyze the performance of your campaigns and identify which strategies are effective. Customization is another one of Insightly’s strong suites. It offers flexible email and pipeline templates, allowing you to tailor many of its features based on your needs.
There are many other features to explore on the unpaid version of Insightly. You can create to-do lists under each lead to stay on top of tasks. You can also organize your leads and contacts and schedule email marketing campaigns. The platform also has web-to-lead capture for better conversion and on-the-go access through its mobile app.
While there’s a maximum of 2,500 contacts, it’s easy to overlook this drawback, given the other advanced features. The real challenge with Insightly is the lack of customer support for the free version. That’s something to consider if you’re new to CRMs.
ClickUp
Project management and CRM have close ties in the real estate business. That’s why ClickUp makes sense. It’s a project management platform with a free CRM, letting you manage your team and clients simultaneously.
On the project management side, it offers robust communication and organization tools’ It’s easy to delegate tasks, track your agents’ progress, and analyze the effectiveness of strategies. You and your team can gather in one place and collaborate on projects.
As for its CRM platform, you can tell it has real estate professionals in mind. You have access to ready-to-use templates for your emails and workflows, which you can tailor according to your needs and goals. It’s ideal for those who want to customize every step of the process to maximize productivity.
A downside to ClickUp is that it might be overwhelming for CRM beginners with all the automation and customization features. But the interface is intuitive, so finding your way around shouldn’t take too long.
Streak
If you’re the traditional type who prefers to use spreadsheets to manage your leads, Streak won’t take you too far from your comfort zone. It turns your Gmail into a CRM platform without the bells and whistles. It looks like a humble spreadsheet but has impressive email management capabilities.
Streak’s mobile version is a pleasure to use while you’re out and about. It logs all your calls so you have a record of your client interactions for the day. You can also add notes under each call to keep track of updates and urgent matters. Thanks to the app, you can carry all your contacts and pipelines wherever your work takes you.
If you’re familiar with Gmail and other Google Workspace apps, Streak will be easy to navigate. The learning curve isn’t steep, so it’s ideal for CRM beginners. That said, Streak has simple features and is incomparable to the more robust platforms on this list. It’s for those who prefer a no-fuss approach to lead management and don’t see the use of a full-blown CRM.
EngageBay
EngageBay has only been around since 2017, so it’s relatively new. But it’s making waves in the CRM space, proving itself a worthy competitor to HubSpot. Its email marketing capabilities are impressive, and you don’t have to pay a dollar to use them.
You can use EngageBay to execute drip campaigns, sending out as many as 1,000 emails. It offers ready-to-use templates, so you don’t have to spend too much time setting everything up. Beyond emails, you can also create landing pages, newsletters, and auto-responders. That means the platform offers more than lead management. It’s for generating leads, too.
EngageBay is an ideal CRM for real estate agents working solo. It has excellent customer support, so you don’t have to worry if you don’t have a team to help you with the technical aspects of CRM. Also, it’s not too heavy on the budget if you decide to move up from the unpaid version.
IXACT Contact
IXACT Contact isn’t technically free. But it does have a free trial, so it makes it onto the list as an honorable mention. It’s worth exploring for its “Keep In Touch Dashboard,” which calculates how frequently you should talk to clients and leads. It puts the high-priority ones at the forefront of your dashboard so you’ll remember to reach out to them.
It even reminds you of anniversaries, birthdays, and other special dates you note on your contacts’ profiles. That takes the guesswork out of the relationship-building process and ensures your timing is always right. The platform is also handy for creating drip campaigns. That will help convert prospects into long-term clients and increase your chances of landing referrals.
You can use IXACT Contact for free for five weeks. Unfortunately, you have to upgrade to their paid plans after that. But at least you can test it out before you commit.
Choose a CRM That Will Help You Achieve Your Goals
If you’re looking for free real estate CRM software, there are plenty of choices on the market. But not all of them are beneficial to your real estate business.
Choose a CRM with features that support your needs and goals. Consider factors like ease of use, third-party software integration, and customer communication capabilities. With the right CRM, you can stay organized and efficient, ensuring no more real estate leads go unnoticed.
