What are the Best IDX Solutions on the Market?
In any vertical, the goal of a business website is to help you make money. Real estate is no different, meaning your local real estate website needs to bring you clients in order to be worth the time and money it takes to operate it. In the real estate vertical, the vast majority (let’s just call it 80% conservatively) of your website conversions WILL occur as a result of buyers searching for properties on your website and registering for email alerts or updates — but you need an IDX solution to facilitate that process of turning traffic into leads/contacts/inquiries/signups/clients (I don’t want to get into the debate on what to call them).
No one disputes the need for IDX on a successful real estate website. With that said, what are the absolute BEST IDX platforms for real estate agents and brokers on the market today?
Diverse Solutions dsSearchAgent
vs
rewIDX
vs
Displet
vs
Real Geeks
vs
IDX Broker
vs
iHomeFinder
What do you use? What do you think? Does it work? Do your client like it? What’s your conversion rate? Are there any other providers that deserve to be on this list that I missed? Do any of these providers deserve to be axed from the list?
Would love your feedback as to what works and what doesn’t in the land of IDX.
[Update: View the Official Geek Build Steering Committee Recommendation]
Paula
Posted at 08:14h, 03 FebruaryHaving had the opportunity to use 4 of the 6 mentioned, there are pros and cons to each of them. One I would add to the list and the one I currently use is Sierra Interactive.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 08:16h, 03 Februarywhat do you like about that one? I’ve never heard of it before…are they only in a few markets?
Paula
Posted at 09:15h, 03 FebruaryDrew – They were new to my market when I hired them, but know they have expanded since and I’m not sure how many markets they are in.
There is a lot more to an IDX system besides what shows up on the front end. These are some of the features I specifically like about Sierra.*The ability to easily break down the information into a consumer friendly format and an unlimited range of searches.
*Back end lead management is excellent
*Detail pages are thorough and well designed
*Staff and support are phenomenal
I get a lot of positive feedback and for now, no one else here has the same system.
That’s not to say the other companies don’t also exhibit the same qualities. It’s been awhile since I’ve used another, so they may all have the same benefits now. IDX and back end systems are always evolving 🙂
Freddy
Posted at 08:49h, 03 FebruaryI use DS- idx search agent: it’s nice, lot to learn, but once up and running, it works great. I use it on my iPad and clients love it.
Freddy
Ricardo Bueno
Posted at 09:56h, 03 FebruaryHi Freddy, Ricardo here from Diverse Solutions. Sounds like you’re referring to mobile…and I’m very happy to hear that your clients are loving it!
If it gets more people engaging with your site, increases your time on site, and converts…well, that makes me happy (and you too for that matter).
Anyway, thanks for the feedback, happy to hear it!
San Diego Real Estate Agent
Posted at 09:36h, 03 FebruarySwitched from Diverse Solutions to Boomtown and couldn’t be happier. The system is simple and easy to use. It generates 300+ leads per month for us.
We have learned that flashy IDXs and a million features are worthless if the lead capture system isn’t effective. I think some IDXs have gotten to caught up here and haven’t focused enough on the important things which are lead capture and conversion.
The back end is as important, if not more important than the front end. Many of these providers need to take a step back and focus on the entire package and not just the front end (although this is what most dumb Realtors get sucked in by) feature set…just sayin’.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 09:38h, 03 February300 leads a month = how much more $$ per month over Diverse?
Tina McGee
Posted at 11:20h, 03 FebruaryExactly. Firstly, Boomtown is not just an IDX, they are effectively a lead selling company. Secondly, what do you call “leads”, registrations? Sure, you could call that a lead, but to me, a “real” lead is when someone contacts you about a specific property. IOW, someone who actually ASKS you to contact them. While the former can be converted, the latter are converted on a much higher rate. If you had stayed with DS (or any other IDX provider) and spent the extra money on PPC or SEO, you could have the same results. Granted, many agents don’t want to take all of this on themselves, so Boomtown fits that niche.
San Diego Real Estate Agent
Posted at 15:24h, 03 FebruaryI may have had the same results but I would have had to manage them on the horrible DS back end. I love the guys over there but they don’t care about the agent experience with their product enough. They focus way too much on the consumer experience. I have expressed this to them multiple times but is has fallen on deaf ears. They continue to crank out new versions of their IDX and push back the back end improvements.
300 leads is great but not if you can’t effectively manage and track them. Boomtown blows DS away in this department…especially for me as a broker.
Tina McGee
Posted at 16:12h, 06 FebruaryThat’s true, DS has room to improve in that aspect. We don’t use them for CRM.
San Diego Real Estate Agent
Posted at 20:50h, 06 FebruaryHaving to bounce between one system to monitor IDX searches and another as a CRM jus doesn’t make sense. Having a solid all-in-one solution is where its at. The integration between Boomtown’s IDX and CRM is flawless and allows me a ton of options for sorting through leads by price, last login, last follow up, …
Erion
Posted at 14:33h, 29 SeptemberYes but let’s be clear about one thing: boomtown is 9 times more expensive than DS on a monthly basis. The fact that you partnered with vendors to covert the cost is smart but that won’t be available to most agents.
San Diego Real Estate Agent
Posted at 15:20h, 03 FebruaryVery little. We get our vendors to partner with us and cover the majority of the cost :).
Matt
Posted at 11:14h, 03 FebruaryI have several sites and use both Real Geeks and IDX broker. I’ve found that IDX broker has better options for client searching. The mapping function and advanced search options are really popular among clients. Also, the no-contract, 39.99 per month is a huge plus. Real Geeks provides a faster and more streamlined system. Also, their lead management is way better. The lead conversion is about the same; my IDX broker site is a little older, so it seems to have a little bit more of a successful system, but all in all they are about the same for success rates.
Shawn Realty Portland
Posted at 23:39h, 21 AugustMatt, How long have you been using IDX broker and Real Geeks? Also, It’s been 3 years, what do you use now?
LeadIDX
Posted at 09:50h, 06 MarchI am the lead developer of the LeadIDX system (LeadIDX.com).
Some of the systems listed above are good systems and great for many brokers. We do not compare to the list above in many ways, one example is that we typically only take one or a few clients in each market. Our cost is a little higher than most (200 a month, 2k setup) however we have taken on clients in large tough markets with virgin domains and generated hundreds of quality users per day in traffic within 30 days purely from organic results.
We have been in the IDX business for 9 years (we started in programming and marketing in the 90’s) and our system has evolved greatly over time. Specifically our system used to cost quite a bit more however in 2013 we spent a lot of time on development and making the system quicker and easier to setup a new client and hence we greatly dropped the price. We have standard templates you can use or you can use your own designer, we can open up the templates via FTP and your designer can completely control the look, feel and much of the function of the system.
We do many rare and unique things with our system on the backend and front end. Our system is 100% focused on generating quality traffic and leads and our tracking systems internally and externally such as Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, etc. show our clients that our system produces results. Being different, and better, is important. In 9 years I still cannot understand how 20 (or more) brokers in a market using the same system can expect to achieve unique results. I have seen many cases were two clients using the same system are flagged as duplicate results by Google (and hence one or more of them are hidden behind the (click here for more results link in the Google results)
We also do VOW systems and can do a VOW in a large market like Houston where (if all data is represented) that involves hundreds of thousands of listings. Our 200 a month subscription includes every part of our system, no upsells.
You can view our website at LeadIDX.com and you can visit CharlotteNC.net for an example of one of our clients sites, that site is an individual broker and he gets incredible rankings and traffic.
Remember, our system provides and data and foundation. You can work with us or your designer to make it look and function the way you want. In that process we track all the numbers, every click, every field entry, by every user so that you will have real data on how your users like to search and use your website.
Here is a great tool to check website performance.
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/9VHy3/charlottenc.net
Teamjenkinslasvegas
Posted at 11:40h, 03 FebruaryWe use Real Geeks and their link to our MLS is outstanding plus the lead management is very powerful and designed for not only a solo agent but teams as well. Their support and ongoing training make this a no brainer. I have had a lot of sites over the years but this platform is the most cost effective lead generating site I have ever used and no this is not a paid endorsement.
John Woodward
Posted at 11:53h, 03 FebruaryI looked at five off the list including a few that were not. After one failed attempt from one vendor who took my money and delivered nothing ( m y r s o l dot com), I eventully landed with RealGeeks. They are affordable and don’t nickle and dime you with every little change. I also worked with a group that used the tiger but good luck getting anyone to call you back. They are real exclusive and I understand can cost more than the mortgatge each month. I know several of the other solutions are being used by “the competition” and work well.
I especially liked the fact that this platform was designed by active real estate brokers who are in the business of selling homes. In other words, built for agents BY agents. I also didn’t want to pick a platform that everyone else in my market uses…how can you be different if you do what everyone else is doing?
The backend works well and leads can be assigned round robin, by area or a combination of the two with weighting. The template email function is a real time saver. Leads can be sorted a lot of ways and can be exported to a CSV file for various other functions. You can be notified via email and/or text for activity levels from just new leads to every single activity the lead or agent takes. Landing pages can be on-line in minutes you can use the template and/or include custom HTML on any page.
Our site came from nothing last year to where we had nearly 80 organic signups in January. Folks found us by over 1,900 different search phrases…the long tail searchs come quick. You have the option to have the entire dababase indexed and the meta data arrangement is completely customizable. Blog entries index fairly quickly as well.
The platform is being refined and suggestions often get incorporated into the site.
As a disclaimer, I am just an end user of the product…this is not a paid endorsement 🙂 I think you will be happy with this solution and anyone in the market looking for an IDX solution should talk with Kevin and Jeff. I am also happy to chat with anyone who has any questions, take a look at my site and feel free to call at 941-922-8400.
John Woodward
Broker/Owner
Sarasota Real Estate Group
Paul Coffman
Posted at 12:59h, 03 February🙂 Looks like your SEO is working John!
John
Posted at 15:23h, 03 FebruaryYes it is…still lots to do but all in the right direction 🙂
fitzxp
Posted at 13:10h, 30 AugustJohn, once gain I find you bashing MYRSOL without telling the entire story. Lets get the entire story out there as you know MYRSOL was always completely honest about everything and we are always upfront with Realtors(R). After all both my parents are Brokers for more than two Years so I am going to once again post the entire story here for others to read the entire story as to what happened ad that your website was completed and you even had a chance to cancel but you wanted to wait till the work was all done and the website was up and running. By the way that site is still on our servers and has not been touched jwoodward.myrsol.com
————————————————————-
Mr. Woodward,
I want to recap the process we went through from the time you inquired
about a site with Myrsol till today where your site is up and awaiting
content from you as well as approval to go live.
On July 23rd 2010 we received your inquiry about a site. On that same
day I responded, through email, on when a good time would be to give you
a call. After about five emails and a few calls I sent you a quote on
July 27th 2010. This was signed by you (attached) and dated the same
day. On the phone I went over the process of how we will take two weeks
to process the data feed once we are able to pull the feed from your MLS
and that it takes about two weeks to have the site up and running from
the time we receive all the information from you in regards to our
questioner form and the data feed processed.
At the time of our conversation we were using the free data feed from
your MLS. We were just recently informed that they were moving to RETS
and had just found out that the free feed would no longer be available.
We received everything we needed from you to get your site started on
Aug 4th, 2010 except a small issue with your MLS data feed in that we
could not pull down all the data. This small issue it turned out was
actually a problem with your MLS not being RETS standard and because of
such caused a great problem with the developers. On Aug 4th I informed
you that there was an issue with your MLS and that we quickly requested
a solution to this problem in a query that would work correctly on a
Linux server.
By Aug 10th 2010 we had still not heard anything from your MLS and you
asked if you could help. You were able to get them to respond but they
still did not respond with a working query for the Linux server. By Aug
13th 2010 we, once again, asked for a query from your MLS that would
work on a Linux server with no answer. During this time I informed you
that my programmers were working on a solution but I was not sure how
long it would take them with your MLS not willing to help us. I told you
that I was sorry about this and that we were just as frustrated as you
were and if you wanted your money back you were welcome to a refund as
we had not yet started your site. I did inform you that if you took a
refund we would not take money from you again in the future as a client
as this was not our fault.
By Aug 16, 2010 just 3 days later my developers found a solution that
worked and was able to pull all the data from your MLS. We then started
processing the feed on Aug 17, 2010 which can take two weeks as I had
informed you at the beginning. During that time you were in our queue to
start your website and by September 11th 2010 your site was up and
working in less than the four weeks I had estimated to you and the
developers were adding the finishing touches. On Sept 13th 2010 you
requested that some of the landing pages use zip code instead of city or
subdivision and I informed you that we could hard code this to work but
that with our system currently would not let your buyers search via zip
code.
On September 14th 2010 I sent an email asking if you could resend the
IDX request from your MLS. This is also known as the ‘Broker
Agreements’. Not sure why this was such a terrible request as this is a
contract that your MLS requires you to have with your vendor and must be
approved by the broker before your site can go live. The way this works
is your broker puts in the request then your MLS will send us and email
stating that we have a request pending. It does not say to whom it’s
appending for, only that we have one and the only way we can find out
whom it is from is by clicking on the approve icon which is right next
to the delete icon. The reason I said it was flaky, was because I
clicked too far to the right of the approve icon and the system took
that as a delete and did not even give me a warning but just deleted the
request. Because I was not sure who had sent the request and I knew we
were very close to going live with your site, I figured it was your
request. This is why I asked if you could send it again. If not again it
still needed to be sent for us to move forward. If this was confusing to
you, you could have easily picked up to phone and called me in order to
clarify what I was looking for.
Today on September 15, 2010, to my surprise I received a very
disgruntled email from you out of the blue. I am not sure what has
happened to set off this email but I was in no way pleased nor did I
deserve this email. I have always been very upfront with you and have
always kept you in the loop as to what was going on, good or bad. I have
thirty emails from me to you in less than two months and thirty one
emails from you to me including the two today not to mention the emails
from Todd to you on your content. I have always returned your calls and
contrary to what you told Chad today I have never been rude to you or
any client for that matter. I have always called you back and I was very
upfront when I said that it would take us two weeks for the data feed
and two weeks for the site once we had everything from you and the data
feed in place. That is a total of four weeks and your site was up on
September 11th 2010 and just missing some content that Todd said you
were going to send him and a few links and tweaks to the feed. So even
with all the issues we had with your MLS, that we had to solve on our
own, we still had your site up within forty five days from the time you
paid us on July 28th 2010. That is just fifteen days more than I had
estimated it would take us. We all know that those extra fifteen days,
really even more than that, was due to the problems we had with your MLS
not following RETS standards and not helping us with a solution that
cost us a good amount of extra time and money that we did not pass on to
you.
This is in no way an excuse as I feel we did an amazing job considering
the hurdles we had to cross during this time with your MLS. We always
kept you in the loop and I was always here via phone if you needed me. I
would love to know on which topics you feel I was rude to you on the
phone as I don’t recall one time where I every spoke in a poor manor and
being that all our other clients have nothing but amazing things to say
about our customer services I am wondering just why it is that you are
not happy?
To add insult to injury, after all of this time and money has gone into
creating a site for you and the site is now up and just waiting your
approval; You decided you are not happy, out of the blue and that you
want your money back after all the work has been done. This is of course
shocking to us. If you were not happy then why did you not leave before
we started all the work on your site? We gave you a chance on Aug 13th
2010 but you waited until we had done all the work to get upset and say
I was being rude and not delivering on my promises, which was an
estimate as I told you I was not sure how long the feed would actually
take until I was able to see the data, when that is so far from the
truth I am at a loss for words. As I am sure you know our Terms of
services which state that we do not refund setup fees. This is posted
all over our site. Not to mention that the work has already been done
and the programmers have been paid for their time.
We have no problem at all working with you to correct anything on the
site that is not working correctly in order to get your site live as
soon as possible. We are always here for our clients and will work hard
to help you get your site complete. If however you wish to walk away
please note that setup fees are not refundable via our terms of servers
as well as our pricing pages.
Thank you for your time. Below is a link to our pricing page as well as
our Terms Of Service which was signed off on via the quote that was sent
to you.
Links to our terms and pricing page:
http://myrsol.com/cms-idx-pricing.html
http://myrsol.com/terms.html
Thank you,
myrsol
Posted at 07:50h, 30 AugustJohn, That is not how things happened. Being the son of two brokers who have been in Real Estate for more than 30 years I have way more respect for realtors than what you have posted here not to mention that you did not state just how RUDE you were to us after numerous emails and that only after you cursed at Chad did her respond the way he did. Though I don’t condone Chad’s response I do believe you are not fairly telling this story. But let’s give the agents a chance to read the entire story and make up their own minds and just so you know that website is still up today
——————————————
I want to recap the process we went through from the time you inquired about a site with Myrsol till today where your site is up and awaiting content from you as well as approval to go live.
On July 23rd 2010 we received your inquiry about a site. On that same day I responded, through email, on when a good time would be to give you a call. After about five emails and a few calls I sent you a quote on July 27th 2010. This was signed by you (attached) and dated the same day. On the phone I went over the process of how we will take two weeks to process the data feed once we are able to pull the feed from your MLS and that it takes about two weeks to have the site up and running from the time we receive all the information from you in regards to our questioner form and the data feed processed.
At the time of our conversation we were using the free data feed from your MLS. We were just recently informed that they were moving to RETS and had just found out that the free feed would no longer be available. We received everything we needed from you to get your site started on Aug 4th, 2010 except a small issue with your MLS data feed in that we could not pull down all the data. This small issue it turned out was actually a problem with your MLS not being RETS standard and because of such caused a great problem with the developers. On Aug 4th I informed you that there was an issue with your MLS and that we quickly requested a solution to this problem in a query that would work correctly on a Linux server.
By Aug 10th 2010 we had still not heard anything from your MLS and you asked if you could help. You were able to get them to respond but they still did not respond with a working query for the Linux server. By Aug 13th 2010 we, once again, asked for a query from your MLS that would work on a Linux server with no answer. During this time I informed you that my programmers were working on a solution but I was not sure how long it would take them with your MLS not willing to help us. I told you that I was sorry about this and that we were just as frustrated as you were and if you wanted your money back you were welcome to a refund as we had not yet started your site. I did inform you that if you took a refund we would not take money from you again in the future as a client as this was not our fault.
By Aug 16, 2010 just 3 days later my developers found a solution that worked and was able to pull all the data from your MLS. We then started processing the feed on Aug 17, 2010 which can take two weeks as I had informed you at the beginning. During that time you were in our queue to start your website and by September 11th 2010 your site was up and working in less than the four weeks I had estimated to you and the developers were adding the finishing touches. On Sept 13th 2010 you requested that some of the landing pages use zip code instead of city or subdivision and I informed you that we could hard code this to work but that with our system currently would not let your buyers search via zip code.
On September 14th 2010 I sent an email asking if you could resend the IDX request from your MLS. This is also known as the ‘Broker Agreements’. Not sure why this was such a terrible request as this is a contract that your MLS requires you to have with your vendor and must be approved by the broker before your site can go live. The way this works is your broker puts in the request then your MLS will send us and email stating that we have a request pending. It does not say to whom it’s appending for, only that we have one and the only way we can find out whom it is from is by clicking on the approve icon which is right next to the delete icon. The reason I said it was flaky, was because I clicked too far to the right of the approve icon and the system took that as a delete and did not even give me a warning but just deleted the request. Because I was not sure who had sent the request and I knew we were very close to going live with your site, I figured it was your request. This is why I asked if you could send it again. If not again it still needed to be sent for us to move forward. If this was confusing to you, you could have easily picked up to phone and called me in order to clarify what I was looking for.
Today on September 15, 2010, to my surprise I received a very disgruntled email from you out of the blue. I am not sure what has happened to set off this email but I was in no way pleased nor did I deserve this email. I have always been very upfront with you and have always kept you in the loop as to what was going on, good or bad. I have thirty emails from me to you in less than two months and thirty one emails from you to me including the two today not to mention the emails from Todd to you on your content. I have always returned your calls and contrary to what you told Chad today I have never been rude to you or any client for that matter. I have always called you back and I was very upfront when I said that it would take us two weeks for the data feed and two weeks for the site once we had everything from you and the data feed in place. That is a total of four weeks and your site was up on September 11th 2010 and just missing some content that Todd said you were going to send him and a few links and tweaks to the feed. So even with all the issues we had with your MLS, that we had to solve on our own, we still had your site up within forty five days from the time you paid us on July 28th 2010. That is just fifteen days more than I had estimated it would take us. We all know that those extra fifteen days, really even more than that, was due to the problems we had with your MLS not following RETS standards and not helping us with a solution that cost us a good amount of extra time and money that we did not pass on to you.
This is in no way an excuse as I feel we did an amazing job considering the hurdles we had to cross during this time with your MLS. We always kept you in the loop and I was always here via phone if you needed me. I would love to know on which topics you feel I was rude to you on the phone as I don’t recall one time where I every spoke in a poor manor and being that all our other clients have nothing but amazing things to say about our customer services I am wondering just why it is that you are not happy?
To add insult to injury, after all of this time and money has gone into creating a site for you and the site is now up and just waiting your approval; You decided you are not happy, out of the blue and that you want your money back after all the work has been done. This is of course shocking to us. If you were not happy then why did you not leave before we started all the work on your site? We gave you a chance on Aug 13th 2010 but you waited until we had done all the work to get upset and say I was being rude and not delivering on my promises, which was an estimate as I told you I was not sure how long the feed would actually take until I was able to see the data, when that is so far from the truth I am at a loss for words. As I am sure you know our Terms of services which state that we do not refund setup fees. This is posted all over our site. Not to mention that the work has already been done and the programmers have been paid for their time.
We have no problem at all working with you to correct anything on the site that is not working correctly in order to get your site live as soon as possible. We are always here for our clients and will work hard to help you get your site complete. If however you wish to walk away please note that setup fees are not refundable via our terms of servers as well as our pricing pages.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you,
—
Mark Fitzgerald
Myrsol, LLC. Real Estate Solutions
Paul (not an 'rsol' !
Posted at 21:37h, 15 Decemberare you kidding me? you called your solution my-R-sol ?
thats got to be the funniest thing i have seen in years
nice job!
mark
Posted at 06:31h, 08 MayYea, yea, I know man; Just worked out that way as we are from Myrtle Beach so it was actually, Myrtle Solutions. Funny how word play can happen huh.
KScott
Posted at 06:58h, 07 OctoberThe fact that your company just put a clients information out there for the world to see has to be one of the most unprofessional things I have ever seen. I have never used you guys, but for that I would never. I will also be sure to let anyone I know steer clear of your business for shameful business practices.
Mark
Posted at 06:28h, 08 MayWhen you say put the clients information out there Scott what do you mean exactly as his information was first put out there by himself. I was just makeing sure the entire story was told. It’s Odd that you would make such a decision when you have never used us yourself. I believe in the end everyone found their place as John found Real Geeks then REW and has been happy and we are received a number of clients from Johns negative post. There are very few Realtors(R) out there whom have not had a similar bad experience from a buyer/seller and I know the would not want that buyer/seller bash them just as John has done to us. Yet, I hold no hard feelings towards John and I wish him the best and he still has a site here at Myrsol. I am not a vengeful person; I just felt that the public deserved the right, and Myrsol has the right, to show both sides of the story. If you don’t like us that is fine as I believe Real Geeks, Real Estate Webmasters, IDX Broker and a select few others are also good alternatives. See that is the great thing about this country, You have the right to voice(type) your opinion and you can choose the companies you wish to work with. That all being said, I am not ashamed, in anyway way, of my business practices as I hold my head high that I am always honest with my clients and I hope you and John can always say the same and I wish you both the best.
Holly Morgan
Posted at 09:27h, 26 JuneMark…thicken your skin a bit. Clients are going to pan you from time to time. My suggested response to John would be “John, I am so sorry you feel cheated by my company. Call me and allow me to make it right” – then deal with all the drama privately. The rant above makes you look like someone who is going to fight with me as a customer. Nope Nope Nope. I have enough drama. See what I’m saying? I wish you the best.
Mark
Posted at 10:15h, 26 JuneHolly, this event actually happened more than four(4) years ago and I did try to work with him but he would rather post negative comments everywhere he can. He actually told me in an email that he was going to post in every place possible against Myrsol and I am just trying to make sure that when he does we get our side of the story out there. I hate looking like the bad guy and its funny how people always look at the company as the bad guy first rather than the person starting the attack. You would think that as a Realtor(R), John would want to let this go or take the free years maintenance on the site we created but he would rather rant about us it seems. Just last month, he posted against us again on Angies list even though he has not done business with Myrsol in over four years. I am very sorry if my rant/defense of Myrsol turns you off as that is not my intent and I am sure if someone was to post all over the web about you or your business practices you would want to defend yourself as well and that is all I am trying to do. I do wish you the best and I make this promise, If John stops posting against Myrsol, I will stop defending Myrsol on public sites with regards to John.
John Woodward
Posted at 16:08h, 08 JulyMark:
Again, how would anyone want to do business with you after Chad Weabler, with your company decided to go postal like he did? I’m not rehashing what happened. It’s fairly well documented and I am still willing to share the exchange to anyone who asks for it and let those potential new customers decide for themselves. You want to save face? I’ll take the high road and offer you, again, the opportunity to put it to bed once and for all. Refund the money I paid you and we can call it a day. Yes or No, are you willing to do that?
Mark
Posted at 16:27h, 08 JulyJohn, as I told you more than four years ago, I don’t have the authority to do that because the work was done. As for what Chad said to you, that is between you and Chad and not Myrsol. One person does not reflect the view of Myrsol.
Nick Kremer
Posted at 12:02h, 03 FebruaryI manage IDX sites and solutions for clients, and have effectively moved all my customers from IDX Broker/IDX Pro/Tiger Leads/Web Agent Solutions to Real Geeks. The reason was simple and economical.
Real Geeks is $150/mo compared to IDX Broker’s $49/mo, but with IDX Broker you still need to get a site setup and pipe your IDX system into it some way or another. I would charge customers for that site I had to develop, manage SEO, and keep updated. After its all said and done, that’s a wash for cost comparison. I can now focus more on SEO & PPC instead of site management with.
With Google PPC, Real Leads is a beast. Running almost identical campaigns, I am able to track these conversions better and bring the cost per conversion way down across the country for my variety of customers. I have a client in Indianapolis that generated 162 leads in January at a cost of $7.76/lead. This is almost all from PPC, and when his Organic picks up, I believe that number will only continue to drop.
All these systems have their strong points and weak points. In the end, I think it should come down to the Agent/Broker’s personal comfort with the program and support they get from those programs. I am not an Agent or Broker, so from my point of view it comes down to numbers, and Agent/Broker satisfaction with the backend tools. Thus far in 2012 I have extremely happy customers with Real Geeks.
Paul Coffman
Posted at 12:58h, 03 FebruaryMy interaction with Real Geeks has been nothing but positive. I do NOT work for them and I am NOT affiliated with them. I owned and operated my own real estate company for 16 years and used several other IDX platforms before switching to real geeks. These are the real numbers…. I was averaging 150-200 leads per month before I switched to Real Geeks, now I average 1400-1700 leads per month. This is all in the small city of Wilmington, NC, with a city population of less then 100K and a total metro population of less than 250K.
I still own that website and it generated more than 20 million in sales last year. Yes, that is 100% generated from my website.
I now live in Hawaii where I manage that site for myself, here I own and operate a web design and SEO firm in Honolulu. I manage 8-9 real geeks sites for clients all over the country, including my own competitors back in Wilmington. Since they switched to real geeks, they have all seen a significant increase in leads and traffic.
There are definitely more robust systems out there, but for pure SEO friendly and lead generation, I can say I have not found a better system. This comes from almost 20 years of experience of real estate lead generation after using several different IDX solutions for myself and about 15 other ones for my clients. I now generate over 200,000 unique visitors a month for various real estate companies in multiple states in the U.S. using Real Geeks.
Douglas Kirchner
Posted at 23:19h, 21 Julyi am considering Real Geeks, would you be able to chat?
San Diego Homes For Sale
Posted at 15:57h, 03 Februarywhy did you delete my post?
Tina McGee
Posted at 09:49h, 05 FebruaryMaybe because you’re using keywords instead of a real name?
Alex Heyen
Posted at 03:00h, 04 FebruaryI have been using realgeeks now for 6 months in a new market and its transformed my business. Tons of organic leads with a brand new domain. Check for yourself Search for Omaha Real Estate and my website http://www.omaharealestatetoday.com will be on the front page. The Team at real geeks is great with tips and tricks to help you get the maximum benefit from your site. Its definately an overwhelming value proposition. I’ve found the true way to get success from your IDX site is to get some professional coaching from someone who has a proven track record of results with the system. I was hooked up with Stephanie Combs with Pura Vida Coaching who happens to own and operate a real geeks site in St. Louis that is ranked #1 in Google for the term St. Louis Real Estate. She started a team and became the number 3 agent in her city in just two years. Getting help like that is what will truely help you succeed. You can find her at http://www.puravidacoaching.com
Daniel Beer
Posted at 11:39h, 07 FebruaryAn interesting system that I would like to learn more about is Boston Logic. Maybe I’ll put together an interview with them 🙂
As somebody currently going through a full revamp of my site, I can say that my finalists were Real Geeks, Displet, and REW.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 10:58h, 07 MarchI had a contact at Boston Logic when I worked at zillow. Can try to dig it up for you if needed..
Mike Pannell
Posted at 21:52h, 10 FebruaryI use Rew, and have several custom IDX’s though them. I love their stuff and dont know if i would ever change
Ron Goodman
Posted at 18:26h, 16 FebruaryMy vendor, UltimateIDX should probably be on that short list. Small
company, limited development resources, and not in a lot of markets yet,
but getting there. WP (and Joomla and also Drupal) fully integrated,
very SEO friendly, no Iframes, no sub-domains. Great multi-agent CRM.
Also supports multiple MLS feeds and multiple websites (microsites,
agent sites, sites with different IDX/RETS feeds) feeding same leads CRM
and back end. Only negative: no interactive map search yet, but should
be on my site within the next week and ready for roll out to their other
clients soon. I converted from REW (semi-customized template) to UIDX
July 2009, using Joomla, and lead registrations jumped by 30% almost
right away, even without the map search. (Or maybe because no map
search? I wonder. May be a good discussion topic there.) I converted the site from Joomla to WP last Dec., primarily to be able to
take advantage of WP 3rd party RE plugins, and there was no change to
the IDX or its urls, and only short term minor SERP dip for a couple of
weeks. Also, the IDX user interface can be customized extensively by site owners or their own developers without the expensive resources of the proprietary vendors.
Ron Goodman
Posted at 18:46h, 16 FebruaryLead conversion rate as percentage of absolute unique visitors per Google Analytics, Jan 2010 through Dec 1011: 7.8%.
Debby
Posted at 09:21h, 01 MarchI have been using an IDX vendor in Wilmington, NC by the name of Impact Media Solutions for 7 years and they are continually improving their IDX Engine. They just released a WordPress Plugin and have mobile friendly versions as well. They have worked with me to get this IDX to the point where it converts more leads than anything else I have used. I am a Broker/Owner and have had multiple sites with multiple IDX vendors and the Lead Production on my site currently is better than it has ever been. I would definitely look at adding ImpactIDX to this list.
Cindy Davis
Posted at 18:39h, 11 AugustDrew – Am trying to choose between staying with Virtual results or moving to Geek estates…For the same money, which one do you think offers the best bank for the buck in terms of leads?
Drew Meyers
Posted at 16:39h, 12 AugustVirtual Results does not have its own IDX solution (to my knowledge). I take it you mean move from Diverse Solutions to Real Geeks?
Jason Cooper
Posted at 15:44h, 12 SeptemberI’ve marketed real estate website for years now, and I can say that most of my clients have had pretty good success with IDX Broker & http://www.quicksilverleads.com Their system works well to help convert 15% of your traffic into leads. That is the average conversion rate.
James Endo
Posted at 13:41h, 15 OctoberHi Jason, looking for good IDX, lead gen, CRM solution and came across this post. What do you mean you’ve had good success with IDX Broker and Qucksilverleads.com… do you use both on your website or you like them both equally? Any thing stand out? Thanks. James
Pat
Posted at 16:30h, 18 SeptemberHi Drew,
Just curious why http://www.dynamicpagesolutions.com was not on your list
Drew Meyers
Posted at 17:28h, 18 Septemberbecause I’ve never heard of them
Lance
Posted at 07:31h, 16 OctoberReal Geeks sounds like a great company but they do NOT return email messages (2x) and they do not have a phone number on their website. It’s hard to believe but you cannot even call them if you want to buy their product / services. How can you trust a company that has ZERO customer service. I really hope they call me one of these days. Oh well…
Michael
Posted at 09:53h, 16 OctoberI second that about Real Geeks. I called them and emailed them. Their customer service is not good. I want to give them money but they must have all the business they can handle. I would not recommend them from my experience.
jeff
Posted at 11:09h, 16 OctoberHey Michael, We call everyone back and sent email response to all inquiries.. BTW: That has nothing to do with customer support (your not a customer yet). Our customer support is great! You can call any of our clients.. We are always on it 🙂
Rick Janson
Posted at 17:04h, 04 FebruaryI’m shopping IDX systems and CRM and talked with Real Geeks. They talked with me for as long as I wanted to chat… very friendly, very thorough. They know their market. I’m not sure what I’ll go with for http://www.denverrealestateoffice.com yet, but I did appreciate their customer support.
Kenneth LaVoie
Posted at 03:29h, 09 MarchSounds like there might be some overzealous spam filters going on here.
Jeff
Posted at 10:59h, 16 OctoberHey Lance, That is just not true!! We sent email responses and left a message.. Within hours of your email…
John Woodward
Posted at 11:36h, 16 OctoberHi Lance:
I’ve been a customer for a little over 2 years working in the Sarasota area. I have never had to wait for a response from customer service more than a few hours (by email). Most issues I have had stem from MLS changes that have come unannounced but I have always had a quick response. As a customer, I have Jeff’s cell to call if there are any issues and to date, I have never had to call him because of poor customer service. They have always been great. Are you sure you left a good number or maybe have their responses filtered out for some reason?
Mandatory disclosure – I am not a paid or compensated for my opinion….I am just a paying customer like everyone else.
John Woodward
Sarasota Real Estate Group
Lance
Posted at 11:37h, 16 OctoberI would like to “Amend” my statement I made about Real Geek earlier today. I just spoke with Bob and he informed me that they were traveling over the last couple of days. I spoke with him for about 30 minutes and he’s a great guy who REALLY knows what he is talking about!!! Sorry about that.
Sadie Ruggers
Posted at 20:36h, 26 OctoberI have seen both negative and positive comments about BoomTown IDX provider. Generally I liked their product, however when I tried to do my own PPC they would not install the adwords code to allow the conversions to be sent to my adwords account. Anyone working PPC knows that if you cannot feed your leads to adwords means you are working with your hands tied behind your back.
They claimed they could not install the code on their site.. PERIOD! I thought it was kinda odd since they have several hundred sites and they have installed both the google analytics code and the adwords code on everyone of them.
I offered to have google email them the code if they were afraid I was going to put a virus or something in it but they would not hear of it. And worse yet you cannot tell when you get a sale without looking in the BoomTown admin section.
The only reason I can think of is they are afraid some rookie might get a better click thru rate and make them look bad and everyone might start doing their own PPC.
Any BoomTown guys and gals out there that have ever tried to do your own PPC and was told the same.. Hell they only have 2 or 3 folks doing all the PPC for hundreds of sites and of course they don’t have time to do it very well as a good system requires continual monitor and updating..
Jerry G Dobbins
Posted at 01:09h, 25 AprilHad exactly the same experience. They even tried to just play dumb and and act like the had no idea why I would link analytics and adwords even though they do it with their accounts. Was told by R. that “you can see the conversion in your back end”. ???? I was however able to produce conversions at a consistent 8% despite their bulls65t and our cost per lead was about half of what it was with Boomtown managing it.
Judy A.
Posted at 08:50h, 03 DecemberAs computer programmer I have tried several platforms (IDX Solutions). I have never been able to contact RealGeeks but I can tell you from experience, with IDXBroker I’ve had some success yet the customer service is HORRIBLE! You will spend a year getting their platform integrated and semi-dialed in. Then you’ll have a question and customer service will treat you like a piece of crap! You complain about the service you received and BAM! IDXBroker will cancel your account. It will eventually cost you THOUSANDS of DOLLARS before having to start all over. GOOD LUCK!
Jeff Manson
Posted at 09:08h, 03 DecemberHi Judy… Jeff here from Real Geeks.. We respond to all inquiries from agents.. I just looked through all of them submitted from our site and could not find yours.. Not sure what went wrong?? Feel free to submit one from the site and Bob on my team will follow up
Kathering M
Posted at 16:37h, 05 JuneWow, same think just happened to us! Over 3 years as customer and they couldn’t deliver on the Platinum Service scanning/posting twice a day from RMLS plus agents were having issues with client’s getting emails. We complained and BAM, they dropped us giving us only 10 days to find an alternative!
Mike
Posted at 15:52h, 13 MayI recommend that anyone looking into something like Boomtown or TigerLeads take a look at Zurple. It’s very similar on the lead generation side, but Zurple’s CRM software will incubate any unresponsive leads, whether they are generated by Zurple or not. Stop chasing around leads for months and months, and turn off your generic drip email campaign (nobody is reading that). Let Zurple send specific emails to your leads based on the lead’s behavior. Email me if you’d like to learn more, [email protected]. Thanks!
Assembling a Dream Team to Revive Realtor.com - GeekEstate Blog
Posted at 17:43h, 10 June[…] someone who has managed data for Zillow or Trulia, or even one of the larger IDX companies, to build and oversee a scaleable data […]
Samantha
Posted at 11:04h, 15 JanuaryMichele…are you still using Broker IDX on your site? I am thinking of recommending for a client for a wordpress website. You can respond to me via [email protected]
Samantha
Michele K Free
Posted at 11:26h, 15 JanuaryYes–and I’m happy to say that my skills have improved with IDX Broker. I am currently changing over PrudentialCS to Berkshire Hathaway. I also use another version of IDx for a client. I only take referrals, as I have more business than I can handle, so I’d be happy to talk with you or your client. Let me know the terms you would expect–and thanks!
Thinking about Real Estate Search: Have the Portals Already Won? - GeekEstate Blog
Posted at 18:40h, 20 January[…] the money for Diverse Solutions, Real Geeks, Displet, or another IDX provider (see prior discussion about the best IDX providers) and bring your search into the 21st […]
Karen Eddinger
Posted at 19:07h, 26 JanuaryI see you didn’t mention Market Leader. Do you feel it’s inferior to IDX Broker and why do you think that?
Drew Meyers
Posted at 08:55h, 27 JanuaryI’ve personally never really heard a single agent tell me they “love” market leader…and many have told me they aren’t fans of it. I’m not sure if anything has changed recently.
Suzanne
Posted at 15:44h, 08 JulyHello all! I actually scanned through many of these comments. There IS drama about IDX 🙂 ! I would really appreciate new input on IDX because I need to get business and I don’t think my IDX is working well for lead capture. I use IDX Broker Platinum but it doesn’t seem to be user friendly or visually nice. My webmaster who built my wordpress site never worked with IDX or real estate websites so it’s all new to her. I talked, today, to a RealGeek sales person who said that IDX Broker does not convert well. I am a real estate broker here in Orange County CA and it’s competitive here…….PLUS I just moved here a year ago and I am starting over. Can anyone tell me where I can get current, local information on what works here in OC and San Diego and if I really need to replace my IDX Broker Platinum to something like IHomeFinder?? I just need to find some buyers and sellers! Help, please 🙂 Thank you, Suzanne
Mike
Posted at 10:29h, 28 OctoberFor our Sea Coast Property website we have tried iHomeFinder and IDX Broker and have had the best of luck with iHomeFinder and found it easier to use/install ect.
Real estate agent
Posted at 15:08h, 03 OctoberRealgeeks.com provides no service at all! It’s a website you have to pay a huge $160 a month for with a setup fee of $500 for a template site. They do not have their SEO setup on your site so it will even show in any search engine and unless your spend another 800-1500 per month on their pay per click service plus $500 for keep an eye on the pay per click setting the realgeeks.com website might as well sit in a dark corner of a dark closet on the bottom of the ocean!! Because no potential home buyer will EVER find your expensive template site!! EVER!! A total waste of money!! Better spend it on a cold calling service out of the India!
Drew Meyers
Posted at 15:14h, 03 OctoberNO website will rank and get traffic by itself, so I don’t know why you or anyone else expects reelgeeks to be any different. You need to drive links to it, create amazing content, etc or you need to pay to drive traffic to it or you need to drive word of mouth traffic directly. Otherwise, you’ll have no traffic regardless of what website provider you use.
Jeff Manson
Posted at 19:55h, 03 OctoberDrew, That person is obviously a spammer or doesn’t have a clue how online lead generation works. You can have the best site set up to convert visitors to sign ups but, if you don’t have traffic to it you will not get anything.
You are correct.. You have have to build site authority and great content to get any platform to rank or drive paid traffic.
Guy Mauerhan
Posted at 17:07h, 25 OctoberIm a New REALTOR looking to get set up with a lead generating web site. I work on my own with a small brokerage. Im the only residential realtor, so all cost is on me. Im looking for affordability. I have researched some and a company like real geeks is not affordable. I currently have a site http://www.homesbyguy.com on Zillow and working with my MLS to connect. Should I go this route? which is the most affordable?
Drew Meyers
Posted at 21:30h, 25 OctoberZillow and Placester are likely your most affordable options
Ray Malaski
Posted at 20:48h, 28 Decemberall I care about is what converts valid home buyers, what are the conversion rates that you are seeing with the different solutions?
[email protected]
Posted at 08:25h, 11 JanuaryMany of the below systems will work . But the monthly costs, etc. will be a headache. I have been doing custom rets databases that maintain themselves via a cron job (linux hosting) for a few years, and almost have a one button press process to create all the mysql and php scripts necessary for the whole process. As you know, likely none of the systems below will give you your own database or access to the data, and many brokers have come to me because they have bigger ideas than just displaying properties on a cute template. But I am not just shamelessly offering my services and free help with rets projects, I want to add my thoughts on this to help brokers and individuals in this process. I strongly prefer having my own database and access to my own data , and it is what I recommend, HOWEVER, there are a couple situations where I will suggest using one of the ready made solutions talked about in this article
=========================================================
reasons why I would recommend a pre made solution and monthly payments
=========================================================
1 If you will be needing a map with advanced features, you will want to check with the rets provider if they have geo coordinates, because if they don’t , geo coding has become less and less readily available and will cost you a LOT of money, especially when the geocoding company finds out you are a real estate broker. In this case, if you can’t find a developer who can provide you with free geocoding services , you may want to just get one of the ready made solutions that cost monthly.
2. If you don’t care about the 300 fields of data for each rets property , and just want to show the properties on a website , and have other marketing strategies than shooting for the best website out there. You just want to be rets compliant , and have another avenue to show customers you are serious about selling properties. You probably don’t care that there are maybe 8 different property types and hundreds of fields of data available to you .
3. If you are going to use Word Press , or any other CMS. They do not all like to play nice with data and displaying it , Unless you have a developer that is above and beyond good with that CMS, using a mysql database and writing code to display properties and search functions will be difficult and maybe impossible.
4. If you just want a website for show, and you do most of your business by word of mouth anyways.
========================================================
I hope this helps someone. If anyone wants to talk about a rets project for free , email [email protected]
Amanda Williams
Posted at 09:17h, 06 FebruaryThe best IDX website I have ever used is from iHomefinder (http://www.ihomefinder.com/products/optima-omnipress/). It allows me to totally customize my website and have access to the MLS system. I would recommend it to anyone!
Real Estate Software
Posted at 06:02h, 22 Marchthanks for the write about IDX, and related real estate tech tools.
Agent 3000
Posted at 22:20h, 10 Aprilyou need an IDX solution for your website and registering for email alerts.
Bri Chmel
Posted at 20:29h, 08 MayHello! This is realtor Bri Chmel, http://www.LiveLoveSantaCruz.com. I have IDX broker on my site, but they do not offer a “saved polygon search” feature. It is lengthy process on the back end to save a polygon search for a client. Does anybody know what IDX’s offer a simple SAVED polygon search, something that a client could do themselves from the front end?
Jeff
Posted at 04:59h, 09 MayReal Geeks does 🙂
Tim Rivard
Posted at 10:46h, 13 SeptemberYourMLSsearch IDX has a full page map search with saved polygon searching that’s really simple to use.
idxmatrix
Posted at 05:45h, 12 SeptemberIDXMatrix plugin for real estate professionals allows displaying MLS’s listings data on word press site. Integrating IDXMatrix is very easy, quick to setup, easy-to-customize and completely responsive with an adaptable design.
Tim Rivard
Posted at 07:33h, 13 SeptemberYourmlssearch has an incredible IDX property search. It allows realtors to track, analyze, communicate and convert (literally) 100% of their search traffic into actionable leads. It has a built-in chatbot and the system is powered by AI & machine learning. It’s years ahead of anything else on the market.
[removed url]
Drew Meyers
Posted at 08:58h, 13 SeptemberHow exactly is it years of anything else on the market? What’s the core differentiator?
Tim Rivard
Posted at 09:40h, 13 SeptemberSure – Let’s take a few of your examples in the article and look just at the IDX:
iHomeFinder – they use a search form. That means people come to your site, they hit the property search page and all they see immediately is a giant form. They’ll fill out a few fields and then hit the search button. Once they get to their search they realize that they need to go back to that form in order to fix their results. It’s INCREDIBLY inefficient and it drops leads left and right.
IDXBroker, DiverseSolutions – same story.
With YourMLSSearch clicking property search literally gets the lead into results immediately. Instead of filling out a form to see only the results that match, YMLS shows the lead every listing immediately and the lead is now just filtering them out. It’s also wicked fast. The search is a single page web application so there are no page reloads, no pagination (meaning you aren’t clicking to load more results)…
That’s the obvious answer from just looking at the IDX. The truth is there are way more exciting things happening behind the scenes.
YourMLSsearch’s Vision Lead Intelligence is tracking every action that both known and unknown leads do. That means when an “anonymous” user clicks on a listing, it will automatically record the action and allow the realtor to message the totally anonymous user about the listing that they’re on. It also uses machine learning to understand the users behavior – how often they search, what they are searching for and what listings they click on. Algorithms will spit out notifications for the realtor to engage at precisely the right moment, it will automatically recommend and message the lead. All without knowing their email address or their name. Put simply, it’s the first IDX and intelligence system that allows you to actually communicate with people who aren’t willing to register yet.
Let’s face it, IDX is an antiquated idea and more people are turning to Zillow or other national portals because the solutions you write about above aren’t focused on user experience. They’ve been built as a commodity and a have been focused on what realtors wanted – so they’re modeled after MLS systems. YourMLSsearch was quite literally the first company in the country to build a property search back in 1998. Now nearly two decades later we’ve used years of data research, analytics, and click tracking to understand how people actually interact with a search.
Vision has the following features that none of the companies above can compete with:
1) Built in Chat Bot that encourages lead registration
2) Anonymous and Known lead communications
3) Machine Learning
4) Instant Search
5) Personalized search experience for every lead
6) Click tracking
Drew Meyers
Posted at 10:03h, 13 SeptemberKeep in mind this article was written in 2012. I honestly don’t know how you can say this:
“the following features that none of the companies above can compete with:
1) Built in Chat Bot that encourages lead registration
2) Anonymous and Known lead communications
3) Machine Learning
4) Instant Search
5) Personalized search experience for every lead
6) Click tracking”
The fact of the matter is all of them can do all of those things, if they want to. What am I missing?
Have a read of this article for more of my thoughts on the subject of search/idx: https://geekestateblog.com/idx-becomes-irrelevant/
Tim Rivard
Posted at 10:34h, 13 SeptemberYes, totally understand the article is from 2012. Funny thing is that hardly any features have changed for these companies listed. Which is true for almost the entire IDX marketplace outside of responsive design.
“The fact of the matter is all of them can do all of those things, if they want to. What am I missing?”
These are built in – out of the box features (that exist today) for less than $50 a month. I’ve seen the functionalities that you get with each of these IDX systems and not one of them allows you to communicate to 100% of the traffic that’s using your search – they don’t create profiles or learn about the way each lead uses the search – they also don’t proactively chat or encourage lead registration. They’re still (since 2012) form based searches that bleed traffic because they’re horrible to use.
Just an opinion from one guy who’s spent nearly a decade using every IDX search known to man.