How we evaluate real estate CRMs

Last updated: October 10, 2026.

We don't rank CRMs by who pays us. Every verdict has to clear five evidence standards first.

We do

Vendor-published prices, dated sources, scenario winners — one per buyer type.

We don't

Star ratings, paid placement for winners, or inventing prices for quote-only vendors.

Honest gap

Live logged-in testing is still in progress. Until a review says otherwise, treat it as vendor-docs based.

The five standards

1 Real accounts, real configuration Goal — not done yet

  • The bar: log in, configure routing, run drips ourselves.
  • Until then, each review stamps what was verified, on which official site, and when.
  • Screenshots are labeled (vendor-official vs our capture). Unlabeled screenshots don't ship.

2 True first-year cost

  • Solo / 5 / 10 logins (not just agents) — ISAs, admins, TCs count.
  • Base + setup + dialer + texting (10DLC + SMS/MMS) + required add-ons + MLS/IDX feeds.
  • Add-ons labeled per-login / per-user / flat. Example: FUB dialer $39/login vs Sierra Starter dialer $100/mo flat.
  • No public prices (Lofty, BoldTrail)? We say quote-only — never invent a number.

3 Routing and follow-up depth

  • Lead at 11pm: who gets it, how fast, what if nobody picks up?
  • We check round-robin, first-to-claim, lead ponds, auto texts/calls, listing alerts — against help-center docs today; hands-on once accounts are live.
  • Rules unpublished? We don't guess — "Before you sign" questions go in the review instead.

4 Migration and exit risk

  • In: contacts, tags, drips — clean import or CSV of names?
  • Out: export formats, who owns the database, contract / auto-renew, domain ownership, cancel steps.
  • Cheap to join + expensive to leave gets marked down. Unverified items say so in plain words.

5 Scenario fit — one winner per buyer

  • Solo · portal-lead teams · IDX-and-ads · brokerages are different buyers.
  • Each situation gets one winner. Runner-up stays runner-up — we never crown a third mid-page.

Why no star ratings

A 4.7 vs 4.5 tells a busy agent nothing. What matters is the scenario verdict: who should pick this, and who shouldn't — backed by the five standards above.

Outside sources

Each review ends with "External sources & what others say." Rules:

We opened and read it

Publisher, author, publish date, access date. Paywalled pages are skipped — not summarized from snippets.

Trade press first

HousingWire, Inman, Real Estate News, RISMedia, TechRadar, TechCrunch, The Close. Vendor press is labeled.

Paraphrase, short quotes

Our words; at most one short line (<25 words), always attributed.

No borrowed scores

We don't republish G2/Capterra stars. This site has no scoring system.

Vendor pages win on numbers

If an article quotes a stale price, our tables keep the vendor's current figure.

Plain links

No affiliate/tracking params. rel="noopener noreferrer". G2/Capterra/Trustpilot/Reddit blocked our reader Oct 9, 2026 — we don't summarize them.

Search interest index

The homepage shows each brand's Google Trends average (US, 12 months ending Oct 4, 2026, 0–100). It measures <strong class="font-semibold">public attention</strong>, not quality or market share.

Limitation: "Wise Agent" also matches unrelated meanings, so part of that volume is noise. We show it anyway rather than cherry-pick. Snapshot, not live.

Price updates

Every price carries a verification date and source. When a vendor changes pricing, we update the number, cost tables, verdicts, and FAQs that cite it — and stamp a new date.

Affiliate disclosure (summary)

No links on this site earn a commission yet — signup/demo buttons are disabled placeholders. Commissions never determine winners; the five standards do. Full affiliate disclosure →