Placester is a real estate website builder and lead generation platform that makes it easy for realtors to generate traffic and create high-quality content. It has a variety of beautiful and professional IDX-enabled website templates and built-in tools to publish blog content easily. Plus, its templates are completely customizable with your branding, style, and content, making it easy to drive organic traffic to your website. I’ve spent countless hours researching Placester, so let’s dive into this Placester review and discuss its features, its pros and cons, and who it’s best for.
My Verdict on Placester & Why You Should Trust It
As an experienced marketer, real estate researcher, and writer, I’ve spent many hours researching Placester websites over the past few years. I have seen the quality of its websites and offerings as it has changed its packages multiple times. I’ve read hundreds (if not thousands) of reviews about the software in my research. Amazingly, Placester reviews have been remarkably consistent in proving Placester’s ease of use and modern, professional, and well-functioning websites.
However, its pricing structure has changed significantly, and it is no longer the most affordable website builder. Regardless, Placester has always stood out from other platforms by providing inexperienced agents with a beautiful, IDX-enabled website running in less than an hour. It also makes it easy for agents to publish blog content, customize their website (without touching code), and generate leads from listings, landing pages, and blogs. These features may seem simple, but they are incredibly valuable to agents building an online brand.
While no software or real estate website builder is without challenges, Placester has been a consistently well-known platform for agents who want a tool that offers the most efficient method of creating a professional, branded, glitch-free IDX website. Ultimately, I think it’s a valuable tool with many benefits for agents.
Placester Alternatives
Although Placester is a well-known lead generation software with tons of valuable features for agents and brokers, it may not fit your exact needs. Plenty of other real estate lead generation websites have more customization options, different pricing structures, and even more organic SEO tools to help drive traffic. Here are a few of our top choices:
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Placester Reviews: What Current Users Think
Current Placester reviews from customers are mixed, with people offering a variety of features they love and features they struggle with. Overall, users say that the platform is easy to use and customize and that setup is quick and easy. Multiple users stated that even without experience designing websites, the platform made it easy and even fun to navigate, and their website looked professional.
Below are a few five-star reviews from G2:
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5-star professionals and 5-star service! They listen well and respond even better. I am constantly impressed. They turn tasks and projects around quickly and are always ready to help you with whatever is needed.
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Placester is very intuitive! I find it easy to navigate, and whenever I have questions or need assistance, the staff are very helpful, patience [sic], and easy to understand.
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Tools and service that our independent real estate firm needs! Placester was the website solution that we needed when we went looking for a new tool to add value to our agents. It’s the friendly, helpful service that is simply icing on the cake. For an independent company with 140 agents the service component is important. Not only does their paid service option save our marketing department time while serving our agents, it is easy to use and the communication is constant so we know where our projects stand.
There are a good number of unhappy reviews concerning customer support and automatic billing. Here’s an example of an unsatisfied Placester review:
⭐⭐⭐
Straight forward real estate website. It’s easy to use and inexpensive (for basic version). Great looking professional templates. As with many basic website builders, this one is lacking highly in customization. Very limited color themes for each template. Also you are only able to choose from a limited selection of pages for your site, meaning if you wanted to add something like an affiliates page or any type of specific page you aren’t able to do so. I was able to get around this by adding blog posts. Still slightly inconvenient.
Keep in mind that Placester has recently changed its packages and offerings, so earlier reviews—both positive and negative—should be taken with a grain of salt. It now offers more robust customer support options on its higher-tier packages, but this is something to consider for the DIY plan.
Key Features of Placester
Let’s take a look at some of the essential features offered by Placester and why it is one of our choices for the best real estate brokerage software:
Website Templates
Placester offers over 35 beautifully designed real estate website templates, making it easy to find one that best fits your real estate brand. Every website template is customizable and codeless, which is why so many real estate agents and teams love it.
IDX Integration
Any real estate agent who uses a real estate website within their marketing strategy should ensure that the website is enabled with IDX to display property listings. All of Placester’s website templates automatically include IDX listings, so you can easily build an IDX real estate website without messing with highly technical codes or plugins.
Resources & Support
Although there have been Placester reviews in the past stating that its customer support is lacking, there is a wide variety of support and resources available on its website. The “Resources” section of its website includes the following:
- Marketing Academy: Large library of articles on real estate marketing topics and free downloadables
- Webinars: Recordings of live webinars that Placester has done on important real estate lead generation topics
- Knowledge Base: Searchable library of how-to tutorials to help answer questions about the Placester interface
- What’s New: Constant updates on new features from the platform
Website Maintenance
If you want to have one of the top real estate agent websites, you can’t just set up your website once and forget about it—it has to be regularly maintained. Placester offers two Do It For Me plans that include maintenance from experts. This additional feature option means you don’t have to spend any of your valuable time on the backend of your site. These plans also include a creative assistant to help you make strategic marketing choices.
Placester Pricing
Placester has three main pricing tiers: the DIY option is the most affordable, and two Do It For Me packages with varying levels of support. The website templates and intuitive codeless website builder come with all plans, but only the Do It For Me plans include additional services and maintenance. The Do It For Me + Content package includes publishing blog and social media content.
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Methodology
At The Close, our goal is to help real estate professionals grow their businesses with strong strategies and the right tools by their side. Our team of licensed professionals, writers, researchers, and editors have done hours of research and created a weighted rubric to accurately determine how Placester stacks up against other real estate software options.
For more details on our process, read our detailed The Close methodology. For this Placester review, our criteria included the following:
- General Features: 25%
- We evaluated each website builder’s main features, including bandwidth, storage capabilities, reporting and analytics, white-label capabilities, and mobile apps.
- Pricing: 20%
- Our pricing evaluation calculates monthly pricing, setup fees, subscriptions, money-back guarantees, and free trial availability.
- Advanced Features: 20%
- We evaluated advanced features for website builders, including SEO tools, IDX integrations, landing pages, lead capture forms, and real estate-specific website designs.
- Customer Feedback: 10%
- We scoured online boards to find all available third-party reviews about Placester.
- Customer Support: 10%
- The support score is determined by the customer service hours, availability of live chats, help center, and whether the team is available by phone and/or email.
- Expert Score: 10%
- The Close evaluated the product’s overall features, value for the money, and ease of use to determine an accurate expert score.
- Ease of Use: 5%
- We determined ease of use by the navigation features of each software and user feedback.
FAQs
What does Placester do?
Placester is a real estate website builder that offers DIY and done-for-you options to create and maintain a strong real estate website. It includes a variety of real estate website templates, lead generation tools, and services to customize your website.
Does Placester have a CRM?
Placester no longer offers a built-in CRM but provides a CRM integration for $125. If your CRM is available on Zapier, you can integrate it to automatically see your new leads and contact information in that platform.
Should real estate agents have a website?
Having a real estate website is not necessary to be a real estate agent, but it is an extremely powerful and valuable tool. Successful agents and brokers use their real estate websites to build their brands, drive traffic, and generate new leads.
Bottom Line: Is Placester Worth Your Money?
Placester is an easy-to-use website-building platform for agents who want a professional website without spending hours at their desks. Placester reviews show that it is a powerful software with features that effectively generate high-quality leads. However, the pricing is relatively high compared with alternative options, and customer support is difficult to reach on the DIY plan. Overall, I think Placester is an excellent tool for agents or teams new to marketing through a website and want the most efficient method of having a professional website.
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