Small Business CRM for Real Estate

[Nathan Parker]

A friend of mine works in real estate and needs a CRM for his real estate work. He needs something low-cost and adapted for small business use. Something that works on a Mac or web browser plus iOS (iPhone and iPad) would be ideal.

He checked out Daylite for Mac, but it’s not sufficient for his needs. I once used Insightly since they had a free plan for two users, but he’s having issues finding it. I can’t find the Outlook CRM small business version that used to be available with some Office 365 plans. SalesForce and Dynamics is likely overkill for him.

If anyone has any other recommendations, that’d be great.

He has a web hosting package (so I could help him do self-hosted if need be), and he uses WordPress for his website, so I could roll him another WordPress instance with a plugin if need be.

I will send the link to him in case he needs to chime in with more.

Thanks!

Nathan Parker

Reply | Quote

[Kirsty]

Nathan, I’m not clear what it is you are actually asking about, using the term ‘CRM”.

Contact Relationship Management functionality is often covered in the software businesses use for their accounting, although special add-ons can be utilised if additional capabilities are required. Mine has the ability to set up regular reminders for each customer’s file, record notes, send emails, etc. (sorry, their website totally ignores this section, for reasons I can’t fathom!).

There are many Customer Relationship Management software companies, which have a somewhat different focus.

Then there’s a plethora of website plugins that engage with site users.

Perhaps you could clarify your “CRM” intended use, as that one acronym isn’t itself clear 🙂

Reply | Quote

[Nathan Parker]

Sure thing. He is looking for a Customer Relationship Manager similar to the Sales Cloud variant of SalesForce or Dynamics, but both of those may be overkill.

The Small Business Outlook CRM that used to be available in Office 365 might have worked for him, but it seems Microsoft no longer offers it.

I also used the free version of Insightly once, but he can’t find their free plan anymore.

I had him try Daylite since it works on a Mac, but he found it clunky.

I tried to roll a free instance of SugarCRM on his hosting package, but the code is too old to install on his hosting package (I found out the free SugarCRM isn’t supported or updated. There may be a fork of it that’s more modern, but I haven’t found a specific one yet).

I told him to chime in here with more specifics on his needs. I hope this helps somewhat, and I’ve been trying to research Customer Relationship Managers in general, but he may have some more specific needs he’s looking for, so I hope he’ll chime in.

I keep trying to get all my friends to join AskWoody and post their questions themselves (or at least post as anonymous), but some of them still don’t do it. I seem to have to generally post the question then and email them the thread and say if they have more they want to add, chime in. You’d think they’d want to have fun asking questions on here. 🙂

Nathan Parker

1 user thanked author for this post.

Elly

Reply | Quote

[Paul T]

This page has a bunch of suggestions.

cheers, Paul

2 users thanked author for this post.

Elly, Nathan Parker

Reply | Quote

[Author]

Posts