FREE Real Estate CRM Software: Top 10 CRMs To Close More Deals

Real estate is a high contact sport. It’s all about contacting your sphere of influence and leads. For that reason, a free real estate CRM, or customer relationship management software, is necessary even when you’re starting out as an agent.

CRM software can get very expensive very fast. So, a lot of real estate agents wonder what the best free real estate CRM software is. This way, you can keep your costs down and improve your cash flow — something critical as a new real estate agent.

In this article, we’re going to share with you the 10 best free real estate CRM options and how you might decide which one is right for you.

The Best Free Real Estate CRM

This list is fairly comprehensive, but you may find other free real estate CRM options. As you go through this list, we didn’t rank them in any particular order.

That’s because the best real estate CRM is going to depend on your needs and situation. The best free real estate CRM is going to look different for the agent who is in their first week at their sponsoring broker versus the experienced real estate agent who has to manage over 300 leads and a database of 500 people.

With that said, let’s look at our list of the best free real estate CRMs.

• Google Sheets
• Your Broker Provided CRM
• Streak
• HubSpot
• IXACT
• Zoho
• Freshworks CRM
• Agile CRM
• RealOffice360
• Bitrix 24

10 Best Real Estate CRMs

Google Sheets

Google sheets isn’t a CRM, but you can make it into one. With just a few columns, you can turn a Google spreadsheet into a fairly robust and custom CRM.

Early on in my real estate career, I used a Google spreadsheet as my CRM. I used it for my first six months. It probably wasn’t the most productive option, but it was free and didn’t have a learning curve.

Most of us are familiar with a simple spreadsheet. Every other real estate CRM has some learning curve to it. You have to figure out how to navigate to leads and complete the tasks in the CRM.

If you’re just looking to get up and running quickly, I recommend starting with a Google spreadsheet. This isn’t a long-term situation, but I find it to be beneficial to just get things going.

Plus, this will help you when you decide to use a CRM. A majority of the time, you can upload contacts into a CRM using an Excel file or Google spreadsheet.

All you need to do is create columns for their name, email, phone number, maybe the address, a notes column and the last time you contacted them.

Your Broker Provided CRM

Next to Google sheets, I find most new agents are best served by using the broker provided CRM. A majority of brokers provide a free real estate CRM.

For example, the Realogy brands — Century 21 and Coldwell Banker — offer a CRM through their Zap platform. I believe there are talks about moving over to a new CRM and web development program called MoxiWorks.

Keller-Williams offers their internal CRM called Command. Before that, they offered eEdge. The Century 21 office I once worked for offered a free CRM through Market Leader. Exit Realty provides a CRM called PureAgent through Onjax.

The PureAgent platform allows you to share leads across an entire office or team. You can also send video email messages and text messages inside the platform.

A great way to stand out to leads.

I recommend using the broker provided CRM because these are tied to your agent website. So, if you plan on doing any marketing to your agent website, you can integrate web data of visitors with your CRM database.

For example, if you have a lead, you can see if they are browsing your website. This can help you decide which leads to prioritize on your call list. It’s a way to see the agents that are interested and are familiar with you and your brand.

Lead prioritization is a way for agents to be more productive. Earn more while working less and avoid chasing dead, cold leads.

Most often the functionality you will get from your broker provided CRM would cost money. Few free real estate CRMs offer the functionality that you often get from your broker.

Streak CRM

Streak is a CRM that lives inside your Gmail inbox, which means no separate website or program you have to log into or manage.

You can manage leads and projects from right inside of your Gmail inbox.

To use Streak CRM, you download the extension and create an account. The software has a Google spreadsheet feel to it inside of your Gmail inbox.

With just a few clicks, you can assign an email to a lead or a project, for example.

I used Streak prior to getting into real estate. It was easy to use, but I didn’t find it the best CRM if I was making a lot of phone calls.

For real estate agents, I would say it makes a better project management solution than a CRM. It’s great for taking a lead and turning that lead into a project. There is no need to use another software to manage the transaction process.

You can create a client transaction and then all of the emails you get from lenders, appraisers, title companies, and other agents can be easily assigned to the project.

This is a great way to track and organize client projects right inside of Gmail.

However, it’s still definitely an option for real estate agents. You can log your call notes and other information under the leads profile information, but I find it best if you’re email-based or need to manage projects.

HubSpot

Ah, HubSpot, the forever free CRM. HubSpot isn’t dedicated as a real estate CRM. Instead, HubSpot is built to serve many different markets and industries.

For that reason, I didn’t care for HubSpot when I was transitioning from my spreadsheet CRM. I tested and set up HubSpot, but got fed up with it pretty quickly.

Since it’s not built as a real estate CRM, you will need to do a lot of customizing to set it up. That was too much for me. And, it can be hard if you’re not familiar with the concept of pipelines and sales CRMs to begin with.

Plus, things got really out of hand when I tried creating different pipelines for buyers and sellers.

HubSpot offers email tracking, document sharing, live chat, contact deal management, and task management. It can be a good option if you keep things simple. Don’t try to build complicated pipelines or a lead tracking system.

Users of the free HubSpot can enjoy unlimited user data and up to 1,000,000 contacts.

IXACT

IXACT customer relationship management software, or CRM, is built with real estate in mind. It’s been designed specifically for real estate agents, which makes it a great platform to solve many of the paint points we experience as real estate agents.

For example, it’s easy for our contacts to be spread all over the place — from websites, to gmail, to our phone, to the MLS. Contacts and their data is everywhere.

IXACT CRM offers a solution to that. Plus, with their rich profile feature you can build a complete profile of your client and include a lot of personal data, like their spouse or properties and mortgage details.

I find that most general market CRMs, like many of the ones we’ve recommended, lack this kind of functionality that is crucial to a real estate agent’s business.

Zoho

Zoho got it’s fame as a CRM due to their customer-service and support side of their CRM platform. That’s more applicable for businesses where people are submitting support tickets.

However, it can be used for the sales side of things. Where Zoho excels for real estate agents is those looking to scale their real estate company or team.

The CRM includes deal management, tasks, and has room for 5,000 records. Most real estate agents won’t hit this limit, but keep in mind that you may need to delete contacts if you happen to generate a large list of internet leads every single year.

Zoho offers a lot of integration and functionality that can help you build a powerful marketing and sales technology stack.

I’ve also found that Zoho probably has one of the steepest learning curves of all of the CRMs. There are so many features, it can be overwhelming to know where to start and how to use the features to get your desired results.

Freshworks CRM

Freshworks is another general CRM rather than a dedicated free real estate CRM. However, Freshworks is pretty user-friendly for most new agents and offers features for growth.

Their mobile app allows you to manage and update contacts as on the go. They also have a chat-feature that you can install on your website to create and manage leads.

Plus, on the free CRM you can build email marketing campaigns rather than having to manage email campaigns in a separate real estate email marketing software, like Aweber or MailChimp.

Agile CRM

Agile CRM is an excellent free real estate CRM option for those with a team or multiple employees who need to manage leads.

On their free program, you can create up to 10 users. This gives a real estate agent an opportunity to hire an individual inside sales agent (ISA).

Create a separate account for the ISA and they can help manage and update your contacts.

The CRM software will also let you quickly build email campaigns, score your leads, and deliver messages based on content they’ve browsed.

By far, Agile CRM offers some of the most functionality for free. However, you will be limited to 1,000 contacts which could be a problem for a real estate team.

If you plan on using digital marketing, this is a free CRM worth investigating because of it’s marketing features — from email marketing to lead capture pop-ups.

RealOffice 360

RealOffice 360 is a CRM built for real estate agents. The free real estate CRM software focuses on being simple and easy to use for real estate agents. With its simplicity, it makes a great option for real estate agents who want something easy without all of the headaches or having to set up something custom.

With RealOffice 360, an agent can manage clients and leads in their database, set follow-ups to easily plan the next day, and send marketing emails.

On the free plan, you will be limited to creating five pipeline deals. This could be an issue if you wish to use CRM pipelines as a way to manage transactions. You would only be able to track five at a time.

However, even on the free plan, you can create unlimited contacts. It’s best for solo agents because a real estate team will likely need to upgrade their plan to get the collaboration and sharing features they need.

Bitrix 24

Bitrix 24 is a great option for real estate agents who have pushed their sales process to be more virtual during the pandemic. Agents can set up one-on-one video chats inside their CRM with their team and clients. However, options like screen sharing require an upgrade to a paid plan.

It’s also a great option for real estate teams as it allows an unlimited number of users.

The Premium version of Bitrix 24 will unlock more features, especially their marketing tools and sales intelligence. It will also unlock a lot of their automated task features.

The tools will have a steep learning curve for anyone who isn’t familiar with CRMs. There’s also a limit on the leads you can have.

So, while you can have unlimited users, you are limited in your lead count.

FAQs On Free Real Estate CRM

Should I Use A Paid CRM?

Probably, but it depends where you are in your career. If you’re just starting out, I would look for a simple, easy-to-use and free real estate CRM. Something like the one your broker offers or a Google spreadsheet.

Once you have completed a few deals and have some money coming in, I would look into upgrading your CRM software solution. There are a few paid options that we recommend, like FollowUp Boss and Pipedrive.

FollowUpBoss, for example, is going to offer a lot of functionality for real estate teams and solo agents. Our top pick is Pipedrive and we wrote an excellent guide where you can learn about using Pipedrive for real estate agents.

Who Owns The Data In A CRM?

You do. If data privacy is your concern, understand that you own the data and the CRM provider doesn’t have a right to sell the data that you put into their system.

This is also important if, for example, we’re saving emails that might contain home buyers or home sellers personal information. Think about all of the personal information that comes to our email inbox as real estate agents.

How Can You Find The Best Real Estate CRM?

You can sign-up for free trials or go through a demo with their sales team. This will help you find out if a CRM will work for you. It was through HubSpots free trial that I quickly realized it wasn’t going to work for me.

You can also do a quick assessment of your needs. Think about your current sales and marketing process.

Ask yourself:

• What kinds of things do you need from your CRM?
• Is there technology you’re currently using that a CRM can help replace and simplify your technology stack?

Do I Really Need A CRM?

At the end of the day, do you really need a CRM?

Well, you use one whether you realize it or not. It might not be called a CRM but you’re using something.

It might go by more common names like:

• Your brain
• Pen and Paper
• Your Phone

But, these solutions aren’t designed as CRMs so they cause agents to lose out on deals and leads. A CRM will help you track your leads and convert them.

Don’t let a deal slip you because you forgot to follow up with a lead. Few things hurt worse than that.

So yeah, you need a dedicated real estate CRM. You can find a free option or a paid option.

Keep it low-cost and simple as you’re new and move up as your business grows.

Our overall recommended real estate CRM is a paid option, Pipedrive CRM. We found it’s the easiest to use and can help real estate agent manage leads, their sphere of influence and play a part in the transaction management process. You can get started with a free 30-day trial.