Follow Up Boss is a robust customer relationship management (CRM) tool designed specifically for real estate professionals. There are tons of CRMs out in the wild, with varying features, price points, and ease of use, designed for real estate agents. But Follow Up Boss is one of the best ones around, in my opinion.
Follow Up Boss has been my CRM of choice for my own real estate business since 2019. Now my whole brokerage uses this platform for all real estate business on a large team plan. So let’s dig into the why!
Why Do Real Estate Agents Need a CRM?
There are agents who run their businesses successfully without a CRM. But I would venture that many of them are leaving money on the table simply because leads slip through the cracks when there’s no solid system in place to manage them.
Using some of the amazing technology that has come along specifically to help agents automatically manage their transactions, leads, and email marketing can boost your real estate business. CRMs can work like virtual assistants, answering text messages from leads, sending automated emails, and nurturing those long-term leads to keep your pipeline filled for future business.
If you’re a serious real estate agent with a vision of growing your business, an intuitive and robust CRM is a must. If you invest in lead generation, a solid and responsive CRM like Follow Up Boss (FUB) will help you capture more of those leads, convert them into clients, and stay on top of your entire database so your lead generation return on investment (ROI) is higher.
A good CRM will also help you expand your business if you decide to build a team. Maintain those relationships and recruit on autopilot with some of the features FUB has to offer. FUB is designed to let you start as a solo agent and easily add new members to your plan.
In this review, I’m going to break down some of the best features, the time investment, the monthly cost, and some of the cons of this platform to give you some insight as to whether or not Follow Up Boss might be the CRM for you and your business.
How Much Does Follow Up Boss Cost?
| Plan | Price per Month (Billed Monthly vs Annually) | Max Users | Annual Investment (Billed Annually) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grow (solo agents and small teams) | $57/$69 per user | No limit (per user) | $684 per user |
| Pro | $416/$499 | Up to 10 users (add’l users $49/month) | $5,028 |
| Platform | $833/$1,000 | Up to 30 users (add’l users $20/month) | $9,996 |
Let’s start with the most impactful part of your decision-making process—the monthly cost. While I firmly believe in investing in your business—focusing on potential ROI rather than cost—I also know that money can be tight for agents just starting out.
Yes, Follow Up Boss is a little pricey considering it’s only a CRM and nothing else. However, the features you get with FUB can offset some of the cost. It includes a lot of additional features that other CRMs with lower price tags consider add-ons and charge extra for.
In fact, since 2019, Follow Up Boss lowered their pricing and simplified it, making it more accessible for agents trying to get their real estate legs. At just $69 per agent, per month, a solo agent can easily afford Follow Up Boss, considering the fact that it can basically run their entire business.
Core Functions of Follow Up Boss
With Follow Up Boss, the core functions are included at every single price point. The main difference in the pricing plans is based on how many team members, or users, you’re allowed to include in your plan.
Key Standout Features
Now let’s deep dive into a few features in more detail that make Follow Up Boss a standout CRM platform for real estate agents.
User Interface
One of my favorite features of Follow Up Boss is its interface. I personally love the clean, easy-to-navigate contact page that acts as a main dashboard for each person in your database. You can practically run your entire business from this interface.
You Own Your Database. Always.
Something that can’t be overlooked is the fact that, if you decide to leave Follow Up Boss for any reason, you keep your database. That’s not the case with some specific CRMs for real estate agents, particularly the ones agents access through their brokerage. But if you ever decide you want to leave Follow Up Boss and switch to another CRM, you simply download your entire list into a CSV file to easily upload into any other platform you choose. You can even keep many of your tags and notes in your database so you never lose the work you’ve put in.
Real estate agents spend a ton of their own time and money developing a database that will generate business for years. Without a database, a real estate agent has nothing to work with. The ability to retain your database is crucial to your success.
Integrations & Flexibility
Follow Up Boss offers a ton of easy integrations, from IDX websites to lead generation platforms to email marketing services. With so many options for agents at different levels, it’s easy to customize the experience and continuously adjust as needs change. That’s a level of flexibility many CRMs can’t provide their clients.
Training
As with most CRM platforms, there is a learning curve when first starting with Follow Up Boss. They provide a boot camp to get agents started quickly with additional training modules for deeper dives into specific functions. But one thing I love about Follow Up Boss is this little feature on each of their screens that allows agents to get a quick training on the same screen as the feature itself.
Up in the top right-hand corner of the screen lives a blue button that says “How ____ Works.” When clicked, a short explainer video pops up to show how to use the feature or function on the page without ever leaving the screen. That’s super convenient, and I for one love this little added detail that makes life simpler.
Pros & Cons of Follow Up Boss
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Follow Up Boss may not be the right fit for every agent, but there are so many other options you can explore. For example, if the price for FUB is prohibitive, you might try LionDesk instead. LionDesk offers tons of features at a lower price point. If you want to start out with a free option, we like HubSpot to get your business started. Or if you’re looking for an all-in-one platform that includes a website and lead generation, a good option might be Propertybase GO. If project management is your priority, you might want to check out ClickUp.
There are plenty of different ways to build your real estate business, and there are almost as many tools available. You might consider checking out our buyer’s guide on CRMs to explore other options. You can check that out here.
What I Love About Follow Up Boss
Personally, my favorite thing about using Follow Up Boss is how easy it is to see everything I need to in order to run my real estate business. With all of my lead’s data down the left side of the screen, I can easily find key information about my contact.
The center of the screen is dedicated to activities and communications between me and my contact. From here I can initiate anything—email, phone call, text message, or start an automation—right from this screen.
I also love that Follow Up Boss is focused on being a really good CRM. It’s not trying to be more than that. Not everyone needs all the expensive websites, lead generators, or marketing management systems. It’s nice to have a great platform that is focused on being exceptional at just the one thing and nothing else. So many companies are trying to be everything in one service and leaving solo agents and new agents behind.
Follow Up Boss is a great tool to grow with too. It integrates with so many other services that agents can add what they want to create their own customized system of services. That level of flexibility is everything to growing agents who may want to use different tools at different levels of business success.
Your Take
There are a ton of CRM options available for real estate agents these days. Hopefully, this honest review of one of my favorite real estate tools helps you get a better understanding of what it can do for you in your business.
However, what they say is true: The best CRM is the one you will use. So, my opinion is just that: an opinion. If you have a different opinion, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
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