Every agent needs a high-functioning, effective website. Your branding, prospecting, lead generation, and property marketing efforts begin and end with your website, but few agents have the time to actively manage one. In our review of the company’s offerings, we found Placester understands that pain point and offers a unique solution.
Placester is a real estate website builder that not only designs and builds a custom real estate site, but manages and updates the site for you—forever. In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into the Placester concierge-level service experience. We’re going to take a close look at the website building process, the pricing, and additional features and explain why we believe Placester to be the best website builder on the market. Check out our Placester review to find out why.
Placester Pros & Cons
After our careful review of the Placester’s capabilities, we present you with its pros and cons.
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Placester Pricing
Placester offers three simple packages: DIY (Do It Yourself), DIFM (Do It For Me) and DIFM Content Pro.
Note that all Placester packages come with a customer relationship manager (CRM) as well as IDX functionality. They are also deeply discounted for National Association of Realtors (NAR) members. Annual contracts come with two months free, and both DIFM packages require a $500 one-time setup fee.
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Reviewing Placester Package Options
Placester keeps it simple with three package options.
DIY
The Placester website builder offers a “code-free” design experience that lets you create and manage your own IDX-enabled, mobile-friendly real estate website. You don’t need any special training or coding experience with their simple site editor.
DIFM Website
Placester creates a custom, expertly designed website for you within 48 hours. You meet with them, make changes, tweak, finalize, your site is launched, and your hard work is done. From there, Placester will handle unlimited updates and changes to your site.
DIFM Content Pro
With DIFM Content Pro, you also get three Facebook posts, three Instagram posts, and one piece of custom content per week. Placester will post the content to your social media and website for you, in accordance with their proven social media calendar cadence.
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Agents have long been clamoring for someone to take time-consuming website management off their plates. Enter Placester. In my review of Placester’s offerings, I found the company not only creates highly functioning, aesthetically pleasing, lead-generating websites specifically designed for real estate agents, it updates and maintains them forever.
This type of concierge-level service at a price point this low has never been done, and assuming Placester can scale with increased demand, I think it has the potential to be incredibly disruptive to the competition. Busy agents, teams, and brokers will reap the benefits from having optimized, high-converting websites with none of the work.
Click here to visit Placester, take a brief quiz, and get your custom website within 48 hours.
Getting Started With Placester
To get started, access the “wizard” quiz, which takes less than five minutes. It’ll ask for your name, service area, if you have an existing site, your goals for your site, and your general aesthetic preferences.
Placester then presents your custom, expert-designed site within 48 hours of completing the quiz.
You’ll give feedback and can make changes. Once it’s perfected and goes live, everything is managed and updated by Placester.
Placester Website Features
We really appreciate that Placester is taking over so much of the busy work related to websites.
Placester understands real estate agents, and their websites are designed specifically for the real estate industry. Sites include crucial lead generation tools like property valuations and other landing pages, lead capture forms, and even community pages.
As you review your website draft, you’ll notice these crucial features:
- Property Search
- Contact Us
- Featured Listings
- Testimonials
- Blog
- Mortgage Calculator
- Lead Capture Forms
- IDX Listing Display Tools
- Save Listings/Save Search options
- Area and Community Pages
- SEO Tools
- Royalty-free Image Library
Requesting Updates to Your Website
Your dashboard is where you’ll request any updates or changes to your site. This process is streamlined, stress-free, and an area where Placester knows it will need to constantly improve and optimize. They realize that if it’s a pain to submit changes, agents won’t be willing to pay for the DIFM options.
Content Creation With DIFM Content Pro
Not only will Placester build your custom website, they’ll create custom content to go on it. If you opt to go with their DIFM Content Pro package, you’ll get three Instagram posts and three Facebook posts every week. The social media posts are not unique content, but they are posted automatically to your site and accounts based on a tested cadence.
The content that is unique to you, such as a weekly blog post, can be used in your social media or newsletters.
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Placester Draft Websites
Curious to see a Placester website in action? Here are four drafts created for agents starting the DIFM process.
Placester FAQs
Now you know how Placester works and the tools Placester users have at their disposal. But you may still have questions. Here are the most frequently asked questions we get about the Placester real estate website builder.
How is the Placester CRM?
OK, so this is a tricky question to answer because, ultimately, it depends on your needs. If you’re looking for a full-throated CRM with all the bells and whistles, including sophisticated automation, a dialer, and more, then no, this CRM isn’t going to meet your expectations.
On the other hand, if you want a place where you can simply track the leads coming in from your website, keep them organized, and get a basic understanding of what you should be doing with them next, then yeah, this CRM works.
The fact of the matter is, the Placester CRM isn’t going to win any beauty or functionality contests, but its features work. We’d suggest using another CRM, but if it’s a choice between Placester and nothing, choose Placester.
Is Placester a good deal?
Yes. When comparing what you pay vs what you get on Placester, there is a significant value on this platform. Yes, there are less expensive options out there, which are generic website builders. Those aren’t going to provide you with the specific tools Realtors need to run their business. You’re definitely not going to find a provider who maintains your website for you at this price point. Based purely on strength-to-weight, the Placester pricing is a good deal.
How long will it take to build my Placester website?
If you select the DIFM option, 48 hours. And then virtually no time spent on maintenance and updates.
If you choose the DIY option, I’d say you’ve got about two hours of work to get your site launched—taking you from a brand-new agent to operating a fully functioning website that is firing on all cylinders. After that, you’ll need to dedicate at least an hour a week for regular maintenance and to continue to add details that will make your site super relevant on Google—including adding weekly blog posts, building out your geographic area features, and so on.
Does Placester have strong customer support?
Yes, we were satisfied with the Placester level of client care.
If you’re a DIY plan agent, you have access to email and phone support, which was pretty responsive and answered our questions, though there was some lag time. With the DIFM plans, you’ll have dedicated customer service reps to answer all your questions through your dashboard.
All in all, Placester passes the customer support tests. They answered all our questions, solved our website problems, and did so in a professional manner.
Bottom Line: Is Placester the Best Website Builder?
For agents looking for a cost-effective, powerful, easy-to-use website builder, Placester is definitely a winner. Plus, their expanded package options will manage and maintain your site for you.
Busy agents should be out answering calls, showing houses, and getting contracts signed. They shouldn’t be spending time updating agent bios on their websites. We believe that Placester not only has high-converting websites that will boost any brand, but their concierge-level service means less worry and greater efficiency for agents, teams, and brokerages.
As long as the Placester team can maintain these services as they scale, we think this has the potential to really shake up the website builder software market.
Interested in learning more? Click here, take the quick, less-than-five-minute quiz, and get a draft of your custom website in 48 hours—at no cost.
Your Turn
Do you have experience with Placester? How do you feel about giving up the reins and having Placester manage and update your website? Still have any questions about how it works or specific features? Leave us a comment below!
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