If you’re a real estate professional looking to up your digital marketing game, having a website is a must-have. It will help make you look professional, bring credibility, show off your featured listings and past sales, show listings in the local real estate market, create landing pages to capture leads, and, ultimately, more sold listings.

Through our extensive experience working with real estate professionals, we’ve put together a comprehensive explanation of what IDX sites can do for you and our specific recommendations based on your individual needs. While there’s no simple answer to which is the best IDX site for RE agents, we hope to shine some light on the topic.

We hope our past experiences within this industry can help provide you with a little more clarity on which IDX site is best for you!

What is an IDX Website?

The Internet Data Exchange (IDX) is a software that pulls MLS data and shares it to other websites. This allows users who are searching for properties to view the most up-to-date information that has been uploaded to an MLS. Think of it like all other search engines. In the past, home buyers were solely dependent on their real estate agents to send them available homes, however, IDX sites allow people to do the searching themselves.

It is important to have up-to-date listings on your real estate website. By integrating an IDX software, MLS listings will be pulled and displayed on your site, allowing you to provide the most accurate information to potential buyers. This accuracy will hopefully keep them on your website and give them no reason to search for properties on other competitors’ real estate websites.

Why Do You Need an IDX Site?

There are lots of factors to take into consideration when deciding which IDX provider you want to go with as a real estate professional. For our clients, we like to look at the cost, the features and functionality offered, how easy the interface is, and how updated the search appears on the user's end. While there are many options for IDX providers out there, it’s possible that only certain ones offer the type of service that best fits your needs.

We know there are a lot of expenses involved in real estate, not to mention the handful of other online platforms you probably use, but how you strategize your real estate website will probably be one of the most important decisions you make as a real estate professional.

Why? We find that real estate websites are the #1 way for real estate professionals to grow their email lists which convert a lead generation into a new client. But, like with any big decision, the best course of action is to really think about your needs and then weigh all of the options. So let’s discuss!

What Can IDX Sites Provide?

IDX sites can provide many important features for Real Estate professionals. First and foremost, IDX sites help with lead generation! One of the most critical parts about being a Real Estate agent, investor, team, or brokerage is converting inquiries into leads, of course.

Once someone has signed up, an IDX site can provide important information based on what users search within your real estate website. RE agents can easily divorce what a user has searched when they searched, the specific properties they are interested in, and so on.

Lead generation allows you to capture people who come to your real estate website looking for homes might not be ready to dive into the search seriously quite yet. An IDX site can capture their information for you to then put on an automated email campaign so they can keep you fresh in their mind until they are ready to move forward.

You can easily start them on a drip campaign using platforms like Mailchimp, Mailerlite, or Follow Up Boss to reach out consistently to be able to capture them when they are ready to buy their dream home. This is the beauty of having an IDX provider on your new website.

Once potential buyers visit your real estate website and find how simple it is to search for properties, they won’t want to leave! This up-to-date information on listings will give them a reason to scope out similar properties and hopefully stay on your real estate website for longer periods of time.

How to Know Which is the Best IDX Site for Your Real Estate Website?

Now you may be thinking, “okay, I’m sold on using an IDX site, but how do I choose which one?” Well, now that you know what IDX sites provide for real estate professionals, you need to think about what best suits you.

How much work are you willing to put into the real estate website? Are you looking for an easy and simple solution? Or are you willing to put in the work to set it up how you like it? Is pricing a large factor in your decision? Is your approach long-term or short-term when it comes to building an online presence? All of these questions (and more) will lead you to your perfect match.

Looking from website provider to website provider, you will soon find that each may offer “extras” for your IDX site. If you are looking for a quick and simple solution that does not require much work, we recommend considering established IDX providers that will put it all together for you.

Some names you might see popping up repeatedly in your IDX site quest include Agent Fire, Easy Agent Pro, Incom, IDX Broker Home, and Placester. We picked our favorites and will dive into them below!

What IDX sites are high on our list?

With so many different options out there, here are four we recommend: Agent Fire, IDX Broker Home, Luxury Presence, and InCom. Each IDX website builder offers different pricing, customizability, and resources.

While some options are more expensive than others, these platforms are all a more economic solution than using real estate website designers, which can easily set you back a few thousand dollars. Using one of these platforms to create IDX websites suddenly seems like a much better way to generate leads!

Agent Fire

Agent Fire is a great choice if you’re looking to build a real estate website within your budget but still would like to have control over the features and design choices.

When it comes to real estate website builders, this option is in the middle of the spectrum cost-wise. You’ll be paying the monthly support fee, being $129 a month, and the initial setup fee which ranges from being free to $1,785 for a customized IDX website.

Agent Fire’s backend is extremely user-friendly and intuitive. It works in a similar way to a WordPress website, so nearly anyone will be able to make edits to their IDX website on their own without the need for a helping hand.

However, if you do need assistance with anything, or just need to save time, the IDX provider has professionals on standby for phone and email support to help your real estate team. This is covered in your monthly support fee.

Agent Fire’s landing pages functionality is also great. Landing pages have one thing in mind: conversions. You’ll generate immediate interest and lead capture will be much easier with strategy within your real estate website.

Landing pages can be anything from a form that requests personal information so that you can do property analysis, a button that subscribes them to all of your social media accounts, or lead capture forms. Agent Fire’s spark pages have been rated as the #1 landing pages for many years in a row.

A great addition that our clients love to use is the blog posts. These are an additional fee per month, but blog posts are one of the best ways to generate authentic traffic to your real estate website, so it’s worth the cost. It’s one of the marketing tools we would highly recommend paying extra for!

We love this IDX website for any real estate agent in any location. To sweeten the pot, The Inspiration Agency can offer a 10-day free trial for new users, all you have to do is click here.

IDX Broker Home

In choosing IDX Broker Home, you will be given a personalized WordPress website and even have the option to choose from different themes. One special feature is that you can adjust how aggressively you would like to capture real estate leads. Whether or not you will request users to register on your site or not is fully up to you.

Contrary to Agent Fire, the pricing of IDX Broker Home is centered around its users. There is a setup fee of $500 for all users and three different monthly plans to accommodate the size of your team.

As an individual real estate agent, you would pay $150 a month in addition to the initial setup fee. As a small team or a larger office, it would only cost slightly more, at $160 a month and $190 a month, respectively.

IDX Broker Home has plenty of features that will make your real estate website user-friendly and provide your visitors with more than just a property search. Some of these features include a mortgage calculator, powerful interactive maps, and home valuation request forms.

These features will allow you to offer your new website visitors the opportunity to seek a relationship with you instead of just performing a simple transaction of a property search. You’ll also have the opportunity to create landing pages, at an additional cost.

Overall, this is a great option if you are looking to prioritize pricing and functionality. Your very own WordPress website will allow you to brand yourself while also growing your business at a steady rate, in pulling those local MLS listings through.

Luxury Presence

An IDX site that shows up-to-date listings pulled from an MLS site is good, but an IDX site that allows you to add to those listings to make them stand out more is great. Luxury Presence allows you to do just that, among other things of course!

The high-resolution photos, videos, and virtual tours you create can be added to your real estate pulled through local MLS listings. This makes the search experience more powerful for website visitors and allows an interactive experience.

Some other features include high-converting lead generation, blog publishing, built-in SEO tools, landing pages, and the choice to choose from design templates or have your own real estate website customized.

Overall, Luxury Presence is aimed at real estate agents or professionals who specialize in luxury real estate. The pricing begins at around $5,000 with monthly costs up to $500. If you are looking to brand yourself within the luxury market of real estate and value the visual experiences you provide users, there is no better option among IDX solutions for luxury real estate agents.

InCom

If you’re looking to be more budget conscientious, use the basic features offered, or maybe just dip your toes into having an online presence, InCom is a great option for you.

The budget-friendly pricing for InCom begins at $39.95 a month along with an initial setup fee of $250. You’ll even have the ability to create landing pages for free. There are plenty of options that allow you to pay for additional features and add-ons to enhance your real estate website even more.

Some of those include premium templates, Google Ads management, and ReCall Marketing. Without any additions, you will still have templates to choose from and all the basic functions.

One downside is that the templates do not allow for much customizability, so you will not be able to brand yourself as well as some other options listed above, possibly giving your competitors an advantage. This is definitely something to keep in mind! Overall, InCom is a great option if you are an individual or new to the real estate business as it will provide all the functions necessary for your real estate website to be successful, but at a budget-friendly price.

Conclusion

Now that we have given you all of the preliminary research, we hope you are one step closer to making a decision about which IDX site is best for you.

The Inspiration Agency specializes in helping real estate professionals get leads through our digital marketing services. Of course, overall success in the Real Estate industry depends on how your real estate website is strategized.

However, real estate success goes well beyond just the website itself. If you’re looking to improve your overall digital marketing presence, maybe you would be a good fit to be our next client. You can reach out through our contact page!

Best IDX Websites for Real Estate Professionals