12 FREE Marketing Tools for Real Estate Agents in 2021
Interested in testing some new online marketing strategies on the cheap?
And I mean really cheap? Like, “free” cheap?
Below are some free real estate marketing software options that all have free entry-level offerings that will let you experiment and play around with their product.
The free stuff might even be enough to do what you need. Or, if it’s working for you, maybe it will be worth an upgrade!
Also, check out my other articles about free real estate software categories:
- Free Real Estate CRM Software
- Free Real Estate Transaction Management Software
- Free Property Management Software
Or read my article about the Ultimate Free Tech Stack for real estate agents!
ListReports – Market Reports
ListReports
FREE+. ListReports is a lender/agent marketing suite that includes open house tools and listing marketing tools. It also includes monthly market and property updates that you can send to your sphere. It is free for agents, but there is a paid version for lender partners who are the main customer. You can also pay for some things like direct mail and signs.
What it Costs
- FREE
- Additional marketing materials are available for sale
What it’s Got
ListReports is designed for use by real estate agents and lenders alike.
Their service includes a marketing service that has free “shareables”, infographics that you can post to social media (with the ListSource branding).
It is best used for marketing your listings and includes open house sign-in sheets for home buyers, property fliers, and more.
Direct MLS integration makes using its service quick and painless.
What it’s Missing
ListReports is designed exclusively to be used with a loan officer. So find your favorite one and get them on board.
The main services are entirely free, and you are instead upsold on digital and print marketing materials.
Its property reports lack any AVM or market updates to keep existing homeowners apprised of area activity and home equity.
Alternatives
See this list of home market report software options.
Kleard – Open House Software
Kleard
FREE+. Kleard has a complete suite of both open house and self-tour tools. For self tours, “Kleard Now” offers signs with instruction or iPad stands, as well as smart locks for the home. The basic Open House sign-in software is free. Kleard can serve as a simple sign-in sheet, or an all-in-one solution for agents and brokerages looking get started with self tours.
What it Costs
- FREE for the Kleard Lite
- $19.99/mo for Kleard Pro
- $99/listing for Kleard Now Self Tours
- $139.99+ for Smart Locks
What it’s Got
The free version features safety features for your open houses and everything you need for the basic open house.
Paid features will allow you to customize the app, customize the questionnaire, marketing tools, and more integrations with your CRM.
What it’s Missing
Kleard is a great app for open houses. The free version will get you most of the way and you can elect to upgrade affordably if you need additional features.
Alternatives
See this list of open house software for real estate agents.
SendPulse – Email Marketing
SendPulse
FREE+. SendPulse does more than just email marketing. They also have push notifications for your clients and visitors to download to help push your content, as well as SMS marketing and Facebook chat bot tools.
What It Costs*
- FREE for up to 12,000 emails per month and 500 subscribers
- Professional features start at $6.40/mo
- $0.024 per text
What it’s Got
SendPulse is an email marketing tool, but does so much more. Their software includes options to add push notifications, SMS text marketing, and even Facebook chat tools. You can create autoresponders, web forms,
The email marketing campaigns include a drag-and-drop editor to customize your email chain, whether you are doing a monthly newsletter, a drip email sequence, holiday message, or a one-off email blast to your database.
The free version packs a lot of punch and is worth a go!
What It’s Missing
The basic free email marketing tool is missing nothing.
You get the full product for up to 500 subscribers on an email campaign. That is a lot, and possibly enough for a small real estate business.
They have additional features that can cost money like text messages. But even the push notifications for your website are free (with SendPulse branding).
They give you a lot for nothing, hoping you will be able to afford their upsells when your business grows and needs more.
Alternatives
See my list of real estate email marketing software.
Realist – Prospecting Lists
Realist
FREE. Realist is an MLS add-on that includes access to property information for MLS subscribers. Not only is it a useful one-stop-shop for all public record data on a property, but it also allows users to export up to 5000 records per month for use as a mailing list. Subscribers can filter data by geography, demographics, and property characteristics.
What it Costs
- Free for members of participating MLSs
What it’s Got
CoreLogic is one of the largest residential data companies in America. In addition to Realist, it offers other third party paid list services like ListSource.
You can get that same targeted information straight from Realist, up to 5000 contacts a month, for free!
What it’s Missing
Realist is not a marketing platform, and you cannot send direct mail, has no marketing automation software features like listing mailings, nor can you manage your campaign from within Realist. It is useful just for building a targeted mailing list or looking up public property data.
Alternatives
See this list of list building companies for real estate agents.
Facebook Messenger – Website Chat
Facebook Messenger
FREE. Facebook is in beta on a website chatbot based on Messenger. In fact, it is Messenger. Folks can chat with your business on your website just like they can on your Facebook business page. Messenger has its own ecosystem of support and software, companies like Chatfuel and Manychat that help you create sophisticated marketing bots to help put your lead gen on auto-pilot.
What it Costs
- Free
What it’s Got
Facebook Messenger can be directly integrated into your website at no cost. You can interact with your website visitors in the same manner you interact with your Facebook page visitors.
What it’s Missing
There are third party apps that can add additional sophisticated chat functions of other third party chat software. But it costs money. And it certainly is not as feature rich as dedicated apps.
Alternatives
See this list of real estate website chat software.
Hotjar – Website Heatmaps
What It Costs*
- Free
- $39/mo for the first upgrade (to Plus)
- $99+/mo for full business features
What it’s Got
Hotjar is a really cool website heatmap tool.
A website heatmap is all about seeing which parts of a particular webpage on your site visitors interact with.
More than just a heatmap, Hotjar can record the behavior of visitors – their entire time on your page. It is a full dose of Big Brother as you watch through the eyes of a buyer and seller as they scroll through your page, where they have the mouse, and where they click.
Heat maps are a must-use tool for conversion rate optimization (CRO) experts and user interface (UI) designers. They allow those folks to get a sense of how users utilize the website, which content gets the most attention, and optimizing where to place links, call-to-actions, and more.
It includes a free version for up to three pages heat mapped and 2000 visitors. It is 100% worth looking at even if you don’t need the upgraded version.
What It’s Missing
The free tool gives you up to 2000 page views for the heatmap, up to 300 visitor recordings, and 3 pages mapped. That includes all of the core features of the heat maps and visitor recordings and is very cool to see!
In addition to higher caps on page views and visitors, paid plans add more features like reports, recording tags, and advanced JavaScript tools. As a small business, the $29/mo Plus plan is probably all you would ever need.
Alternatives
Buffer – Social Media Scheduling
Buffer
FREE+. Buffer is an easy DIY way to schedule posts across all the major social media platforms. A starter account is free. Consider Buffer if you want to be more hands-on and curate content yourself, and just an easy way to synchronize it across several platforms.
What It Costs
- Free
- $15/mo for upgraded account
- $99+/mo for business accounts
What it’s Got
Buffer is one of the most popular social media marketing tools available. It is an easy way to schedule your social media content throughout multiple channels.
Easily post content to all your social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest) in a single dashboard. You can schedule those posts to go out at the right time of day to get the most interaction, instead of 10 PM when most real estate agents actually have time to actually spend on their social media.
What It’s Missing
Chances are you might get by as a solo entrepreneur or small business on the free account.
The free account comes with most of the tools but limited to 3 social media accounts and up to 10 posts in the queue.
The first upgraded account allows you to have 8 social media accounts and 100 scheduled posts. Larger enterprise accounts are $99-$399 for 25-150 accounts and up to a whopping 2000 scheduled posts.
Alternatives
See my list of real estate social media marketing tools.
Zapier – Integrations and Automations
What It Costs*
- Free
- $19.99/mo for the first upgraded plan
- $49/mo for the Professional plan
- $299/mo for the Team plan
- $599/mo for the Company plan
What it’s Got
Do you need to send your website leads to your CRM, your email marketing software, your Google contacts, and maybe more?
Zapier is your tool!
Zapier essentially lets different participating software from different providers talk to each other using a “zap” that you can easily create. You don’t have to be techy to pull it off.
Some folks may prefer an all-in-one software solution. But the best software is often with different companies, so having a way to use the best-in-class in each category is a tremendous benefit!
What It’s Missing
The free plan has almost all the features, but limits you to 5 “zaps” and single step zaps. Some specific integrations are “premium” integrations and not available until the upgraded plan, so depending on what you are trying to integrate, the free version may or may not help.
The first paid plan, the “Starter” plan, includes up to 20 integrations, makes premiums zaps available, and introduces multi-step “zaps”, which would likely be as sophisticated as a typical real estate team or small brokerage would need.
Alternatives
HubSpot Marketing Hub – Marketing Software
What it Costs*
- Free
- $45 for the starter plan
- $800/mo for the premium plan
- $3200/mo for the enterprise plan
What it’s Got
Hubspot has a free CRM and a Marketing Hub.
The Marketing hub has quite a few features that you normally might find in your CRM, but separate.
Probably the best features available in the free version is the Facebook/Instagram ad management (up to $1000 ad spend), plus a website live chat feature.
The free version of the marketing hub includes contact management, forms, chatbots, and more.
HubSpot is generally worth considering if you are a content marketer and expect to eventually dive in to the world of content creation, blogs, video, and website SEO.
What it’s Missing
The basic plan includes a few neat tools and is worth experimenting, but realistically it’s not a lot compared to what your existing CRM may already provide in the terms of marketing tools. The upgraded versions, especially at the Professional level, really opens up HubSpots full potential as a marketing engine.
The starter plan adds email marketing, mobile optimization, and reporting dashboards for $50/mo. From there, it obviously gets pricey and is designed for larger enterprises with a focus on content creation like blogs and video.
Alternatives
Canva – Image Creation
Canva
FREE+. Canva allows you to create custom graphics, selecting from templates available or starting from scratch. It’s especially handy for a good infographic. These graphics are ideal for sharing to social media, making infographics to earn backlinks or create shareable content, supercharge blog posts with branded imagery, or deck out a listing presentation.
What it Costs*
- Free
- $12.95/mo for Canva for Pro
- $30/mo for Enterprise
- One-off premium purchases
What it’s Got
Canva is on everyone’s list of cool free tools for marketing, and I am not going to snub it here!
Canva, of course, lets you pick from a variety of templates – or make your own! – to create custom graphics. It’s especially handy for a good infographic.
These graphics are ideal for sharing to social media, making infographics to earn backlinks or create shareable content, supercharge blog posts with branded imagery, or deck out a listing presentation.
What it’s Missing
The free version has a somewhat limited library of clipart, styles, and pictures. You will probably pine for several of the paid content. But if you work it, you can go pretty far in Canva on just the free version.
Canva for Work upgrade adds some functionality like transparent backgrounds, animated graphics, and resizing pictures more easily.
Alternatives
- Adobe Spark / InDesign / Photoshop
- PicMonkey
- Piktochart
Ubersuggest – SEO Keyword Research
What it Costs
- Free
What it’s Got
Ubersuggest is the creation of Neil Patel, a famous digital marketing guru who is worth a follow if you take your website and digital marketing seriously.
Ubersuggest is a keyword research tool that helps you figure out what keywords to target in Google when creating content like blog posts, neighborhood pages, and more.
While some tools like these become less useful for low volume, hyper-local SEO keywords that local businesses (like Realtors) generally target, keyword research is still a critical component of mapping out your SEO strategy.
What it’s Missing
Ubersuggest is completely free. There are no upgrades or upsells.
Neil Patel created as a backlink machine and lead magnet for his ecosystem (his network, for example, is the creator of paid tools like Kissmetrics and Crazy Egg).
That said, it is still a tool in its infancy. It doesn’t have nearly the same kind of power, insights, and versatility as its paid competitors like SEMRush or Ahrefs.
Alternatives
Pexels – Stock Images
What It Costs
- Free
What it’s Got
Pexels is not exactly software. But it’s a great free site to browse royalty free images.
Not just images, but royalty-free videos as well! You can use these images for commercial purposes with almost no strings attached (you can’t resell the images).
Stock photography isn’t as good as original photography, especially as a real estate agent. Using photos of your own local area is great way to enrich your website’s content. But stock photography still has plenty of uses!
What It’s Missing
As with any free stock image site, the cream of the crop in stock photography ain’t gonna be there.
They have “sponsored” images for which you can pay, which is how they monetize the site and make money.
Alternatives
See this list of stock image services for real estate agents.
Conclusion
These free marketing tools for Realtors can complement not only marketing strategies for those in the real estate industry but those of most small business owners.
And, being free, I highly recommend taking them for a test drive. Some of the free versions will take you pretty far.
Updated December 29, 2020; Originally published March 3, 2019.
Another great software for agents is OHGuests.com All In One Open House Management Platform with a built-in agent safety feature!
Thank you for sharing! That had just come on my radar recently and I have it noted to look into it more. I hope to do an Open House software series soon and will be sure to mention it, thank you!