Placester | Reviews and Pricing | 2024
Placester is a real estate website provider build on the WordPress platform. Placester partnered with NAR in 2017 to provide real estate agents with a free website. TThe free version won’t get you far, but Placester is still a helpful resource for agents and one of the most affordable website products and services for single agents.
Located in Boston, MA, Placester was founded in 2011. Placester Vice President Seth Price is a popular industry leader in the marketing space, and author of The Road to Recognition, An A-to-Z Guide to Personal Branding.
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Your Reviews
Placester
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Use Placester if…
- Your website is not the central pillar of your business but you want something professional and modern that can represent you and your business online
- You want a simple, not-too-techy website that works seamlessly with your open houses
Skip Placester if…
- You’re willing to pay more for a more robust website focused on SEO and with a built-in CRM (consider Real Geeks)
- You prefer the distinctive design style of Easy Agent Pro
- You’re dissatisfied with the styles and selections and want something more custom and powerful (consider Agent Image)
View Other Real Estate Website Providers
Placester Design Examples
I give Placester websites high marks for their premium themes. While a hefty $50/mo, these themes really stand out and are as crisp and modern as what you find with even high-end sites, in my opinion. Their basic design packages are serviceable as well.
Some Placester users also hire outside designers to spruce up their Placester sites when required.
Jack Conway
Placester is oriented toward individual agent websites, but it is not uncommon to find teams or brokerages using it for their website presence.
Best Features
Easy to Use
While there is not a lot of customizability in the backend, Placester is very easy to use and get started. The lack of options means that you can get a website up and running quickly, and won’t accidentally mess anything up.
If you are not a tech-savvy person, Placester is a navigable solution.
RealSatisfied
Placester added the real estate agent review tool RealSatisfied to its portfolio in 2016.
RealSatisified automatically sends clients surveys and creates an easy-to-use review aggregator you can share on your website of all your reviews.
This tool is fully integrated into the basic subscription of the Placester website, and is an excellent start on reputation and review management for the individual agent or small team.
Biggest Pitfalls
SEO
Being built on WordPress, Placester sites are on a solid foundation when it comes to SEO.
However, unlike some alternatives, I do not have any good examples of any that rank for competitive keywords. Of the 10 example sites I found, only 1 earns a significant amount of organic traffic, though still under 1000 visits a month.
This isn’t likely the fault, per se, of Placester. Instead, it likely reflects the types of agents who choose to use Placester and their preferred business strategy. Serious content marketers who are putting the work in to rank on Google are more likely to manage their site themselves or have more expensive SEO-friendly all-in-one platforms like Real Geeks or Sierra Interactive.
Customizability
WordPress is a very customizable CMS.
But Placester isn’t about giving you access to the full WordPress backend and letting you screw anything up.
Instead, they limit what you can do in the backend cosmetically and functionally.
There are two basic themes for most websites, and four premium themes available for an extra $50/mo.
Consequently, Placester is not the most customizable website platform. If you are picky about the small details of your website, Placester will quickly annoy you.
Being a WordPress site, you can actually hire designers to implement custom CSS on your Placester site and give it an upgrade. But that hardly counts as being a customizable platform if you are hiring someone else to do it.
Placester Pricing*
- $80/mo Starter ($100 for non-Realtors)
- $150/mo for Advanced ($190 for non-Realtors)
- $300/mo for Office Builder
- Discounts for paying annually
Placest starts at $80/mo for NAR members, and $100/mo for non-Realtors. This will give you access to some basic website builder tools.
The Advanced plan includes home valuations, custom lead capture, custom colors, and more. It is $150/mo or $190/mo for non-Realtors.
The Office Builder plan adds agent roster pages, subdomains for agents, and more office tools for $300/mo.
There is a 20% discounts for paying annually.
*This is current to the best of my knowledge at the time of this writing. Contact the vendor directly to check current prices, discounts, and terms.
My Personal Recommendation
Placester has had a roller coaster time the past few years. They grew rapidly, culminating in a lucrative partnership with NAR. But by the end of 2018 they were forced to announce massive layoffs amounting to over half their employees.
Perhaps related to their turbulent recent history, quite a few of the online reviews voice displeasure at Placester’s customer service, complaining that the sales staff overpromises but the experience under delivers.
With a new CEO, it seems likely that they will be making changes, and it will be interesting to watch what those are.
In the meantime, for agents who get most of their business offline from sources like your sphere and referrals, Placester might be a great option. In fact, it is the 4th most trusted website solution among the top 250 real estate teams in America with a 4% market share.
I would consider Placester near the top of the pack in what I call the “business card” websites – websites that aren’t necessarily designed for much more than a home base for your online presence.
I love that they are built on WordPress, although WordPress’s greatest advantages (SEO and customizability) are unfortunately stripped away from you, the consumer.
But if you want more from your site, like content marketing, high converting landing pages for your PPC campaigns, online real estate lead generation, or a highly customized site that can grow with your business, steer clear!
But if you are a tech-wary agent who works mostly referrals, past clients, farming neighborhoods, and just need something aesthetically pleasing in Google when your customers look you up, Placester is a contender.
Placester Videos
Pros
Template design for those who want a somewhat “plug-n-play” site.
Con
Several cons!
1 – Customer service is absolutely HORRIBLE!!! They advertise, in multiple places, that requests to your creative assistant (on the DFIM plan) will be handled within 48 hours. After having virtually designed my entire site after a trial period, the few revisions I requested that didn’t require any customization weren’t handled after a period of 7 days. When I reached out to customer service about it, they were less than helpful with a laissez faire attitude. The rep constantly avoided directly answering my questions.
2 – They don’t care if you cancel, because they do not offer refunds…. something that is not clearly disclosed. So, in my instance, I paid for a 1 year subscription to the DIFM plan (~$2K), which included custom setup at $500. Even if I cancelled 14 days into the subscription, Placester would retain the full amount of what was paid.
3 – MAKE SURE YOU CANCEL YOUR CREDIT CARD IF YOU DON’T WANT THEM TO AUTOMATICALLY RENEW YOUR SUBSCRIPTION. I have heard this multiple times after doing a bit of digging around. Apparently you can “cancel” your plan, but when it comes time to renew at the end of your subscription, other subscribers have been automatically charged and well, they don’t issue refunds.
I wish I could give a zero rating. I have been less than impressed with everything, especially customer service and my creative assistant.