[ad_1]
The Ixact (opens in new tab) CRM is up against some stiff competition when it comes to the best CRM for real estate (opens in new tab). With so many clients to manage and complex customer relationships to nurture, real estate agents benefit greatly from CRM software that is purpose-built for their needs. It’s no surprise that real estate CRMs have become a competitive niche within the wider CRM software category.
When it comes to CRMs, there are lots of elements to consider. What works for one real estate agent may not work for another. In this Ixact review, we take a deep dive into the platform to find out who it’s best suited for and what makes it stand apart from the competition.
Ixact CRM: Plans and pricing
Before you sign up for an Ixact account, you can choose between a monthly or annual plan. Ixact offers a generous five-week free trial so you can try out the platform before committing either way.
The basic CRM package offers a lot of functionality, but the platform offers lots of extras and add-ons for which the pricing gets slightly complicated.
For example, an Ixact subscription includes 2,500 mass emails per month. If you need more, you can purchase additional email bundles at $10 for 1,000 emails up to $150 for 50,000 emails. Once purchased, the extra email sends do not expire and can be used whenever they are needed.
All Ixact subscriptions come with a free agent website. However, registering a domain name through Ixact costs an extra $24 per year. Ixact also offers Internet Data Exchange (IDX) integration so you can compliantly pull properties from Multiple Listing Services (MLS) onto your agent website for prospective clients to view. If you want this add-on, you can choose between IDX Standard at $19 per month or IDX Professional—which includes advanced property search and extra lead generation tools—at $39 per month. There’s also a one-time $65 IDX set-up fee.
If real estate recruitment is an important part of your business, Ixact also offers a CRM solution specifically for agent recruitment purposes. Known as Ixact Recruiter, this tool can be purchased as an add-on to your Ixact subscription or as a standalone recruitment CRM product. It comes with all the same CRM and marketing tools but enables you to keep your recruitment contact management, marketing, and targets separate from your real estate client CRM.
| Header Cell – Column 0 | Features | Monthly Plan *Billed monthly | Annual Plan *Billed annually |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual | – Contact management – Email marketing – Automated newsletters – Agent website – Mobile app | $45 per month | $38 per month |
| Teams | – All the functionality of an individual account with the ability to invite team members into shared CRM | $45 per month + $29 per additional team member | $38 per month + $24.65 per additional team member |
| Ixact Recruiter | – AI-based Keep In Touch assistant – Automated email marketing and newsletters | $99/month + $45 per additional team member | $85 per month + $38 per additional team member |
| Social Stream Add-On | – Automated content posting to social media channels | $20 per month | $20 per month |
| SMS Marketing | – Includes custom business text number and 100 texting credits per month | $5 per month | $5 per month |
*Save 15% with the annual plan
Ixact CRM: Features
Let’s take a look at some of the key features that set Ixact apart from other CRM systems.
Email marketing automation
Ixact provides users with the ability to create and automate lead nurturing drip campaigns and monthly e-newsletters. Both of these email types require little to no set-up while remaining fully customizable.
For example, once you activate your automated monthly e-newsletter, you’ll find it already fully created under the Mass Emails tab. The email is pre-written for you and includes real estate articles that your subscribers might find interesting written and pre-loaded into your CRM by the Ixact team. You can easily customize the messaging and the articles in each newsletter before sending, including adding your own article links.
Activity plans
Ixact comes with extensive pre-defined marketing, listing, and closing activity plans to help you nurture leads and customers effectively throughout your entire sales lifecycle. Activities include emails, phone calls, letters, and administrative tasks.
Once a contact is assigned to an activity plan, Ixact will automate emails and send you task reminders to keep you on track.
Image 1 of 4
With Ixact’s Social Stream add-on, you can leverage automated content creation for your social media channels. Social Stream pulls informative real estate articles, writes the social media posts to go with them, and automatically posts them to your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter accounts according to your pre-selected posting schedule.
This is a particularly useful tool for real estate agents who want to leverage social media but struggle to find the time to source and publish regular content. Although you can edit the messaging of your social posts before they are published, it also works as a set it and forget it tool so you don’t have to do anything beyond the initial setup.
Free agent website
All Ixact subscriptions come with a free real estate agent website. However, options are limited. There are only eight website templates to choose from, and customization options are limited as well.
However, a website is entirely built and written for you. Once you set it up, you can hit Publish almost immediately and have a fully functional website that includes a mortgage calculator, pre-written blog posts, and lead capture forms.
When it comes to the pre-written blog posts, Ixact writers produce a new article bi-weekly. The article is made available to all Ixact subscribers in the website builder to post to their site’s blog. However, while this can be useful for sharing with prospective clients, there is the potential for duplicate content to become an issue for your search engine optimization (SEO) results.
Ixact CRM: Interface and in use
Setup
Setting up an account on Ixact is very straightforward and only requires entering a few details such as your email and phone number before getting started. However, you will have to enter credit card details before getting started with your free trial.
Once you’re in the dashboard, you’ll see a pop-up box with a useful set-up wizard so you can get familiar with the platform quickly.
The only time consuming part of the setup process is loading your existing contacts into the CRM. There is no option to upload a CSV or Excel file in the platform. You must contact customer support by phone or email so they can upload existing lists into your account.
Ease of use
Most parts of the Ixact dashboard are easy to use. It’s an intuitive platform, particularly if you have used any other type of CRM previously.
Where things can get slightly confusing is connecting the dots between different functionalities. For example, the Mass Emails tab is where you can manage when your emails are sent. But setting up and editing the drip emails and e-newsletters found in the Mass Emails tab requires navigation to the Keep in Touch tab, which is not immediately obvious.
Navigation
On the left-hand side of the screen is a pop-out side panel menu where you can access all the different functionalities of Ixact, including your website editor and add-ons such as Social Stream.
Within the different sections such as Business Pipeline or Contacts, you’ll see tabs along the top of the screen to help you further navigate each section of the CRM. Even if you get a little lost in Ixact, it’s easy to quickly click around until you find what you’re looking for.
Mobile version
Ixact has an app available for download on both iOS and Android devices. While all the same features are available on the app as they are on the cloud-based browser version of the software, the app is not as user-friendly as the desktop browser experience.
Operating on Ixact requires a lot of back and forth between different tabs and sections of the software. The app navigation makes this a lot slower. The app also runs a lot slower in general in comparison with the desktop browser version.
Ixact CRM: Support
There are lots of options for contacting customer support such as phone, email, and live chat. However, they’re only available from 9am-8pm EST, Monday through Friday.
That being said, the team is very fast and responsive during these hours. We were waiting only 15 minutes for a response to a support question via email. We also received lots of helpful email support throughout our setup phase—something that Ixact refers to as their Concierge Service.
Outside of that, you’ll find a small but useful library of tutorial videos to help you navigate the setup of your CRM.
Ixact CRM: The competition
There are many CRMs on the market that are specifically built for real estate agents. Two comparable CRMs to Ixact are Wise Agent (opens in new tab) and Boomtown (opens in new tab). Like Ixact, these CRMs cater to small- to medium-sized real estate businesses.
It’s difficult to compare pricing between Ixact and Boomtown because the latter doesn’t provide any pricing information on its website. However, Ixact and Boomtown closely rival each other in terms of functionality across lead nurturing, website creation, and listing management. But Boomtown is better for bigger teams, as it enables you to automate lead routing to team members.
In terms of pricing, Wise Agent and Ixact are closely matched. A monthly subscription to Wise Agent is $32 per month in comparison to Ixact’s $45 per month. Like Ixact, Wise Agent also offers a 15% discount for annual subscriptions.
Where Wise Agent gains an edge over Ixact is in the amount of data it can automatically collect on your leads. For example, Wise Agent automatically scrapes social media channels to link the social accounts of your leads into their contact records in the CRM.
Ixact CRM: Final verdict
Overall, Ixact is a robust and user-friendly solution for real estate agents who want a fast and easy way to integrate a CRM tool into their business workflows. While larger teams or anyone who wants lots of customization options for their website might want to look elsewhere, Ixact is a suitable option for individual agents or small teams to manage their leads, marketing, and day-to-day tasks.
The pricing structure of Ixact can certainly seem complicated at first. Outside of the CRM package, there are lots of add-ons available that can start to add up. However, this can be an advantage for agents who want to customize their package to their exact needs rather than paying for features they rarely use.
If you’re still shopping around for a CRM option, why not try looking at more all-purpose CRM solutions? Check out this Zoho CRM platform review (opens in new tab) if your focus is on deal management. If you’re more interested in marketing automation with your CRM, check out this in-depth Hubspot CRM review (opens in new tab).
Source link
