best free property design websites
We'll get straight to it – according to our research into the best real estate website builders on the market, Squarespace comes out on top. Offering modern, image-led designs, a slick user experience, and a free trial to get you started, it's our top choice for realtors.
Squarespace is followed closely by four of the remaining best real estate website builders. These platforms all make IDX integration as simple as possible, and come with image-centric templates that pack max curb appeal into an online package. They'll help you nurture each lead from enquiry to purchase, with strong SEO to get you ranking for buyers searching in your area. And on top of that, they'll be easy enough for you to set up and swiftly edit with ease.
Taking all these factors into account, here's our top five:
Best Website Builders for Real Estate: Our Top 5
- Squarespace – Best for small real estate websites
- Duda – Best IDX integration
- Wix – Best for ease of use
- Weebly – Cheap, but at the expense of features
- WordPress.org – Good for large sites, but not the easiest to use
The website builders in this list have all been through our full website builder research process, including:
- First hand ease of use testing (with actual participants, as well as us)
- Cross-analysis of features
- Design analysis according to best practice
- Help and support testing
On top of this, we've also looked at them specifically from a real estate website point of view. What a real estate website builder needs above all else is the right features, and a useful design – so we've weighted these factors higher than normal in our ranking.
In terms of features, we've zoomed in specifically on:
- Collecting leads – contact forms, booking requests, ability to book appointments
- Integrating IDX/MLS – essential for adding listings to your site from other platforms. If these are already built into the templates, it's a bonus, as you'll reap the full SEO benefits.
Squarespace came out on top in our testing. Great design is something this platform has nailed, and we love the real estate templates on offer. Features were also a strong point, with lots of ways to capture and nurture leads, as well as a pain-free MLS integration.
1. Squarespace
- Modern, image-led designs
- Ready-to-go templates
- Add IDX using code
Free trial available
Paid Plans:
Pros
- Sleek, image-focused designs
- In-house guide for adding IDX
- Great built-in features ready to use
Cons
- Not as straightforward as some platforms
- Need to add IDX with custom code
Read Review
Any real estate agent knows all about the power of a good first impression, and this is something Squarespace delivers on like no other website builder we've tested. By working from one of its curated selection of professionally designed templates, nobody will guess your site was made the DIY way.
Squarespace's real estate website templates don't come with IDX pre-integrated. However, there's a pretty simple way to add this functionality, and a comprehensive Squarespace article to guide you through the process.
You'll need to find the embed code from your IDX service, and then add this to your Squarespace website in a custom code block. This sounds tricky, but it's really just a matter of copying and pasting – no technical expertise required!
We've already mentioned how impressed we are with Squarespace's template designs (the best we've tested, scoring 4.8/5). Squarespace has identified five designs which would work well for a real estate website. The designs put images front and center, giving you the chance to really show off your properties.
Squarespace doesn't give you total design flexibility. You can switch out the content, add in new elements and pages, and change the color scheme – but you can't drastically change the layout you see to begin with.
But honestly? While this may be less fun for the more creative people out there, it does mean you're forced to stick close to the professional design, and your website will look all the better for it.
Squarespace's extra features come already 'baked in' and ready to use, whether relating to the front end of your website, or behind the scenes stuff. You can add pop-ups with the Business plan, which – when used tastefully – can be a really effective way to alert people to a reduced price, or a new property.
When designing your website, you can add in new 'elements' like a form, image, or map by selecting them from the menu. Integrations like Mailchimp allow you to follow up with leads and clients automatically.
Squarespace offers two non-ecommerce plans:
- Personal – $12 per month when paid annually, or $16 per month when paid monthly
- Business – $18 per month when paid annually, or $26 per month when paid monthly
We'd recommend the Business plan for your real estate business. The small extra cost is well worth it for the extra marketing and analytics features you'll gain access to.
Squarespace isn't the cheapest website builder on this list, but it is good value for money. With so many features built in, and the professional-looking designs on offer, it's well worth this monthly fee.
Our users fed back that Squarespace wasn't as intuitive as some other website builders.
That said, it is simple to use once you've had a play around and gained a good grasp on how everything works, and where everything is – so definitely don't be too deterred by that.
The support team is available via live chat to jump in and help you find anything, and remember – you have two weeks to try it out, totally free.
Squarespace has a lot of guides to SEO, but not a lot of 'hand holding' – so the responsibility will fall to you a little bit here. It has everything you need to give your site the best chance of ranking well for searches in your area, but you'll want to read through some of Squarespace's guides to help you make the most of what's on offer.
2. Duda
- Designer-level platform
- Feature-packed template
- Must upgrade to add IDX
Free trial available
Paid Plans:
Pros
- One feature-packed real estate template
- Simple to customize
- Build a custom IDX integration
Cons
- Quite expensive compared to others
- Need the Agency plan to customize IDX
Read Review
Duda is 'the website builder for web designers', and has the beautiful templates to match. It's surprisingly easy to use, but holds a lot of features back for customers on its more expensive plans.
We were a little surprised to see that Duda doesn't have a native IDX/MLS functionality given how advanced the platform is as a whole. Instead, you can take the code for a third party IDX widget and add this to your site when in developer mode.
If you're not confident with this, or you need something a bit more bespoke, you can get a custom built widget via one of Duda's Fulfillment Partners. These are third party, Duda-approved agencies that you can book through your Duda account, and work with for a one-off fee. Duda's fulfillment channel is only available if you're on the $22 per month Team plan or above.
This is where Duda really excels, rivalling Squarespace for design. Duda has one core template for real estate, and honestly, we think it looks great – clean and visual, with eye-catching animation. It's super professional and already full of helpful features for a realtor, particularly one with a larger portfolio of properties. Duda also offers a lot of scope for customization, so you can easily align this to your vision and your brand.
Duda's features are impressive. In terms of lead generation, here are some tools you'll get with the real estate template:
- Great email marketing (for keeping leads engaged)
- A members area (but this isn't password protected)
- Contact and appointment forms (for gathering leads)
While this template does look good, it's the built-in features that really shine through. This is a template that's ready to work for you from day one.
Duda offers three different premium plans:
- Basic – $14 per month when paid annually, or $19 per month when paid monthly
- Team – $22 per month when paid annually, or $29 per month when paid monthly
- Agency – $49 per month when paid annually, or $55 per month when paid monthly
While Duda does offer some competitively priced plans, as we mentioned earlier, it holds a lot of features back for those on its Agency plan – which is why it scored poorly in our testing for value for money. If, for example, you want to customize your IDX integration, this would require the widget builder, which is only included with the Agency plan.
Duda pitches itself as a website builder for web designers, and all the talk of 'building websites for your clients' may seem daunting to beginners. But don't let that put you off – Duda is actually pretty simple to use. It scored 4.1/5 for ease of use, coming second only to Wix, which is the platform we'll be looking at next.
Duda won't hold your hand through optimizing your website for search engines, but it does have all the necessary tools to do this well.
A real bonus for realtors is the Local Business Schema feature, which will allow you to mark your site as a local business to Google, and increase the chance of your site details ranking for local property searches.
Duda also keeps a close eye on page speed (an important ranking factor), which can otherwise quickly fall by the wayside with media-heavy sites.
3. Wix
- 16 real estate templates
- Easy to use and customize
- Temperamental for IDX
Free plan available
Paid Plans:
Pros
- Wide choice of templates
- Favorite platform in user testing
- Wide range of apps for functionality
Cons
- IDX integration can be buggy
Read Review
Wix is a versatile, simple-to-use website builder. It offers a huge selection of professionally designed templates that you can choose to work from, plus a wide-ranging app market for adding extra functionality and features to your website.
However, what lets Wix down is a weak IDX integration. This has to be added via code, but unlike Squarespace, this doesn't seem to be a seamless process – with some users reporting it to be quite buggy.
Wix offers over 500 professionally designed templates, with around 16 dedicated entirely to real estate websites.
Wix uses drag-and-drop tools to help you design your website. This means your template is just a guide, or a springboard; you're free to move elements like images, paragraphs, and menus wherever you want. This also means you can't switch your template after you go live, so just keep that in mind.
Wix's real estate templates come stuffed with helpful features, including contact forms, dynamic maps, and even online booking forms that clients can use to arrange viewings.
Wix offers five non-ecommerce price plans:
- Free – $0 forever
- Combo – $14 per month when paid annually, or $18 per month when paid monthly
- Unlimited – $18 per month when paid annually, or $23 per month when paid monthly
- Pro – $22 per month when paid annually, or $27 per month when paid monthly
- VIP – $39 per month when paid annually, or $47 per month when paid monthly
The free plan is a great way to test the water, but we recommend upgrading to at least the Unlimited plan as soon as possible (this is ideal for businesses, whereas the Combo plan is more for personal projects). As you upgrade, you'll also unlock more features, like extra video storage for virtual house viewings (this starts at 1 hour on the Unlimited plan), and extra paid ad credit for landing those local searches.
Wix is, first and foremost, very simple to use. You don't need any tech experience to build a website; the whole platform is intuitive and sensible, and this was a big part of why it was the platform our users were most likely to recommend after testing.
Having 16 ready-to-go real estate templates is a real time saver. Instead of having to tailor a template to your needs, it's more than likely that one already fits the bill, and it's then just a matter of swapping in your own content (something that's designed to be really beginner-friendly).
Wix is ideal for anyone without much SEO experience. The Wix SEO Wiz gives you personalized recommendations, tailored to your site and the search traffic you're trying to capture.
4. Weebly
- Cheap starter plans
- Slightly dated look
- No real estate templates
Free trial available
Paid Plans:
Pros
- Easy to set up and edit a website
- Loads of apps to customize your site
Cons
- No in-house guide to embedding IDX
- Lack of real estate-specific templates
Read Review
Weebly is one of the cheaper website builders on this list, with paid plans starting at just $6 per month. It has really strong SEO features, which is why we typically recommend it for small businesses. That said, the templates are a little dated – it's not going to deliver a website as beautiful as Wix or Squarespace would.
As with Wix, Squarespace and Duda, adding IDX just requires embedding a piece of code from a third party integration. There are a few guides around for doing this, but nothing actually from Weebly itself, which makes the process feel a little more daunting.
Weebly has a nice selection of designs ('themes') available, but none that are specific to a real estate site, which isn't ideal.
It's still very possible to build a good real estate site by using another image-centric design as a springboard, though you need to be prepared to roll up your sleeves a bit to make it happen. But when you consider that Weebly's designs aren't as impressive as Squarespace's anyway, it seems a bit counter-productive.
It's easy to add lead capture elements, such as contact forms, to your Weebly site via its app store. There's a lot of choice here, and most apps have a free plan – but keep in mind that you'll often need a paid one to get upgraded features, like the ability to customize the branding of the forms you're adding. Paid plans usually cost around the $10-$15 per month mark.
Weebly has built-in email marketing tools which are ideal for growing an engaged database of househunters, and for collecting testimonials after the event, too.
Weebly offers four different plans:
- Free – $0 forever
- Personal – $6 per month when paid annually, or $9 per month when paid monthly
- Professional – $12 per month when paid annually, or $16 per month when paid monthly
- Performance – $26 per month when paid annually, or $29 per month when paid monthly
Weeby's low prices are appealing, but keep in mind that we'd recommend you spring for at least the Professional plan for your real estate site, as this is the cheapest ad-free plan (meaning you won't see Weebly's own adverts displayed on your site).
This is essential for giving that all-important good first impression, but puts your plan in the same sort of price bracket as the Squarespace ones – which have a lot more to offer.
Ease of use is normally Weebly's calling card, but its lack of real estate-specific templates leaves you a little on the back foot.
When you sign up to Weebly, you're really guided through the process of building your website, and won't ever be in doubt about what you're supposed to do next. You can select an image-centric theme, like Travellin or Acquire, and adjust it to your needs by dragging and dropping elements into place. But considering you're not starting with something ready to serve realtors straight away, this naturally adds in some extra steps.
SEO is one of Weebly's strong suits. There are helpful prompts and comprehensive guides, and you can access and edit everything you need to give your site a fighting chance of ranking on page one for brokers in your area.
5. WordPress.org
- Completely customizable
- Most powerful platform
- Steep learning curve
Paid Plans:
Pros
- Total control over design
- Wide choice of templates and integration
- Can be very cheap (but costs vary a lot)
Cons
- Longest setup time
- Steeper learning curve
- Not an 'all-in' package
Read Review
WordPress is a big name in the world of website building, but it's not actually a website builder, and works quite differently to the other platforms in our ranking. It's a powerful and customizable platform (probably the most powerful, and the most customizable), but you'll probably find it difficult to build a fully fledged, on-brand real estate site without support from a designer. That said, it would be our top recommendation if you're planning to list quite a few properties, and need advanced search functionality.
Adding an IDX integration to your WordPress site is a really simple process. From your main dashboard, go to Plugins, then Add new. You can then search for a well-rated IDX plugin in the WordPress plugin directory – this yielded a few pages of results when we tried it, so you'll definitely have plenty to choose from.
Once you've chosen a plugin, just click the Install Now button, and it will automatically be applied to your site. It's a really quick and simple process.
Make sure you keep the plugin up to date by actioning any updates that appear in your dashboard.
WordPress works a little differently to website builders in that all of the themes in the WordPress theme directory – also accessible from your WordPress dashboard – are uploaded by a mixture of developers, rather than by WordPress itself.
This is the nature of working with an open source platform. There are around 10 results for 'real estate' themes, and while they look good, they don't have many (or in some cases any) user reviews. While this probably isn't cause for concern, it might be worth branching out and looking at a third party theme website, such as ThemeForest, or even exploring the option of getting a custom design from a web designer.
Part of the reason we've thrown the web designer idea into the mix at this stage is because it's not as easy to customize a WordPress theme as it is to alter a website builder template. Making basic changes is easy enough, but playing around with the general style and vibe can be difficult, and may require coding knowledge. For a few hundred dollars, a custom design may end up seeming the more appealing and savvy option.
Any lead capture components can be added in the same way as the IDX integration – via the (almost) infinite selection within the WordPress plugin directory. Again, anyone is free to upload to this directory, so we recommend taking user reviews into account when choosing between different options.
But ultimately, your options are endless here – there won't be anything you can't add to your WordPress site. The question will just be whether it's a plugin you need to pay for, or one you can get for free.
It's really difficult to put a price on a WordPress real estate website. With a website builder, you pay an all-in monthly price, which means you really know where you stand in terms of cost.
With a WordPress site, there are a lot of variables at play. Web hosting is an essential (this will cost anywhere from around $2.95 per month upwards, depending on the size of your site). You'll also need to purchase a domain name at a cost of around $10 per year.
While the cost of hosting and a domain name are pretty easy to account for, the cost of design and plugins is not. This is because it really depends on what you're prepared to do yourself, and what your site requires. So while the ongoing cost is likely to be comparable to a website builder, the setup cost could be a lot more substantial (potentially several hundred dollars). We've done a whole guide to WordPress pricing to break this out into more detail.
While it's very easy to add an IDX integration to your WordPress website – don't be lulled into thinking WordPress is an easy option for building your real estate website in general.
WordPress is a powerful platform that allows for infinite opportunities for your website, so it's no surprise that setting it up is more time consuming and more difficult. And as we've mentioned above, depending on your requirements, you may even find it beyond your capabilities to complete this task on your own.
WordPress has a really good reputation when it comes to SEO. Because so many websites are built with WordPress (around two thirds), Google is well-practiced at understanding them.
Nevertheless, we recommend adding an SEO plugin to your WordPress site (our favorite is Yoast SEO) to make sure you're giving your site the best chance of ranking well for those all-important local searches.
Other Real Estate Website Builders
Above, we've showcased the five winning website builders from our real estate-specific research.
Below are some real estate platforms you may have been surprised didn't make the cut. They still deserve a mention, which we'll give right now, along with explaining why they're not in our top five ranking.
For the real estate-specific website builders, this almost always came down to lacking in core areas outside of purely having real estate features pre-integrated. Things like design, value for money, ease of use, creative freedom and SEO often missed the mark.
1. Placester
Placester is a dedicated real estate website builder, so of course it comes with a whole load of really useful features for real estate websites built right in (although for considerably more money). You won't have to worry about things like choosing an unsuitable template, or having to manually integrate IDX.
Placester is designed for big real estate websites, and for this has sacrificed a lot of ease of use – without the customer support in place to hold your hand through the process. Customer reviews also complain the platform is glitchy and outdated.
This is a problem we see time and time again with 'niche' website builders; they have useful features, but don't have the same backing and investment as larger platforms, meaning basic things can fall by the wayside.
2. Intagent
It's a very similar story with Intagent, another feature-rich but dated platform. Intagent does offer a web design package though, so if you're looking to outsource the actual building of your site, that could be something worth looking into. Just steer clear of the $29.95 per month website builder package.
3. Propertybase
Rather than just a website builder, Propertybase is for those looking for a scalable, all-in-one real estate platform – and its price tag reflects this. We see this as a good solution for teams, but not great value for individual agents.
4. RealtorMint
We're always a little wary of recommending platforms where the website builder part is secondary to the main offering. That's the case with RealtorMint; great CRM software for your real estate business, but with a pretty basic website builder. It's okay, but not a candidate for our top choices just yet.
5. AgentFire
AgentFire is an expensive option, but does come with much more support than a typical website builder. Prices start at $129 per month, and this is just for a pretty standard website builder package. On top of this, essential 'add-ons', such as that all-important IDX integration, quickly add up – this particular one costing $30 per month. Custom design assistance is available, but starts from $699.
6. Realtyna
Realtyna has created plugins and themes for real estate websites built using WordPress. Both are worth a look if you're going down the WordPress route, but it isn't a standalone platform in its own right.
7. Ylopo
Ylopo is another platform that's more of an overall digital marketing solution than a website builder. And again, Ylopo is better-suited to organizing a larger team of agents, than to those working solo. It does have some really helpful features, like the ability to add a 'microsite' for each team member within the website as a whole.
How to Choose the Best Real Estate Website Builder
We've presented you with five strong options for your real estate website builder. Let's recap three overlooked criteria you need to look out for when making your decision, and why:
1. Access to IDX listings and the MLS
If you're in the real estate game, then you already know the importance of being able to access the IDX, as well as being able to close deals via the MLS.
As we've seen, a growing number of real estate website builders are equipping their platforms with the ability to pull in listings from the IDX – albeit in varying degrees.
2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
You want people without any prior knowledge of your business to be able to find you by googling 'real estate agent [your local area]'. Given that 68% of online experiences start with a search engine, you want to be at the top of Google's results pages, and you'll need a builder with strong SEO support and/or apps to get you there.
3. Lead capture and nurture
You've got a visitor to your site, and they like one of your properties. Great! But now what? You need a website builder with customizable contact/booking forms in order for users to take the next step to arranging a viewing.
Property not quite right? With great email marketing tools, you can tailor campaigns to keep visitors in the loop when new properties come up which match their criteria.
4. Help and support
It's no use being bowled over by fancy features and stunning designs, only to find a hurdle you can't get over, and nobody available to help.
Having a dedicated support team is something that sets website builders apart from CMS platforms, like WordPress. It's something people often forget to check for, or don't realize the importance of until they hit a blocker.
5. Images and videos
As a realtor, we don't need to tell you that images matter – you already know they can be the difference between your phone ringing off the hook, and a property sitting vacant for months.
We want to only show you website builders that really give your images the chance to shine, as well as the space to add video tours, if this is something you offer.
Best Website Builders for Real Estate: Summary
We've covered our top-rated platforms for your real estate website, according to your individual needs. As you've seen, they all offer something a little different – but by now, you can feel confident choosing the one that's right for you. Here's a recap of our ranking, and the core strength of each platform:
Best Website Builders for Real Estate: Our Top 5
- Squarespace – Best for small real estate websites
- Duda – Best IDX integration
- Wix – Best for ease of use
- Weebly – Cheap, but at the expense of features
- WordPress.org – Good for large sites, but not the easiest to use
Now all that's left to do is to go and build your website! Remember that each website builder has either a free trial or a free plan, so you can try it out commitment-free.
9
FAQs
If the main focus of your real estate website is to make money online, then you'll want to think about using an ecommerce-specific website builder plan. Many of the builders we've discussed on this page actually rank in our review of the best ecommerce website builders, too, so you already know a thing or two about the top contenders!
Video is a really valuable element of real estate websites. You can include videos on your site in a few ways, whether that's embedding a clip straight from YouTube or Vimeo as part of the content on a page, or even using a video clip as a moving background image!
best free property design websites
Source: https://www.websitebuilderexpert.com/website-builders/real-estate/
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