What is the best real estate automation software?
It depends on which job eats your time. Follow-up tools like Keystone handle emails, texts, letters and cards to your contacts, full CRMs handle lead routing and pipelines, and app connectors link the tools you already use. New agents usually get the most from follow-up first.
There's no single best real estate automation software, because "automation" covers several different jobs. The right pick is the tool that takes over the job costing you the most time. For most new and part-time agents, that job is follow-up.
The five kinds of real estate automation
| Kind | What it does | Pick it when |
|---|---|---|
| Follow-up automation | Drafts and schedules messages to your contacts over weeks and months | Leads go cold because you forget to follow up |
| CRM automation | Routes leads, creates tasks, moves people through pipeline stages | You have a team, or lots of leads arriving from several sources |
| Lead capture | Runs ads or landing pages and delivers new leads | You need more leads, not better follow-up |
| App connectors | Passes data between the tools you already use | You have working tools that just don't talk to each other |
| Social scheduling | Queues posts ahead of time | Your content calendar is the bottleneck |
Keystone sits in the first row. It isn't a full CRM, a transaction manager, an IDX site builder, a dialer or a lead source.
What follow-up automation looks like in Keystone
Keystone runs follow-up across email, text, call prompts, printed letters and handwritten cards. Every sequence comes written. Each day, your Today list shows who's due, with every message already drafted and the person's details filled in. You edit it or send it as is.
A few details worth knowing:
- Replies pause the sequence. The second someone writes back, their sequence stops and the reply jumps to the top of your list.
- Letters and cards wait for you. You see the exact piece and its cost before it prints or ships. Nothing goes out until you approve it.
- Texting works two ways. Text from your own cell (Keystone can't see those replies), or use a Keystone Number that logs both sides of every conversation. Late texts wait until morning.
- Calls are prompts. Keystone tells you who to call and gives you talking points. It doesn't place the call.
How to choose
1. Find your biggest time drain
Ask what you dread on a Monday morning. If it's "who haven't I contacted in a month," that's follow-up. If it's "where did these twelve new leads come from and who gets them," that's a CRM problem. If it's "I have no leads," automation won't fix that. Lead sources will.
2. Start with one tool
Trying five tools at once is how people end up using none of them. Set up one, use it for a month, then decide what's still missing.
3. Check what it takes to start
Ask how long until your first message goes out. With Keystone, you drop in a spreadsheet, the columns match themselves, and you pick a sequence. You're not building anything from scratch.
Where the big CRMs fit
A full CRM is the right call when you run a team, route leads between agents or manage transactions. If that's you, see how the approaches differ on the compare page. Some agents run a CRM for their pipeline and Keystone for the follow-up on top of it.
Try it
The Free plan covers 100 contacts, 3 letters a month and texts from your own phone. Paid plans are on the pricing section.
Related questions
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