Best Real Estate Website Builders of 2023 | Our Top 5 Picks

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 – in fact, they’re the best we’ve tested, earning a 4.7/5.

 

You have access to over 100 free templates, but Squarespace has identified five designs which would work best for a real estate website. The platform lets you design a website that puts listing images front and center so you can really show off your properties.

Squarespace doesn’t give you total design flexibility compared to the likes of Wix. While you can easily switch out content and add in new elements and pages, you can’t drastically change the layout you see to begin with.

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 scored a nice 4.1/5 in our “website feature” testing, because a lot of elements come already baked in and ready to use. This is handy since you don’t have to worry about subscribing to any third-party services for extra functionality.

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 – $16 per month when paid annually, or $23 per month when paid monthly
• Business – $23 per month when paid annually, or $33 per month when paid monthly

We’d recommend the Business plan for your real estate endeavors. For $23 per month (paid annually), it’s 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. This is why it scored just below GoDaddy and WordPress.org in our ‘value for money’ testing with a score of 4.1/5. Still, with so many features built in and professional-looking designs on offer, it’s well worth this monthly fee.

The Basic Commerce and Advanced Commerce plans are great if you’re just looking to sell any real estate-related products, but that’s about it.

Our users fed back that Squarespace wasn’t as intuitive as some other real estate website builders. That said, Squarespace received a respectable score of 4/5 for “ease of use,” falling slightly behind the likes of Duda, Wix and GoDaddy.

Squarespace 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.

Squarespace also had the best help and support of any real estate website builder that we’ve tested. It scored an outstanding 5/5, and has a handy live chat to help you find what you need. And remember – you have two weeks to try it out, totally free.

Squarespace has a lot of guides on SEO, but not a lot of hands-on instruction – so the responsibility will fall on you a little bit here. Squarespace 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 its guides to help you make the most of what’s on offer.

We were a little surprised to see that Duda doesn’t have a native IDX/MLS  functionality, given how advanced the platform is overall. 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 with a score of 4.4 out of 5. Duda has one core template for real estate, and honestly, we think it looks great.

We named Duda as our template winner out of all the platforms we tested, and it’s easy to see why when you look at its designs. Duda’s realtor template in particular is clean and visual, with eye-catching animation. It looks professional with a ton 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 builder to your vision and your brand.

Duda’s features are impressive. Here are some tools you’ll get with the real estate template:

• Great email marketing (for keeping leads engaged)
• A members area (just note that it’s not password protected)
• Contact and appointment forms (for gathering leads)

While this template does look good, it’s the built-in features that really elevate it. 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 $168 for one year
• Team – $22 per month when paid annually, or $264 for one year
• Agency – $44 per month when paid monthly, or $528 for one year

The bad news is, Duda is the worst value real estate website builder we’ve tested. It’s pretty expensive, and holds a lot of features back for those on its Agency plan, which is why it only scored 1.3 out of 5 in our testing for value for money.

For example, if you wanted 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 extremely simple to use. It scored an awe-inspiring 4.4/5 for ease of use, making it just as simple as 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.

However, Wix’s weak IDX integration lets it down. This has to be added via code, but unlike with Squarespace, this doesn’t seem to be a seamless process – some users report that it’s quite buggy.

Wix offers over 800 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 – 14-day free trial
• Combo – $16 per month
• Unlimited – $22 per month
• Pro – $27 per month
• VIP – $45 per month

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 scores 3.7 out of 5 for value for money, making it a much better value option than Duda – even though they have the same starting price. You don’t need any tech experience to build a website with Wix; the whole platform is intuitive and sensible. This is a big reason 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 will already fit 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.

GoDaddy provides a step-by-step guide on how to add IDX or MLS real estate listings to your site. However, these steps will include heading over to the IDXBroker.com website and creating an account in order to integrate.

Although it seems daunting at first, once the IDX account has been created, it’s a pretty seamless process to complete the integration in GoDaddy’s website builder.

GoDaddy soared past Duda and Wix with a nice 4/5 in our ‘design functionality’ testing. What stands out to us is how simple it is to add sections to a page via the ‘+’ button in the editor. This is particularly useful when it comes to adding photo galleries to successfully showcase your listings.

With various templates to choose from, you won’t be far off from creating a modern, image-led website with GoDaddy.

We can’t say that GoDaddy is the best when it comes to features. In our research, it scored a much lower 1.6/5 because of its inability to support IDX integration without a third-party app, and for its lack of email marketing.

Email marketing is an important tool for generating leads in real estate. Although GoDaddy misses out on this, you can integrate with Facebook ads to showcase your listings beyond your website. You can also add a booking section to aid visitors in arranging viewings in their area.

It’s fair to say that GoDaddy relies on social media, newsletter sign-ups, and on-site chat boxes to help nurture your leads, as opposed to the direct email marketing strategies and exclusive members areas that Wix and Squarespace use.

GoDaddy offers two non-ecommerce pricing plans:

• Basic plan: $6.99 per month and $11.99 per month on renewal
• Premium plan: $13.99 per month and $21.99 per month on renewal

GoDaddy offers a free plan so you can get started without any risks. Still, you won’t be able to proceed with IDX integration without upgrading to a paid plan. All paid plans come with unlimited storage and bandwidth, and social media integration to drive more traffic to the site itself.

GoDaddy proves to be a lot cheaper than Squarespace or Wix – and you won’t have to sacrifice much in terms of design or features for the lower cost, meaning it’s better value too!

GoDaddy impressed us in our most recent ‘ease of use’ testing, even jumping above Squarespace (our top industry builder) with a score of 4.1 out of 5. With a simple editor that lets you add elements and page sections without fuss, we see why users find this platform super easy to navigate.

When testing the builder out for ourselves, we noticed how GoDaddy has multiple – and really useful – elements available to insert with ease. Whether you want to include an events calendar to showcase upcoming viewings, or upload photo galleries, any added functionality can be dragged and dropped to wherever you like.

Similar to Wix, GoDaddy is great for anyone with little to no experience when it comes to SEO.

GoDaddy has built-in features to help you optimize your website, and it lets you embed external reviews users have left on Facebook, Zillow, and Yelp. Being able to share listings across multiple channels is a great way to expand your reach and attract more visits to your site without needing any SEO expertise.

Although, if you do want to optimize for search engines, GoDaddy’s Search Engine Visibility tool works perfectly to help you rank higher. By tweaking your keywords, page titles, and metadata, the builder helps you get found online faster – not bad! 

Adding an IDX integration to your WordPress site is a really simple process. From your main dashboard, go to Plugins, then select 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.

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 third-party developers, rather than by WordPress itself.

This is the nature of working with an open source platform. There are around 73 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.

WordPress.org stole the show in our “value for money” testing with a solid 4.6 out of 5.

The open-source platform is completely free to use, but you will have to purchase your own web hosting – this costs 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 that of a website builder, the setup cost could be a lot more substantial (potentially several hundred dollars more substantial).

Luckily, we have a whole separate guide to WordPress pricing to break this down into more detail for you.

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 difficult than it is with other platforms. This is why it falls behind the other builders we’ve mentioned in our “ease of use” testing, with just a 3.2 out of 5.

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.