WebsiteBox

Using this for my real estate company has been hell. I would not use this company in the future. The company is not RESO complicit which makes it very hard for an agent to get their MLS properties on the site. The tech support is also subpar they often do as little as possible to help.

To many technical problems in a short amount of time. I have had to open about 8 problem tickets in 6 months. Not how to's actual problems that WebSiteBox is having or caused. Have had my website with them for about 6 months. All the listings on my site were mapping to my home address. Took a long time for them to correct it. As of this review my listings have disappeared from my own website. Can't link to them using mass e-mailing. At this rate almost appears deliberate.

Note: This review comes from real experience with Websitebox. Ok, so it's $99, right? My wife and I are full time Realtors and wanted something somewhat easy and reasonable in price. So we bought into it. Though it has some pics and basic content, you have to really put your own pics of your area and content that pertains to you and the area you work. The site is very buggy and quarky you have to constantly have to invest time chatting (no phone calls) to tech support, which takes added time. All together, it took me 2 full months of solid full time work to get our site up and running, adding and updating all the pics, content, meta tags and SEO to get it fully functional and operational. Now then, figure investing 40hrs per week +/- for 2 months total. If you say to yourself that my time is worth only minimum wage at $8/hr, that is a man hour total amount of $2560. Forget that your time is worth $25/hr or more.

Google Analytics says that the traffic is low. We have great content and pics and the only reason for the traffic we get is the fact that the website address is on our business cards and we have given out nearly 2000 cards in the last 1.5 years. It almost matches up with Google Analytics.

Also, they use to syndicate to Zillow and Trulia (the 2 biggest real estate sites). They no longer do that.

So here is the real kicker! After 1.5 years total of up and running customized website, we have not received NOT ONE SINGLE INQUIRY OR LEAD from our Websitebox website.

Bottom line, with a lot of hard work, you can have a great looking website. But that website will not generate no business for you and it will end up costing you about as much (in man hour labor) as a custom website that will have way better SEO and will generate you some business. Plus you can continue with your real estate business, making money that way and not missing out on opportunity in the RE biz because you are tied up working on your website project.

When I started building our Websitebox site, they used another agents website built using WSB as a testimony. It too looked good as ours (even better). They are based out of San Antonio TX (we are in a busy section of Florida where the business and economy are hoping!). So I called and talked to him. He said between himself and an in-house computer guy, the most leads they got from their Website box website was 1 lead per month. He claimed he spent $5000 with a company to customize a website for them and within the 1st month it paid for it's self several times over. We are tired of not recieving any business and have decided to invest the money and have a custom website that works, were we don't have to create it and it has real SEO to bring in the business.

I'm sorry to bust some people's bubble, but that is the sad truth about a site that you build using Websitebox. You are better off building something on your own using Wordpress or Wix (which are both free) and building it up yourself because it will take just as much time but the SEO is better and will generate more traffic. Otherwise, bite the bullet and invest in a good web that someone else does for you that knows what they are doing and you continue to work and make money, doing what you do best. With WSB, you have to learn all that SEO stuff, that's a total different world that is constantly changing. It's hard to be both (a programmer and a realtor). Stay with what you are good at and let someone else build your site since they are good at what they do best. Otherwise, forget about your personal time because if you're going to do both, you will have no spare time! Bottom line, stick with what you are good at and let someone else help you built your site because they are better than you to do that. It's worth every penny letting someone who knows how to do it right, do that for you!

Ted

Just my experience with it and my 2 cents worth!

Unless you know how to build a website, don't bother. I have had mutiple questions as things were not working right and it sometimes takes 1-3 days to get a response back. Nobody attempted to have an on board call with me, I made arrangements to have one this week and nobody even called me. I cleared my schedule for 2 hours for this! I've waited on hold for an hour trying to get someone. The site itself looks fine, but lags and very slow. When you click through to search it immediately says no results, 15-45 seconds later the results will pop up. Nothing is set up for you. Like I said, if you know how to build a site, or if you are not a busy agent that can spend time playing, it will probably work for you. Just like everything else, you get what you pay for.

First of all their customer service is nonchalant and is borderline disrespectful. They claim that you pay a one time fee which is a lie. The charge you for using your mls and unlike other websites they do this on an annual basis without notifying you ahead of time. The fee to add your MLS is $100 and it be careful because you will get debited a year from the date you start with them.
Their services are so bad that I no longer use them after paying to set up my site.
Their CRM and tools are very lacking and ambiguous. I could set up a website using HTML easier than using their crap and it's hard to customize.
I would never recommend them to anyone wanting a decent real estate website. They sucker you in with their claims of a one time $99 fee which is totally untrue.

Without an SSL certificated the website notifies users in red that the site is Not Secure. This must be remedied as soon as possible.

I like WebsiteBox. At a one-time fee of $99, it's very affordable, which is especially nice for new agents. Plus, it's easy to set up. I was able to set it up in a weekend. Also, the customer support is alright, although they sometimes take a while to answer back.

However, WebsiteBox has a serious security loophole that's stopped me from using it. This platform doesn't support SSL. In other words, your site will be flagged as "This Site Is Not Secure", and anyone who enters in their name, street address, etc will put their personal at a serious risk. Hackers will have a field day. Some clients won't care, but as buyers become savvier, they'll start to avoid sites without an SSL certificate.

If you're a realtor, you're trying to get prospects' contact info. That's important when you want to keep in touch with sellers and buyers who may not be in the housing market for a good 6 months or so. But, you can't do that (at least not responsibly) with a site platform that's missing basic security requirements. You could get away with this in 2002, but not 2018. Not with all the recent data breaches, internet protection laws, and whatnot. Besides this being unsafe, it also looks unprofessional, especially now that most realtor websites have an SSL certificate. Google will also push your site way down the list, too. Not having an SSL certificate is really bad for SEO, too. Don't expect to rank on the top 3 search results pages.

Also, if you're a realtor who does Facebook advertising, this platform doesn't support that. It supports Google Analytics at least, so Google AdWords should work with it. Still, to ignore one of the largest ad platforms out there is really disappointing to me.

These issues, combined with the Windows 95/XP layout of the control panel, make WebsiteBox very lacking compared to more expensive sites. I like what they're trying to do. They want to bring affordable website solutions to the real estate industry. But, it feels less like an "affordable solution" and more like a "you get what you pay for" sort of thing.

Summary: It seems if you want a decent, secure, and up-to-date realtor website, you'll need to shell out at least $300.

EDIT: The more I read the reviews, the more I suspect that a lot of them are fake.

I am a Real Estate Broker & Webmaster. I must say that in my humble opinion, there is no way to sustain any business with a one time fee. My server costs money every month to keep a connection to the internet so I can provide hosting. Client services takes time, noticing that many of the Forum questions have not been answered.

Once everyone possible has signed up, the money flow stops. Nothing in life is for free, if it is then not for long. Added costs/fees for apps and add on features is also a one time fee, but again it is not sustainable over time. WebsiteBox would appear to be more believable if they at least charged $5 a month for hosting. Then when there is a million clients, they will be able to pay for their cost of server hosting and internal costs.

Just saying...