Houston, Texas Feb 18, 2020 (Issuewire.com) - Just after Valentine’s Day, Real Estate Tech Startup AgentPortal.io posted a picture to its Facebook with the phrase “Fall in Love with your CRM again” just before opening the floodgates to a full suite of technologies for Realtors, mostly free.
The battle of RETech has increased exponentially in recent years. A 2018 study showed that the CRM industry alone had ballooned to a $48 Billion industry. Real estate brokerages have started to feel the heat from agents choosing their brokerage based upon tech offerings alone. Tech-heavy company eXp Realty (EXPI) is now the fastest-growing brokerage in history while industry behemoth Gary Keller now calls his brokerage “a tech company”.
While brokerages are trying to play catch-up, many agents have become overwhelmed. “The disparate nature of this emerging tech, and high-cost, means that many agents are lost and aren’t sure what to use or if it warrants the price,” said Joshua Miller, Co-Founder of AgentPortal.io. “We wanted to quiet that noise and make the technology free or as cheap as possible,” said partner and Co-Founder David Melvin. Both Miller and Melvin are seasoned real estate agents with backgrounds in marketing, app development, software engineering, and of course using Real Estate Tech. “David and I usually try everything. We are kind of technology junkies” Miller said adding “The issue is cost. So many agents have just begun their careers and now there are CRMs out there charging $500+ a month! We think agents are being taken advantage of — at least that’s how we felt”.
There was apparently a straw that broke the camel’s back. One day, while browsing a company chat group an agent posted in an online group asking if anyone knew of a good company to get a Digital Business Card. "The first reply was an obvious referral link from another agent. I clicked it and the ‘card’ company was selling these one-page sites for $150 a month — and it had ads all over it!" Miller stated. "At the bottom of the card was an encouragement to become a ‘referral partner’ and make $50 for every card you helped sell -- it just felt like yet another rip off for agents and yet another money grab!” complained Miller. “It upset me. I realized it was just a one-page website with a picture and some links". That was the first disruptive service for Miller "I got on my computer and made an amazing one myself for free, in less than 30 minutes, and shared it with the group to show them how easy it was! The next thing you know I’m getting dozens of emails offering to pay me to make them. I didn’t want to be the digital business card guy so I created a tool that lets people make their own for free. It cost me nothing but time". Now it’s one of the features of AgentPortal.
That one instance was the beginnings of AgentPortal. “We wake up every morning and have a Zoom call, coffee in hand, and go over what we want to do next,” Melvin said. “I’m constantly thinking…what else can we make or offer for free’” he added. That mindset shows in the number of tools available upon launch. From a CRM to a Social Suite Platform, Landing Page Builder, Free Websites for All, — there are over 50 tools for agents. Some are free, some cheap, and some freemium. “I wish we could do it all for free,” said Melvin. “We can’t host everything ourselves and some of the tools still require third-parties (for now). In instances like that we simply pass along the cost without a markup” he added. “Our goal was never to get rich, but to disrupt an industry that we feel is taking advantage of agents. We will, of course, look to pay staff, servers, and add more features --but we just aren’t the Lamborghini-driving dollar-sign-eyed guys like so many others in the tech industry. We want this to be the first place people start, and if other companies want to charge $500 per month for every user then they better be worth it!”.
AgentPortal.io is available on the Web, iOS App Store, and Google Play.
Media Contact
AgentPortal hello@agentportal.io 7136283232 https://agentportal.io
