LionDesk CRM | Analyzing Pricing Integrations and Reviews

Real estate CRMs can be a great way to increase your efficiency when it comes to managing contacts and nurturing incoming leads for different periods of time.

One of the well-known real estate CRMs is LionDesk. You may have already come across it because it’s very popular.

In this article, I will explain this CRM software. By the time you finish reading this article, you will understand…

• what LionDesk is used for
• if it provides leads, features drip campaigns, IDX, and has a mobile app
• whether Mailchimp integrates with it
• the 21 features it provides
• 18 third-party integrations
• pricing plans
• 12 reviews from other users
• alternatives you may also consider
• and how good it is

What is LionDesk Used For?

LionDesk is primarily used to manage business contacts for different industries. However, it appears to be mostly tailored to real estate professionals.

So it is mainly a CRM software with limited lead generation (marketing) and transaction management capacities and many different third-party software and service integrations to extend its functionality.

You can use it for:

• Bulk text messaging
• Drip campaigns
• Task management and reminders
• Video communication
• Transaction management
• AI-powered lead follow-ups
• Lead generation (via Facebook ads)
• Direct mailing campaigns
• Landing page generation
• Assigning leads
• Power dialing

Does LionDesk Provide Leads?

LionDesk doesn’t provide you natively with leads. The company provides you with leads either through its native extension called “Facebook Ad Portal” or its third-party service provider called LeadPops.

LeadPops, which I already analyzed in this article, offers real estate marketing funnels, real estate websites, and most importantly, in this context with in-house marketing services (paid ads management with Facebook and Google Ads).

Since LionDesk only promotes lead generation via Facebook, it is safe to assume that you may have some discount for LeadPops and Facebook ads management.

In my article, I established that you will pay on average $7.87 per Facebook lead.

The main advantage of using such a provider is that you won’t have to invest much time and money until you achieve mastery in lead generation via pay-per-click advertising on social media such as Facebook. They offer a shortcut.

The same is true for LionDesk’s native Facebook ad platform service.

You can select an ad blueprint from tested templates, an audience list from a dropdown, select your budget, and that’s it.

That being said, both LionDesk and LeadPops are not pay-per-lead providers where you can just say I want x amount of leads and just pay per lead.

You will pay them on a monthly basis for their services, and on top of that, the ad budget you have available for Facebook in that case.

Since I already analyzed that LeadPops and LionDesk use them as a third-party service provider for lead generation, it is safe to say that lead generation will not be included in their pricing plans.

The same is the case for LionDesk’s service solution because its Facebook Ad platform is offered via their marketplace additionally.

Does LionDesk Have Drip Campaigns?

Already in the most basic pricing plan, LionDesk offers drip campaigns.

Within LionDesk’s dashboard, they are called “autopilot drip campaigns.”

That’s just another word for saying automated drip campaigns. They can be found in the menu item called “marketing”.

These drip campaigns can be sent as texts or via email. You can create them from scratch or use templates.

You can time them and send them either immediately, recurring, after x amount of minutes days, or use a specific date and time.

Does LionDesk Have IDX?

Natively LionDesk doesn’t have IDX. However, this functionality can be integrated into LionDesk via the third-party provider, Cevado.

Cevado offers mobile-friendly IDX real estate websites to which you can add your individual business branding.

It includes map searches, lead capture with premade questions and prompts, tour scheduling, and saved searches.

You can also add call-out listing banners for new and featured listings, open houses, days on market, and a mortgage calculator.

Does Mailchimp Integrate with LionDesk?

LionDesk integrates with Mailchimp when you either want to use it additionally for drip campaigns or as a substitute for its native drip campaign feature.

It is a good option to use Mailchimp when you think of extending the email marketing functionality LionDesk provides.

Since Mailchimp’s main focus is email marketing, you will have access to more options.

But when you are just starting out, LionDesk’s native drip campaign feature is likely just enough.

By the way, I already analyzed Mailchimp for real estate in this article.

Does LionDesk Have a Mobile App?

LionDesk has a mobile app that you can download both on Apple’s app store and on Google’s Play Store.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the best reviews so far in both app platforms, reviews in Google’s Play Store slightly being more positive than in Apple’s app store.

The app was recently updated on both platforms and received fairly regular updates in the past.

The features provided in the mobile app focus rather on LionDesk’s core ones such as:

• Alerts on incoming calls
• Text messaging
• Contact management
• Recording and sending of video texts/emails
• Alerts for incoming leads and messages
• Task management and push notifications for task reminders
• Lead assignments

What seems to be exempt from the mobile features are functions that are connected with integrated third-party providers.

Several users on both platforms who left rather negative reviews criticized that the mobile app seems to have synchronization problems and features limited compared to the desktop version.

21 LionDesk Features – An Overview

LionDesk offers 22 features, not all available in the basic pricing plan. So in this section, I will provide you with a short overview of all the features.

1) Custom Landing Pages

With this feature, you can use pre-made templates to build landing pages. Leads converted with them go directly in your LionDesk account so you can follow them up easily.

2) Transaction Management

This feature helps you to keep track of tasks linked to particular properties and their closings. Here you can also automate tasks and determine deadlines.

3) A.I. Lead Follow-Up

Here AI-powered conversations can be done, and you can nurture and qualify leads via text for up to 12 months.

4) Texting Manager

This feature is helpful because it allows you to glance overall communication and conversation activities.

5) Video Email and Video Texting

This feature enables you to send video emails and texting. It can be done via emails/texting or drip campaigns.

6) Scheduled Emails and Texts

Already mentioned above, you can create email and text marketing campaigns that can be sent immediately or in a scheduled manner with this feature.

7) Lead Distribution

This feature is important for managing leads and/ or assigning them to your team members. You can assign them based on your team member’s zip code or performance.

8) Contact Management

The main function of the contact management feature is to manage all types of lead sources.

You can categorize them by type, such as cold or hot clients, sellers, buyers, and add further tags.

9) Third-Party Lead Imports

If you already have other lead sources such as Trulia, Realtor.com, or Zillow, the third-party lead imports features come in handy.

Leads from there can be sent instantly to LionDesk, from where you can handle the rest.

10) Auto-Responders

This feature lets you send pre-made automated texts, emails, and calls to leads. It also tracks conversions.

11) Enhanced Drip Campaigns

Similar to the feature of scheduled Emails and texts, you can also do the same automation with drip campaigns, including phone calls and texts.

12) Email Results Tracking

To measure your email marketing performance, this feature helps you track who opens and clicks on your emails.

13) Click-to-call

This feature speeds up the outbound and inbound calling process. You need to just click without dialing when receiving and making a call.

14) Power Dialer

If you want to speed up calling several numbers in a row right after a call is completed, this feature will help you with that.

Any call activity is logged in the contact records.

15) Task Management

This feature is important at the level of the contact, where you can add and manage tasks.

Provided you configure it that way, the software can also call you to remind you of a particular task.

16) Sub-Account Management

Suppose you have a team or even several real estate offices.

In that case, the SubAccount Management feature allows you to create master drip campaigns, view more detailed reports on leads, add users to sub-accounts, and get access to all deals, contacts, and properties related to your office.

17) Text2Sell

This feature will help to track local marketing campaigns. You can create personalized local area code numbers and generate “Short Codes”; you can put on flyers, signs, etc.

18) Direct Mail

This one is more of an access to digital and print resources for direct mailing than a feature.

19) Facebook Lead Generation

As mentioned above, this feature gives you access to a Facebook ad management service provided by LionDesk.

It can give you a shortcut to a successful lead generation campaign.

20) Third-Party Integrations

This feature allows you to integrate several third-party software and service providers into LionDesk.

21) Pre-Build Email & Text Campaigns

If you don’t want or can’t create the content for drip campaigns from scratch, you can resort to hundreds of pre-made drip campaigns with copy, audience segmentation, and recommended schedule.

18 Liondesk Integrations

Liondesk has two types of integrations. Its integrations or better known as extensions directly from Liondesk. You could also call them upgrades.

And then, there are third-party software and service integrations.

The table below gives you an overview of all of them.

According to Liondesk’s website, there are 18 displayed integrations counting in “ModerAgent.” But my research resulted in a 404 error, and it can mean that the company’s page is permanently unavailable or just temporarily.

If you would like to watch a walkthrough of LionDesk’s free trial version, I can recommend the following video:

LionDesk Pricing

The following table will provide you with all the LionDesk pricing options and their related features.

For a cash-flow-friendly version, I chose the monthly payment plans.

Of course, you could also choose the yearly payment plan and would get discounted rates.

12 Liondesk Reviews from Users – The Good and The Bad

One thing is my opinion, but usually, it’s better to let others speak. So I researched many good and bad user reviews about LionDesk.

This is what they had to say about the software.

6 Positive Liondesk Reviews

“Their system is very easy to use and love the different applications that you can use. They have tutorials making it easy to learn.” (source)

“I love being able to text customers directly from the app or software. It also allows me to respond right away when they text back. Adding a digital business card to the text and calling directly from the app is a definite advantage.” (source)

“Liondesk is a robustly featured CRM used for Real Estate but could probably be used for other forms of sales as well. The features that drew me to Liondesk are as follows: 1. Data Analytics: Robust data capturing and visualization 2. Features for the money: Contacts, emails, custom phone lines, text messaging, drips, deal plans and pipeline revenue projection, and soon a new AI. It is a fully-featured system. 3. The price: It is very affordable when comparing the CRM to other software web apps in its class.” (source)

“Integrating with my business was easy and the different features as well.” (source)

“It is an out of the box solution that most Realtors would get a benefit from using assuming they do not need a custom solution.” (source)

“The feature that I like best so far is the ability to customize a few fields. I also like the ability to edit and modify existing standard fields.” (source)

6 Negative LionDesk Reviews

“I could not sync my gmail with it, it would log me out in the middle of doing something. And their transaction templates are not intuitive at all.” (source)

“This is a schizophrenic program that has been in the middle of a transition from version 1 to version 2 for the 3 years I have had it. On the one hand, you get simple issues like no line breaks in the notes, so everything you put into them is a single run-on paragraph. Annoying, but we live with it. The texting doesn’t allow formatting in a professional way, the video text and email (the feature I signed up for) are so limited they are useless. The drip campaigns they provide are a collection of donated emails from the 1990’s so plan on writing your own.” (source)

“The biggest problem with this company is customer service. If you have a problem, you have to call 10x because they continually drop the ball. Some customer service people give you wrong information and none of them follow through.” (source)

“Campaigns seemed a little outdated and seemed like I was having to purchase add on features.” (source)

“Steep learning curve. Some of the automation bits (like drip campaigns) took a bit to master, but once you understand the logic behind the process, it makes a whole lot more sense.” (source)

“I don’t like the fact I have to pay Zapier to link my email to Liondesk in order to store/record email responses.” (source)

LionDesk Alternatives

All types of customer relationship applications used for real estate use cases will be alternatives to LionDesk. They can be divided into free CRMs and paid CRMs suitable for real estate.

1) Six Forever Free CRMs

• HubSpot
• Podio
• Freshsales CRM
• Agile CRM
• Really Simple Systems
• Asana: can be repurposed to work also as a CRM

2) Paid CRMs That Can Also Work for Real Estate

The CRMs below can also be used for real estate, and most of the time come with a free trial for a limited time and with a limited set of features.

Some of them are also particularly tailored to the real estate industry.

After the trial period, you will pay a monthly fee according to your chosen pricing plan.

• Salesforce
• CompanyHub
• Zoho CRM
• Wise Agent
• amoCRM
• Contactually
• RealOffice 360
• Zillow Premier Agent CRM
• Realty Back Office
• Property Base
• Rethink CRM
• Real Geeks
• Top Producer
• FollowUp Boos
• Nutshell
• IXACT Contact
• Close
• Insightly
• Apptivo
• Less Annoying CRM
• Capsule CRM

If you want to learn more about the alternatives, you can read my two articles about CRMs suitable for real estate here, and here.

How Good is LionDesk, and Is It Legit?

LionDesk is legit since no scam reports could be found or reported. When it comes to how good LionDesk is, it depends on what you define as good and how you measure it.

In terms of real estate lead generation, we need to know how much you pay per lead when using their lead generation add-on service.

More importantly, we would also need additional key marketing performance indicators such as lead to appointment rates and lead to closing rates.

If you use the integration from leadPops, more numbers are already analyzed in this article.

But I wouldn’t measure how good LionDesk is on their lead generation performance since this feature should rather be considered an add-on but not core functionality.

The main functionality is managing generated leads and nurturing them through various communication channels to convert them into paying customers.

From the information I gathered from other users, LionDesk seems to be a good starter CRM that is mostly user-friendly.

It is not perfect (no software is), but you may want to take a closer look at which features you might need, other than managing contact information and follow-ups.

Because there may be some additional costs, you aren’t aware of yet when you want to extend the functionality to much more than the core features.

This article has been reviewed by our editorial team. It has been approved for publication in accordance with our editorial policy.