CRM & sales
Best CRM for real estate agents in Canada
Real estate CRMs for Canadian agents compared: Follow Up Boss, Lofty, REW, HubSpot, Zoho and GoHighLevel, with published prices, CASL and French needs.
There's no single best CRM for every Canadian real estate agent, but there is a best fit for your situation. Follow Up Boss is the safe choice for agents and teams who live on the phone and buy online leads. Lofty and Real Estate Webmasters bundle a CRM with an IDX website if you want one vendor for both. HubSpot and Zoho are general CRMs that work well for agents who mostly farm their sphere and want low starting costs. GoHighLevel suits agents who want their CRM, texting, funnels and automations in one place and are willing to configure it. Before picking, check three Canadian specifics: whether the tool helps you follow anti-spam rules (CASL), how it handles French if your clients use it, and whether its listing features work with Canadian board data. The details below will help you choose.
What a real estate CRM has to do well
A generic contact list isn't enough. For an agent, the CRM is worth paying for if it handles these five jobs:
- Speed to lead. A new portal or website lead should trigger an instant text or email and a task for you. Online leads often go to whoever answers first.
- Long nurture. Buyers can take months or years to act. You need automated, personal-sounding drips that run for a long time without you.
- Past-client follow-up. Purchase anniversaries, birthdays and market updates are how referrals happen. The CRM should remind you or send them.
- Texting and calling from the app. Agents work from their phones. A CRM without a good mobile app won't get used.
- Lead source tracking. You should know which source (portal, ads, open houses, referrals) produces closings, not just contacts.
Nice-to-haves: lead routing for teams, an IDX website, transaction management and AI-written messages.
The main options compared
Prices below are from each vendor's own pricing page at the time of writing. Most are listed in US dollars, so budget for the exchange rate and confirm in your billing currency.
| CRM | Best for | Published pricing | Notes for Canadian agents |
|---|---|---|---|
| Follow Up Boss | Agents and teams buying online leads | Grow: $69 per user/month ($58 billed annually); Pro: $499/month for 10 users; Platform: $1,000/month for 30 users | Strong lead routing and action plans; calling add-on on Grow, unlimited calling and texting on Pro |
| Lofty | Agents wanting CRM plus IDX site in one | Pricing on request, by package and seat count | IDX website, texting, dialer, AI features; confirm your board's listing feed is supported |
| Real Estate Webmasters | Agents wanting a Canadian vendor for site and CRM | Single user from US$350 (CRM and one IDX feed included); teams up to 5 users from US$499/month | Headquartered in Nanaimo, B.C. |
| BoldTrail (formerly kvCORE) | Agents whose brokerage provides it | Pricing on request | Ask your brokerage first: you may already have access |
| HubSpot | Sphere-based agents who want a clean general CRM | Free for up to 2 users; Starter from US$7 to $20 per seat/month; Professional from US$90 per seat/month plus a US$1,500 one-time onboarding fee | Not real estate specific; no IDX |
| Zoho CRM | Budget-conscious agents and small teams | Free for up to 3 users; paid editions per user, with CAD pricing available | Not real estate specific; very configurable |
| GoHighLevel | Agents who want CRM, texting, funnels and automation together | Starter $97/month, Unlimited $297/month (US$); phone, SMS and email billed on usage | Needs setup; powerful once built |
Follow Up Boss
Follow Up Boss is a common choice for busy teams. Its strengths are pulling leads from many sources, routing them to the right agent, and Action Plans that schedule calls, texts and emails automatically. The Grow plan is priced per user with calling as a $39 add-on per user; the Pro plan bundles ten users with unlimited calling and texting, team inboxes and call reporting. For a solo agent who doesn't buy leads, it can be more than you need.
Lofty and Real Estate Webmasters
Both pair a CRM with a real estate website. That's convenient: listings, saved searches and lead capture all land in the same system. The trade-off is lock-in, since your website and your database live with one vendor. Lofty doesn't publish prices. Real Estate Webmasters, which is based in British Columbia, lists a single-user plan with the CRM and one IDX feed from US$350.
HubSpot and Zoho
These are general business CRMs. They don't come with property search or portal integrations, but they're excellent at contact management, email sequences and pipelines, and their free tiers are real. They suit agents who work mostly by referral and want to organize their sphere without paying for lead-gen features they won't use. Watch the jump in cost: HubSpot's Professional tier adds a required onboarding fee on top of seat prices.
GoHighLevel
GoHighLevel combines a CRM, two-way texting, calling, email, landing pages, booking calendars and automation. It's flexible and inexpensive at the platform level, but phone numbers, texts and emails are billed by usage on top of the subscription. Out of the box it's a blank canvas: the value comes from how well it's configured for your workflow.
Canadian requirements to check before you buy
CASL: consent and unsubscribe
Canada's anti-spam legislation applies to the commercial emails and texts your CRM sends. The federal guidance is clear on the basics:
- Express consent (someone agreed to receive your messages) lasts until they withdraw it.
- Implied consent is time-limited: up to two years for an existing business relationship, and six months after an inquiry or application.
- Every message must identify you, include valid contact information, and offer an unsubscribe that you act on within 10 business days at no cost to the recipient.
What this means for your CRM: it should record how and when each contact gave consent, track the date of their last transaction or inquiry, and handle unsubscribes automatically for both email and text. A buyer who asked about one listing eight months ago and never replied may no longer be someone you can email under implied consent.
French
If you work with French-speaking clients, test the CRM in French before signing: templates with accents, texts in French, and whether your team can switch the interface language. Many real estate-specific CRMs are built for the US market, so ask for a demo using your actual French message templates.
Privacy and where your data lives
Your database is personal information. Ask each vendor where data is stored. If you work in Quebec, the province's private-sector privacy law requires a privacy impact assessment before personal information is communicated outside Quebec, and a written agreement with the provider. If a tool stores data outside Quebec, this applies to you, so ask before you sign.
Listings
IDX websites and listing alerts depend on access to your board's listing data. Many US platforms assume US MLS feeds. If listing search or alerts are a reason you're choosing a CRM, confirm in writing that it supports your board's feed before you commit.
How to choose in practice
- Solo agent, mostly referrals: HubSpot or Zoho free tier, or Follow Up Boss Grow if you want real estate-specific workflows.
- Solo agent buying online leads: Follow Up Boss, or an all-in-one like Lofty or Real Estate Webmasters if you also need a site.
- Team with lead routing: Follow Up Boss Pro, or BoldTrail if your brokerage provides it.
- Agent who wants texting, funnels and automation in one place: GoHighLevel, set up properly.
Whatever you pick, run a two-week trial with your real leads and real templates, and import a slice of your database first. The tool that your team actually opens every day beats the one with the longest feature list.
The part most agents skip: setup
A CRM only helps if the automations are built: instant replies to new leads, long-term drips by buyer stage, anniversary reminders, review requests after closing and consent tracking for CASL. That setup is the work our sales automation and CRM service covers, from pipeline stages to email and text sequences, so the system runs from day one instead of becoming another empty app.