Follow Up Boss vs Real Geeks (2026): CRM Alone or CRM Plus IDX Website?

Last updated: September 19, 2026

Quick Comparison

What each tool wins on.

Pick Follow Up Boss if you already have a website or work sphere and portal leads: it costs $69 per user a month, has no contract and comes with a 14-day trial. Pick Real Geeks if you need an IDX website, a CRM and a dialer on one bill and you can commit to $399 a month for 12 months plus a $500 setup fee.

These two are not direct substitutes. Follow Up Boss is a CRM and nothing else. Real Geeks is an IDX website, home valuation pages, a branded mobile app, a CRM, a dialer and optional managed advertising sold as one plan. The right question is whether you need the website. This page covers the differences that decide the purchase. For the full feature lists, see our Follow Up Boss review and Real Geeks review.

All prices below come from the Follow Up Boss pricing page and the Real Geeks pricing page, verified September 20, 2026.

Detailed Feature Breakdown

Contract terms: the sharpest difference

Follow Up Boss wins on commitment risk, and the gap is wide. It bills monthly, advertises "no contracts" on its pricing page, and lets you test the product for 14 days first.

Real Geeks works the other way. You sign an initial 6-month or 12-month term, pay a $500 setup fee, and get a demo instead of a trial. After the initial term the account renews month to month at prevailing rates. If you leave early, the Real Geeks Terms and Conditions (last updated September 8, 2026) charge "a contract buyout fee equal to two full monthly payments," and fees already paid are non-refundable. The vendor's own cancellation support article words the buyout as two monthly payments or the remaining fees through the initial term. Those two readings can differ by thousands of dollars in month three of a 12-month term, so ask your sales rep to confirm the buyout in writing before you sign.

Two smaller terms are worth knowing. Only the site owner can cancel a Real Geeks account. And if Real Geeks registered your domain, transferring it out costs $50, so register the domain yourself.

Winner: Follow Up Boss. A bad fit costs you one month. A bad fit with Real Geeks costs the setup fee plus at least two monthly payments.

What is in the box

Real Geeks wins on scope. The single Real Geeks Platform plan includes the IDX website, home valuation landing pages, a branded mobile app, the CRM, a dialer with unlimited calling, text, email and video messaging, drip campaigns and market reports. An agent starting from nothing can sign one agreement and have a lead capture site and a follow-up system.

Follow Up Boss includes none of the website pieces. It has no site builder, no IDX, no valuation pages and no ad management. What it does is accept leads from anywhere: every plan allows unlimited lead sources, there is a pixel for tracking visitors on third-party sites, a large integration directory, an open API and a two-way Zillow integration. If you already pay for a website you like, Follow Up Boss slots in behind it. Real Geeks would ask you to replace it.

Winner: Real Geeks for agents with no website. Follow Up Boss for agents who already have one.

Calling and texting

Real Geeks includes calling and texting at the base price. Follow Up Boss charges for it on the entry plan: the calling add-on is $39 per user a month on Grow ($33 on annual billing), which takes a solo agent from $69 to $108. Follow Up Boss Pro and Platform include unlimited calling and texting, along with team inboxes and call reporting.

That add-on changes the math for teams, which the cost section below works through. For a solo agent it is a modest extra. For five agents it is $195 a month, enough to make Pro the cheaper plan.

Real Geeks also sells Geek AI Text for $49 a month ($41 on annual billing), included free with any lead package. Its pricing page lists Geek AI Email and Geek AI Voice as "Coming Soon," so do not buy on the strength of either.

Winner: Real Geeks on Grow-sized accounts. Even once a Follow Up Boss team reaches Pro.

Lead generation

Real Geeks sells leads and Follow Up Boss does not. Real Geeks' managed packages run $299 a month for Social, $599 for Search and $599 for Seller on a 12-month term (Social rises to $599 and Search to $799 on a 6-month term). Each carries a written lead guarantee: miss the guaranteed count and you receive a credit of one month on a 12-month term, or half a month on a 6-month term. Self-serve brand and listing ads are marked "Coming Soon" on the pricing page, so the managed Social package is the paid route today.

A guarantee on lead count says nothing about lead quality, and lead quality from paid packages is a recurring theme in Real Geeks user reviews. Treat the guarantee as a floor on volume.

Follow Up Boss takes the opposite position. It stays neutral on where leads come from and concentrates on what happens after they arrive, which suits teams buying from Zillow, Realtor.com, Google ads and a referral network at the same time.

Winner: Real Geeks if you want one vendor running your ads. Follow Up Boss if you buy leads from several sources.

Team controls and seat pricing

Follow Up Boss has deeper team management. Pro adds team inboxes and call reporting. Platform adds teams within teams and priority support. Reviewers who have used both tend to rate the Follow Up Boss CRM as the easier one to set up and use day to day.

Real Geeks has the cheaper seats. Its plan includes 2 users, then charges $25 a month each for users 3 through 10, $10 for users 11 through 40, $5 for 41 through 100 and $1 beyond that. Follow Up Boss charges $49 per extra user on Pro and $20 on Platform. A 40-agent office adds seats at a fraction of the Follow Up Boss rate on Real Geeks, though it gets a simpler CRM in exchange.

Winner: Follow Up Boss for teams of 5 to 30 that need accountability tooling. Real Geeks for large rosters where seat cost dominates.

Onboarding

Follow Up Boss is faster to start. You sign up, import contacts and connect lead sources yourself. Personalized onboarding is reserved for Pro and above.

Real Geeks has more to build: a website, MLS or IDX board approval, domain and nameserver changes, then the CRM. Every account gets a 1:1 onboarding advisor on the one plan, which is a better deal than Follow Up Boss gives Grow customers. Board approval timing is set by your MLS, so ask for an estimate during the demo.

Winner: Follow Up Boss for speed. Real Geeks for hand-holding at the entry price.

Ownership and data

Zillow Group has owned Follow Up Boss since 2023, and some agents care about that. A new Follow Up Boss privacy policy took effect on November 15, 2025 and introduced "mutual customer data," meaning a contact in your database who also holds a Zillow account. Zillow's stated position, reported by HousingWire on October 31, 2025, is: "We will not take an agent's contacts and share them with other Zillow Premier or Flex agents." Read the policy yourself and decide whether that assurance is enough.

Real Geeks has its own data caveat. Its terms make no promise that your data remains exportable after cancellation. Export your contacts before you give notice.

Winner: Real Geeks for agents who do not want a portal owning their CRM. Follow Up Boss for the easier exit.

Using both together

You can run both, and the vendors support it with an official two-way integration, documented by Real Geeks support, the Follow Up Boss integration page and the Real Geeks marketplace listing.

What syncs into Follow Up Boss: contact info, property activity, search activity, home valuations, lead assignments and tags. Reassign a lead in either system and the other updates.

Setup is short, but it has rules:

• Only the site owner or an admin can turn it on. You copy your Follow Up Boss Account ID into the Real Geeks integration settings.
• Agent email addresses must match exactly in both systems, or assignments will not map.
• Only one Real Geeks site per account gets two-way sync. Additional sites fall back to one-way email parsing.
• Do not install the Follow Up Boss Pixel on the Real Geeks site while two-way sync is on. It creates duplicate leads.
• Route leads in Follow Up Boss. Real Geeks' own guide recommends Follow Up Boss lead flow rules.

The cost is the sum of both, because every agent needs a seat in each system. A solo agent pays $409 plus $69, or $478 a month. A five-person team pays $484 plus $499 for Pro, or $983 a month. The same team on Grow without calling pays $829.

This setup suits teams that want the Real Geeks IDX site and ad packages as the lead source and Follow Up Boss as the daily CRM. Be honest about the waste: you pay for a Real Geeks CRM you will mostly ignore.

Total Cost of Ownership Analysis

All figures are list prices before tax, calculated from the vendor pricing pages as verified September 20, 2026. Real Geeks figures assume the 12-month term and one MLS board.

Solo agent

	Monthly	Year one
Follow Up Boss Grow	$69	$828 ($696 on annual billing)
Follow Up Boss Grow with calling	$108	$1,296
Real Geeks, 12-month term	$409 ($399 + $10 IDX)	$5,408 including $500 setup
Real Geeks, annual prepay	about $343	$4,610 ($3,990 + $120 IDX + $500 setup)

Follow Up Boss costs about one fifth of Real Geeks for a solo agent. It also arrives without a website, so add whatever your IDX site costs before you call it cheaper. If that total still lands well under $409 a month, Follow Up Boss plus a separate site is the better buy. The 6-month Real Geeks term at $599 a month only makes sense as a short test, and it is an expensive one.

Five-person team

	Monthly	Year one
Follow Up Boss Grow, no calling	$345 (5 x $69)	$4,140
Follow Up Boss Grow with calling	$540 (5 x $108)	$6,480
Follow Up Boss Pro	$499	$5,988 ($4,992 on annual billing)
Real Geeks	$484 ($399 + 3 x $25 + $10 IDX)	$6,308 including $500 setup

A five-person team that calls from the CRM should skip Grow. Five seats with the calling add-on cost $540 a month, more than Pro at $499, and Pro includes 10 seats, unlimited calling and texting, team inboxes and call reporting.

On that basis the two land within about $300 of each other in year one: $5,988 for Follow Up Boss Pro and $6,308 for Real Geeks. In year two Real Geeks drops to $5,808 with no setup fee. The Real Geeks number includes the IDX website and the Follow Up Boss number does not, so a team that needs a site gets more for the money from Real Geeks. A team that already has one is paying for a duplicate.

Trade-offs in This Matchup

Follow Up Boss

Pros

• No contract, monthly billing and a 14-day free trial
• $69 a month gets a solo agent started with no setup fee
• Unlimited lead sources, an open API and a large integration directory on every plan
• Team inboxes, call reporting and teams within teams for growing teams
• Works behind any website vendor

Cons

• No website, IDX, valuation pages or ad management
• Calling costs an extra $39 per user on Grow
• Extra seats cost $49 on Pro, about double the Real Geeks rate
• Users on Capterra, where it holds 4.5 out of 5 from 58 verified reviews as of September 20, 2026, complain about price for small teams, missed notifications, and tagging and texting bugs
• Owned by Zillow Group, which matters to some agents

Real Geeks

Pros

• IDX website, valuation pages, mobile app, CRM and dialer in one plan
• Unlimited calling, texting, email and video included at the base price
• Managed lead packages with a written volume guarantee
• Extra seats from $25 a month, falling to $10, $5 and $1 at scale
• A 1:1 onboarding advisor for every account

Cons

• 6-month or 12-month initial term with a buyout fee of two monthly payments
• $500 setup fee and no free trial
• A solo agent pays about $5,400 in year one before any ad spend
• User reviews raise lead quality from paid packages, team lead routing that needed troubleshooting and weak site search
• Legacy plans took a price rise on June 1, 2025, and renewal after the initial term is at prevailing rates

Verdict by Use Case

Choose Follow Up Boss if:

• You are a solo agent with a website already, or you work sphere and portal leads. $69 a month against $409 is not a close call.
• You run a team of 5 to 10 that calls and texts from the CRM and buys leads from several sources. Buy Pro at $499 a month, not Grow with the calling add-on.
• You want to test before you commit. The 14-day trial and the absence of a contract make Follow Up Boss the only one of the two you can walk away from cheaply.

Choose Real Geeks if:

• You are a solo agent with no website, no lead source and the budget for it. Take the 12-month term and plan for about $5,400 in year one before ad spend. If that number hurts, neither of these is right for you, and a cheaper all-in-one from our CRM category is the honest recommendation.
• You want one vendor for the site, CRM, dialer and managed ads. One bill and one support line have real value for a team leader without an operations hire.
• You are uneasy about Zillow holding your database. Real Geeks, or any CRM Zillow does not own, removes the question.

Choose both if:

• You run a growth team with budget. About $983 a month for five agents buys the Real Geeks site and ad packages as the lead source and Follow Up Boss Pro as the daily CRM. Route in Follow Up Boss and keep the pixel off the Real Geeks site.

Our Recommendation

Follow Up Boss is the better CRM and the lower-risk purchase, because it has no contract and a 14-day trial. Start there if you have any doubt. Choose Real Geeks only when you also need the IDX website, because then its $399 a month replaces two or three other bills and the 12-month commitment buys something Follow Up Boss cannot sell you.

Comparing Real Geeks with other website-plus-CRM platforms? See Real Geeks vs Sierra Interactive and Real Geeks vs kvCORE. For other standalone CRMs, see Follow Up Boss vs kvCORE vs Wise Agent.

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