The Real Estate CRM for Agents Who Live on Relationships

A real estate CRM keeps track of who is looking for what, which listing is at which stage, and which past client you have not called in a year. Customermates does that job for solo agents, small teams and brokerages that win business through relationships: buyers with their search criteria, sellers with their listings, referral partners and past clients, plus, from the Pro plan, the email and WhatsApp conversations around them. It is an open-source, AI-native CRM built in Germany. It is not real estate software in the full sense: it has no listing database, no MLS or portal feed and no transaction paperwork. The limits section below names tools that have them.

What agents and brokers need from a CRM

Whether a CRM helps an agent comes down to five specific jobs:

• Search profiles you can query. When a three-bedroom house in a certain neighborhood comes in, you need the five buyers who fit, not a list of 900 names.
• Two kinds of client at once. A seller with a listing and a buyer with a budget move through different steps, and many people are both.
• Inquiries on several channels. Portal leads arrive by email, buyers answer on WhatsApp, and a referral partner calls. If those messages stay on your phone, the record is always behind.
• Long gaps. A buyer who is "six months out" or a client who bought five years ago is easy to lose. The next deal often comes from exactly those people.
• Clear ownership in a team. In a brokerage, every inquiry needs one agent responsible for it, and an agent's own conversations should stay private unless shared.

A real estate setup in Customermates

Customermates starts with five lists, and you can add your own. Here is one way to map the five to an agent's work; every field name below is an example you create yourself. In Configure you can rename Contacts to Clients under General.

People link to deals, so interested buyers can sit on the listing they asked about, and a seller's listing and later home search can sit on the same contact. Tasks have no built-in due date, which is why the viewing gets its own date field.

Stages for listings and buyers

The deal stage is a single choice field, and each option can carry a win probability. One stage list can serve both sides if you filter by Side:

On the pipeline board each deal is a card you drag between stages. Weighted values come from your own probabilities times the deal value, and the deal value is the sum of its line items, so for commission tracking the Expected commission field is usually simpler. Either way it is arithmetic, not a forecast.

Saved views for the morning check

1. Active listings: deals with Side Listing in Active or Offer, sorted by Agreement ends.
2. Buyers ready to move: contacts with Role Buyer and Financing Pre-approved, sorted by Next check-in.
3. Who is due: contacts with a Next check-in date, sorted by it, earliest first, so the people to call sit at the top. A sort keeps this view current; a filter on a custom date takes a fixed date.
4. Stalled leads: deals in Lead or Appointment with an updated date Older than… 14 days.
5. Sphere: contacts with Role Past client or Partner, sorted by Next check-in.

Saved views are personal, so each colleague sets the same filters and saves their own view.

Matching buyers to a new listing

Customermates does not match buyers to properties automatically, and there is no property database to match against. What works is a filter. When a three-bedroom home in Riverside comes in at $480,000, filter contacts by Role Buyer, Search area Riverside, Bedrooms 3 or 4, and Max budget at least 480,000. Money fields support greater-than and less-than filters, and single choice fields support "is one of" (filter reference). Link the buyers you call to the listing deal so you can see later who heard about it.

In Customermates Cloud, a routine can do the lookup for you. Choose When something changes, the event Deal Updated, the changed field Stage, and record filters Side = Listing and Stage = Active. Instructions like these:

This listing just went active. Find contacts with Role Buyer whose Search
area and Property type match the listing and whose Max budget is at least
the Asking price. Link them to this deal. Create one task "Call matching
buyers" linked to the deal and those contacts, assigned to me. Do not send
any messages.

Inquiries and conversations in one inbox (Pro and above)

In Customermates Cloud on Pro, Business and Enterprise, the unified inbox brings email from Gmail, Outlook or IMAP together with WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Instagram and Telegram. You reply on the original channel. If a portal forwards inquiries to your mailbox, they arrive here with your other mail. Link a sender to a contact once, and every later conversation with that address appears on their timeline.

Two details decide the plan. Pro includes 1 connected account per user, so an agent who wants both a mailbox and WhatsApp in the inbox needs Business, which includes 3. And your conversations stay private: colleagues, admins included, see a thread only after you share it. Sharing a whole account, such as an office inquiry mailbox, needs Business. SMS and phone calls are not channels.

A daily follow-up routine with Mate (Customermates Cloud)

Mate is the assistant inside Customermates Cloud. It uses hosted AI credits included per active user on every cloud plan; reading inbox conversations needs Pro or higher. Set up a second routine with On a schedule, Every day at 08:00:

Find inbox conversations where the last message came from the other person
more than one day ago and I have not answered. For each one linked to a
buyer or seller, save a short reply draft in that conversation that answers
their question or proposes a next step. Do not send anything. End with a
list: name, channel, what they asked, draft saved yes or no.

Starter includes 1 routine per user and Pro includes 5. If you prefer your own AI client, connect Claude, ChatGPT or another client through MCP; it works on every plan and on self-hosted installations, with model use billed by your AI provider.

Teams and brokerages

Deals and contacts have assigned users ("Assigned"), so each inquiry has a responsible agent. A custom role with Assigned read access limits an agent to the records assigned to them, and the audit log records who changed which record. Customermates has no automatic lead routing: you assign each inquiry yourself, or an n8n workflow you run separately assigns it through the REST API.

Property managers

Customermates is not property management software. It has no rent collection, tenant ledger, maintenance tickets, owner statements or tenant portal. Where it fits a property management firm is the relationship side: winning new owners as clients, tracking leasing inquiries for vacant units, and keeping owner and vendor conversations in one inbox. Model buildings or owner associations as organizations, owners and tenants as contacts, and each new management mandate as a deal. Run the operations in dedicated software and keep the two connected through the REST API or webhooks if you need to.

What Customermates does not do for real estate

• No listing database, property photos, flyers or brochures, and no MLS, IDX or portal syndication.
• No web forms or landing pages for lead capture, and no automatic lead routing.
• No drip campaigns, email sequences or bulk email. Market updates go out from your newsletter tool.
• No texting, calling or dialer, and no mobile app.
• No showing booking or calendar write. On Pro you can see your calendar read-only next to the CRM.
• No file storage on records. Keep documents in your e-signature or file tool and put the link on the deal.
• No task due dates or reminder notifications. A date field plus a saved view, or a routine, does that work.

If one of these is the reason you are shopping, look at a tool built for it. Customermates publishes this page; vendor details were checked on 8 October 2026 on each vendor's own website.

A common split is two systems: listing software or an MLS tool for the properties, and Customermates for the people and conversations around them.

What it costs

Prices are per active user per month, billed monthly. Every plan includes REST, webhooks and MCP. There are no per-lead or per-contact fees.

Each cloud plan adds monthly hosted AI credits per active user for Mate; the amounts are on the pricing page. Running the open-source core on your own server costs no licence fee, but a self-hosted installation has no inbox, no Mate and no routines.

Moving in from a spreadsheet or another CRM

1. Export to Excel

   Export your contacts from your current CRM or phone and save them as an Excel workbook (.xlsx). The import reads XLSX only, one record type at a time.

2. Create your fields first

   Add Role, Search area, Max budget and the other fields above, so the import can map your columns to them.

3. Import contacts, then deals

   On each list, open More actions and choose Add from file. Import people first, then your active listings and buyer mandates.

4. Connect your channels

   On Pro or higher, connect your mailbox or WhatsApp under Settings › Channels and link the people you write with to their contacts.

5. Save the views and routines

   Save the five views above, then add the matching and follow-up routines in Customermates Cloud.

Client data

In Customermates Cloud, the primary production database is configured in the AWS Frankfurt region. Hosting and the other subprocessors, US providers among them, are on the subprocessors page, and a data processing agreement is available. Customermates holds no certification such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2.

Frequently asked questions

Competitor details checked on 8 October 2026 against Follow Up Boss pricing, Wise Agent pricing, Buildium pricing, Propstack, FLOWFACT and onOffice.