5 Must-Have Features of a Lead Generation Chatbot for Real Estate Agencies

Intercom is a leading customer messaging platform that blends live chat, automated bots, and help center tools into a unified experience. The platform is popular among real‑estate agencies for its ability to capture leads directly on the website and route conversations to the right agents. Intercom’s reactive bots can ask qualifying questions, schedule property viewings, and even fetch basic listing details from connected CRMs. The platform also offers a knowledge base feature that allows you to publish articles and FAQs, which the bot can reference to answer common questions. While Intercom doesn’t provide a dedicated WYSIWYG widget editor—design is handled through a theme editor—users can still customize colors and layouts to align with their brand. Intercom’s integration ecosystem includes Salesforce, HubSpot, and many real‑estate CRMs, enabling seamless data flow. Pricing for Intercom starts at $39/month for the Essentials plan, which includes basic chat and bot functionalities. The Pro plan, priced at $99/month, adds advanced automation and reporting features, while the Premium tier—starting at $199/month—offers custom integrations and priority support. Intercom’s strengths lie in its robust reporting, rich integration catalog, and the ability to combine bot and live agent interactions in a single conversation thread. Real‑estate firms that already use Intercom for other customer touchpoints find it convenient to add a lead‑generation bot without adopting a new platform. However, the platform’s pricing can become steep for agencies with many agents or high message volumes.

Drift positions itself as a conversational marketing platform that turns website visitors into qualified leads via AI‑powered chat. The platform’s bot can ask questions, schedule meetings, and provide product demos—all without the need for a developer. Drift’s bot engine is highly configurable, allowing marketers to set up custom conversation trees that align with the buyer’s journey. The platform also offers a Knowledge Base integration that lets the bot reference pre‑written content to answer FAQs, and it includes a builder that supports quick drag‑and‑drop creation of bot flows. Drift’s pricing starts at $400/month for the Basic plan, with higher tiers offering advanced features such as custom domain, advanced analytics, and multi‑account support. For real‑estate agencies, Drift can be used to capture visitor details, qualify leads by asking property preferences, and automatically schedule showings or 30‑minute discovery calls. The platform’s partnership with HubSpot and Salesforce allows easy sync of lead data to the agency’s CRM. However, Drift’s focus on marketing and sales funnels means it is less tailored for post‑sale support or knowledge‑base content than some competitors. Drift’s biggest advantages are its deep integration with marketing automation tools and its ability to provide real‑time meeting scheduling. Its drawbacks include a higher price point and limited customization options for the widget’s appearance compared to a dedicated WYSIWYG editor.

HubSpot Chat is part of HubSpot’s free CRM and marketing hub, offering a lightweight live chat and chatbot solution that can be embedded on any website. The platform is well‑known for its tight integration with HubSpot’s contact database, allowing chat conversations to be automatically logged and used for lead scoring. The bot can be configured to ask a series of questions, provide product information, and pass the lead to a sales agent. HubSpot also offers a knowledge base feature that lets the bot pull answers from HubSpot Knowledge Base articles. The chat widget can be customized through HubSpot’s theme editor, which allows adjustments to colors, fonts, and position. HubSpot Chat’s free tier includes unlimited contacts and a basic chatbot. Paid plans start at $45/month for the Marketing Hub Starter, which adds advanced reporting, custom bots, and more extensive integrations. The platform’s strengths are its free entry point, deep CRM integration, and straightforward setup. However, the bot’s capabilities are relatively simple compared to dedicated conversational platforms, and it lacks a dedicated WYSIWYG editor or advanced knowledge‑base technology. Real‑estate agencies that already use HubSpot for marketing and CRM can benefit from embedding the chat to capture leads without additional integration work.

ManyChat is a chatbot platform that specializes in building conversational bots for Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and now the web. The platform offers a visual flow builder that allows marketers to design interactive conversations without coding. ManyChat’s web chat widget can be embedded on any website and supports basic lead capture, FAQ answering, and integration with e‑commerce platforms like Shopify. The bot can be connected to email marketing services such as Mailchimp and to CRMs for lead management. ManyChat also provides a knowledge base feature where users can set up FAQ sections that the bot can reference. While ManyChat’s web widget is highly customizable, it does not include a dedicated WYSIWYG editor for advanced styling, and the knowledge‑base feature is limited to simple FAQ responses. The platform offers a free plan with limited flows and messaging volume, and paid plans start at $10/month for the Pro tier, which adds unlimited flows, advanced integrations, and priority support. ManyChat’s strengths are its ease of use, strong social media integration, and low cost. However, it is less suited for agencies that need complex knowledge‑base queries or persistent memory for authenticated users. Real‑estate agencies that rely heavily on Facebook and Instagram for lead generation can use ManyChat to create multi‑channel conversations and funnel prospects to their sales teams.