#427- Mail-Right Show: BoomTown vs CINC Pro An Honest Review For 2024

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BoomTown vs CINC: An Honest Review For 2024

2024 comparison: BoomTown vs CINC Pro – Unbiased review helps you choose the best real estate software.

Get ready for an in-depth comparison between two real estate software giants: BoomTown and CINC. In this honest review for 2024, we dissect both platforms’ features, pricing, and user experience to help you make an informed decision. You can take advantage of this comprehensive analysis that will help you choose the right tool for your real estate business.

#1 – Who is BoomTown vs CINC best aim At?

#2 – What are the key differences between these two CRM platforms?

#3 – What are these two platforms’ key strengths and weaknesses?

#4 – Regarding the functionality price matrix, which offers the best value?

#5 – What are the particular peculiarities of each platform?

#6 – Generally, what agents or brokers would get the best value from either platform?

Episode Full Show Notes

[00:00:22.820] – Robert Newman

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. John and I are excited to introduce you to episode 427 of the Mail-Right Show. Today, if you are a real estate system fan, we will be talking about sync in Boomtown. These systems aren’t going to be wildly searched right now because we’re in the middle of one of the most significant upheavals the real estate industry has ever seen. However, that will soon pass, and everybody will be coming back and circling back around for the newest, latest information on these systems. That’s what we intend to give you today: the information you will need to make a great decision about your next real estate system. We’re going to look at sync and boom town before we do. I would love it, John, if you could go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience.

[00:01:13.050] – Jonathan Denwood

Thanks, Rob. I’m the joint founder of mail-right. com. We’re CRM, a lead-generative platform. We also provide fantastic-looking websites through WordPress. I’m back over to you, Robert.

[00:01:28.760] – Robert Newman

Beautiful. All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we will get into sync in Boomtown. Before we do that, I want to let everybody know that while there are a lot of reviews, and we’re going to do a verbal overview today, we’re not going to look at the system; I do have two reviews up in which I got user licenses for each of these systems. I get a lot of questions, Sean, about the age of these reviews because I only update them sometimes. The reason is simple. These companies need to update their platform in meaningful ways for years and years at a time. My updates and reviews regarding what the system looks like are still 95% accurate, maybe even 97 or 98%. Can you hear it? John and I will download an informational download with our thoughts and opinions about how these systems are positioned today. John has gone ahead as he always does, done an incredible job, prepared a deep list, and The first question, which I think is brilliant, is, who is Boomtown versus sync best named at? I’m going to let you open up with your thoughts about that.

[00:02:37.990] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, personally, watching your reviews, I have actually not with Boomtown, but we actually had a couple of people helping us use sync. I have yet to get first-hand knowledge of Boomtown, only my research. I do have first-hand knowledge of sync, which is a really powerful system, ridiculously complicated. You needed a load of training—one of the persons we were working with kept complaining about the bits we supplied. I thought, You must be kidding. You have to spend almost 30 hours training with this bloody sink, and they also charge for it. I think I’m correct. They charge for the training. To utilize their enormously complicated system. And I believe Boomtown isn’t too far behind. So I think it’s really power users’ industry individual agents with a reasonably large power team or a brokerage. I really can’t; apart from those two examples, I can’t really see why somebody would use either to be quite truthful. But in those two examples I’ve given, I think their other problem, and I’ll be interested in your thoughts, is KVCORE, because the one that spent an enormous amount of money on trains with SINC.

[00:04:17.820] – Jonathan Denwood

About six months later, he went to KVCORE and moved there. I think KVCORE can run similar numbers as these. I don’t think it’s as good as either of these, but you might have a totally different opinion, so I’ll be interested in that. I go over to you, Robert.

[00:04:39.450] – Robert Newman

As the years have passed, SINC has been less about a real estate lead generation system and more about a total back-end automation system. Currently, they’ve got banking integrations that are unique to them. They’ve got property management integrations. They’ve got mortgage integrations and HOA integrations, which are basically CRMs for each of those individual services. They’re far less about being a real estate lead generation system. They’re also far less about being a real estate lead generation system as it relates to everybody else, like everybody else in the industry. And they’ve got a different profile that they use for this called Sync Systems, which is connected to their real estate products. So they started with real estate products, developed all these tools in the back end to service real estate, and then spun it off into another website and another set of services. They are focusing all of their development and innovation time on integrations that don’t relate directly to the average real estate agent or even the average real estate agent. They’re going to be global. If I could best put it, they had the same idea Ben Kinney did with Place, except for their years ahead in making the nuts and bolts.

[00:06:14.380] – Robert Newman

Now, Ben Kinney has all the excitement, John, and he’s raised a billion dollars for the place. But Sync has the actual tools. I only realized how much or how deep they had gone into this once I did some research for the show and realized that they’ve been doing sideways development for a while. We all know Syncpro as their lead generation system. That’s what you and I are talking about right now, synchro. Syncpro is different from some of the other stuff they’ve been doing. Syncpro has yet to update at all, like in the last few years. Syncpro is a minimal version of these tools that connects to an elementary real estate website, and it doesn’t necessarily… I’m looking through it here for updates. Here’s what I do, ladies and gentlemen, and I’ve said this, and I’ve done this, and John, I’ve done this in countless reviews. I go to the website and see what they’ve been discussing. Are they updating their customers? Are they updating their internal or external customers at all? I look for updates because if you were updating your system as you do with Mailright and had a big audience already, a big group, everything, wouldn’t you take the time to tell everybody how awesome you were doing if you were updating?

[00:07:46.200] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, their main problem, if you’re talking about sync, is their website offerings because they’re painful, as I’m concerned, even compared to KV. ‘ I think KVCore has done more than what they’ve done. That’s saying something. I’m a bit sassy today. I’ve done another podcast, and I was a bit sassy on that, so I feel pumped up. I’ve had too much coffee, Rob. It could be evil, my comments so that I might get some emails instead of Rob. So there we go. But I need help seeing, apart from the website, what much more they can do. But what they’re doing is what you laid out. They’re doing more on the integration if you’re the most prominent broker and you wanted a Swiss army knife for your back-end stuff. That’s what they’re concentrating on, aren’t they?

[00:08:58.730] – Robert Newman

Yeah, definitely. And you know what? As with most of my competitors, let me say, everybody, for the sake of this article, I went in and started to read the sync blog, and they’ve definitely increased their presence there. Since they actively advertise against me at InboundREM, I feel like they’re paying attention to what I’m saying. They’re doing many things where they’re doing real estate lead value index, and that’s basically where they indicate, Hey, a dollar spent in leads is supposed to be 13% commission. I am curious to know if that metric is theirs or if they’re pulling average lead value, but I can tell you it’s a lot of spreadsheets and a lot of percentages, and I do not know a single agent making any of these numbers. I need to find out what they’re talking about. I don’t have anybody that’s pulling in a 13 to 1 ROI on PPC right now. I need to find out where they’re getting their data from. But if any of you are listening to this show, just as a quick aside, and you are getting better than 13 to 1 off a PPC budget using any lead system whatsoever, let us know.

[00:10:10.400] – Robert Newman

Drop us a comment because I’d love to be proven wrong. I would love to be wrong.

[00:10:14.720] – Jonathan Denwood

So let’s go on to the next one then because we’re almost nine minutes in. So what’s the difference between the two? What’s any really fundamental differences between the two CRMs, Rob?

[00:10:26.350] – Robert Newman

Oh, tons. Sync is an all-in-one, and it’s super complex. If you have got super complicated back-end payment structures that connect into your front-end sales process, so essentially very large teams with very complex financial arrangements, like many, many affiliate partners, mortgage brokers that partner with you, many people that write loans for you, many people that refer business to you. Sync is one of the hands down. If you can comb through it and create a CTO-type expert and get all the training, and You are right, they oftentimes charge for their trainings. If you can do all of that, then sync is a hands-down choice. Now, Boomtown is a simplified lead generation platform built for teams of salespeople that are small to medium size that are hunters. Everybody can see my reviews, including you, John, where I really drill deep down into that and lay a foundation for why I say that, those two things. Why is it that I feel that those two systems are built that way and who they’re built for. What do you think, though? You’ve watched my reviews, and you’ve done so probably more recently than I dropped them than I have. So what do you think these two key differences are?

[00:11:40.860] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, number one, Boomtown is built on WordPress, but multi-site. I think that is still the case. Better-looking website than sync, but that’s not saying too much, is it? I think if you’re an individual agent, a reasonably large team underneath you or a broker, and you’re on the mentality to look at all the data and look at where all the leads are coming from and spend their hours and then actually have Excel or a database, and you’re keeping track, and you’re keeping track and you’re keeping track of all hours, blah, blah, blah. It’s probably worth it. If you’re in the hunter mode and you’re up for it, but I think there’s only a small… It’s sizable because still a sizable niche. But I think you got to have the mindset and the knowledge and the resources to make either. But if you’re in the lead generative mindset, you’re going to go with Boomtown, aren’t you?

[00:13:02.250] – Robert Newman

Yeah. And speaking of Boomtown versus sync, it’s small, medium teams versus large teams with complex back-end scenarios. That’s sync. Ease of use is what I’d say the difference between Boomtown and sync is. If I had to put it down to one sentence for number two, ease of use. Boomtown is easier by far. Actually, everybody’s easier than sync.

[00:13:23.910] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. So let’s go to number three before we go for our break. What are the two platforms as key strengths and weaknesses, Rob? One or two before we go for a break.

[00:13:34.330] – Robert Newman

Sure. I mean, if I was looking for a sophisticated back-end system that was already developed, there’s no doubt in my mind that I would be taking a strong look at sync, comparing the hundred or so features that has in the back end of the platform and seeing if they met my needs. That’s a strength. The weakness is doing that comparison, doing a dive into sync, it’s going to be expensive and time consuming. That’s the weakness for them. Boomtown is easier to use by far, way overpriced for what you’re getting. I don’t know if that’s a weakness, but they have been so out Outvalued inside the CRM world. I’ve got no words for it. They used to be bleeding edge. For a long time, they were bleeding edge, John. Then they become like they have a slightly better-looking website. They’ve got a little bit more thought and passion put into their products. No doubt about it. They’ve got a better-looking IDX, which they built. There are a lot of strengths with it that they’ve got, but they haven’t really changed all that much in over eight years, and it shows. That’s what I got.

[00:14:45.680] – Jonathan Denwood

I think with Zinc, I’m not sure. I think they might got bought out by these people, but- Fidelity National Mortgage, yeah, they did. No, I was talking about Boston Logic. I think they’re trying to I think they’re trying to build a competitor to Boston Logic. Boston Logic built custom solutions for large brokerages. That was their bag. But I think Boston Logic either bought somebody. Did they bought Boomtown? I think they might have bought Boomtown. I’m not sure. I’m getting confused, Robert, but it happens often, doesn’t it, Robert?

[00:15:25.710] – Robert Newman

Property-based and Boston Logic partnered up to build website/real-estate lead gen system. That was in 2018 that they made that announcement. I still haven’t actually seen the final product. I don’t know. I have no idea if they did that. I know they announced it. I don’t think that BostonLogic got bought by anybody because they were raising money six, seven years ago for all private equity money. Now, whether or not that’s remained the same, who knows? I don’t know. I do not know.

[00:15:59.150] – Jonathan Denwood

I just felt they were going… Because I knew, before we go for a break, I knew the owner’s son of Dickinson’s, which is, I think, the largest independent brokerage in Northern Nevada, and they were looking for a solution. I was having a chat with him, and they went with Boston Logic. But they had 500, 600 agents. So he was looking for a whole Swiss army. That’s why I I think I’ll be totally wrong. Shall we go for a break, Rob?

[00:16:35.040] – Robert Newman

Let’s do it. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’re doing a deep dive today. So if there’s any place that you find this, share it with your other real estate friends, share it in your real estate groups, and that would be the way you’d thank me and John, and leaving us comments. We’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 427 of The Mailright Show. Today, we’re talking about Boomtown versus sync. We’re doing an honest review for 2024 because John and I are notorious for being dishonest. All right. Number four, regarding the functionality price matrix? Which is the best value? Now, do you want to take a stab at this? Or do you want me to just like, You know I’ve got a lot to say on all of this stuff.

[00:17:23.930] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, I suppose I think I shouldn’t do this because trying to work out what’s going on in Rob’s mind is not really possible, really. But I presume if you’re looking for… If you’re that size of brokerages, and you’re really looking for a real back-end. And I find it… I know this is a bit of a sweeping statement, really, but I offer a certain type of medium regional brokerage. They have somebody who’s their marketing guru, their analytical guru, and they tend to go with Google paid average, and they track everything They got somebody on board. They’re also looking for a Swiss army knife for all the backends. I think they probably look at sync. But I think if you’re a smaller team and you’re still using They tend not to go, which is the wrong attitude, because they should combine it with content, what you specialize in. But I just find that it’s a mindset. They should combine both, but they tend to go with the paid thing. But if they’re more hunter, as you say, they’re probably going to go… They’ll be better off with Boomtown, aren’t they?

[00:18:56.950] – Robert Newman

Yeah, in terms of price matrix, ladies and gentlemen, when Boomtown was doing some exciting collaborations with Craigslist, and they had some innovative advertising strategies that connected directly into the back of the platform. And now they’ve lost most of the races. Chime is just as easy to use from a platform perspective. They’re not nearly as valuable from the website perspective. But since Boomtown made the decision a long time ago to go with multi-sites, there’s actually not… While the actual site performs better for Boomtown than it does for a company like Chime, you don’t end up seeing the value out of building on WordPress because you don’t own it. You don’t have control of it, you don’t own it. And Boomtown will take your iteration of that website and do something else with it when you leave, maybe repurpose it, which is great for them and horrible for you, the end user, who spent all the money building up the domain authority and value, because that’s what you’re doing when you advertise to a URL consistently. In terms of the best value for your money right now in 2024, I absolutely would probably say sync, because the complicated, really specific things the sync system can do.

[00:20:20.890] – Robert Newman

I don’t know that… I mean, Boomtown has never been very friendly on the integration side, and that is more and more what the modern millennium is becoming about, and Boomtown is terrible. All of that sync is better, and they’ve got a lot of custom development. I just think that for them… But they’re both wildly overpriced, just for the record. That’s what I have to say.

[00:20:45.300] – Jonathan Denwood

Let’s go on to number five, because you know these… You’ve done an enormous deep dive. Are there any particular peculiarities that apply to individual or each platform that you think people should know I think that back in the days in which…

[00:21:03.910] – Robert Newman

I think it was Alan was in charge of Boomtown. There was a vast difference between sync and Boomtown. They both have incredibly strong management companies. There’s a dual CEO thing going on over at SINC, or there was when I last researched it. And Greer Allen, who is one of the more charismatic, personable, really dedicated CEOs, was the founder and owner of Boomtown. Alan Greer went out, the only money he ever raised was to buy a big building in the middle of the city that they’re in and bring all of his team members together to create a better working atmosphere. That dedication, the fact that they focused on high touch, Boomtown was very It’s very ahead of its time in certain regards, and still is. You still get a high touch onboarding process with a dedicated team. I honestly think that the strength of each of these teams would be in the people, not the platform. The platform technology on both sides is antiquated at this point. You can sit here and go, we would need to do a show on each one of these things. I would need to deep dive it for you and explain what What does all those systems do better for each one of these performance metrics, why AI is changing the game, what you could expect, where you should go.

[00:22:42.660] – Robert Newman

If for no other reason than keeping this simple, Chime offers many of Boomtown’s same functionality for half the price. By the way, I’m not recommending Chime.

[00:22:54.610] – Jonathan Denwood

I think one thing I think you’ve touched on in your videos, and I we’ve touched upon it, is I don’t know what… I think it applies to sync as well. But Boomtown, if you want to take your data out and put it in another platform, they won’t make it easy, or basically, they’ll say no. Am I right about that statement? And I think it’s something 100%.

[00:23:25.590] – Robert Newman

It’s terrible. It’s terrible. The customer service policies at Boomtown are 10 years old, and they could have been better to start with, and they’re awful in today’s marketplace. Terrible. Sync is better, but they still need some friendly customer service policies on the front end. Both of these companies have pivoted to the current revolution that’s happening, which is like influencer style marketing, where, honestly, most people who are their customers are looking for answers online. They’re finding them from third parties because boom, down, and Sync have yet to bother to build a robust content library about using their platform. They’re both locked in the dark ages. Let’s keep all the details of our systems private where anybody can find them. Whereas, of course, they can see it. They have to search harder, and then it won’t be you. It’s not going to be inside your control. It is crazy to me how neither one of these companies has embraced video to the level that they should from an informational standpoint. You want your users who are coming to you in your channel to figure out all the answers.

[00:24:34.320] – Robert Newman

They both have channels. They’re just not what they should be, in my opinion. That ease of use, that knowledge that you and I talk about incessantly is my touchstone for everybody, which is pretty simple. Do you have the ability to make your products and services understandable and usable by other people? What are you doing if the answer is no or not very quickly?

[00:25:06.440] – Jonathan Denwood

But I’ll say that the only thing that comes to mind is that it’s not a criticism: In the middle to higher-level power team or brokerage, you got Chime, you got Sync, you got Boomtown. Are any of these higher-level systems reasonably easy to use anyway? I don’t think there is, is there?

[00:25:32.040] – Robert Newman

By the way, kvCore is the system that has become the easiest to use and has the most of this available from its user base.

[00:25:43.270] – Jonathan Denwood

All right, yeah. You’re right about that. I see where you’re coming from.

[00:25:48.940] – Robert Newman

That’s what I’m talking about. If I want to know how to use kvCore, that’s why kvCore is dominating the landscape, my friend. In my opinion, they’ve got so many user-based videos, so many incredible videos from so many different real estate, practicing real estate agents that say, This is the way I’m using the system and making money at it. So there’s a guy on SE Team Leader, there’s one video nine months ago on sync that’s talking about sync is starting to slowly but surely build some video library. They’ve got some videos coming out. Only a few. Five days ago, sync University, real estate training, sync shorts, who knows? Sink CEO on NAR settlement. Somebody said something from Sync on the NAR settlement 30 days ago. I’m going to have to watch it. Like, wow, somebody got online and said something. That’s pretty impressive. I mean, never mind. Considering how big of a company they are, my audience is almost as big as NAR. I mean, and good God, I think they got bought for what, $125 million? I don’t know what the number is, but it was ridiculous. I know that.

[00:26:58.290] – Robert Newman

It is like a crazy big company with very little focus on its users in terms of how people try to get and use information online. Boomtown is guilty of the same.

[00:27:15.780] – Jonathan Denwood

So, just to finish off, can you give one persona for each product? To finish off the podcast, Rob, give an ideal persona of who would get the best from each platform.

[00:27:33.480] – Robert Newman

Sure. Multifocused real estate teams with complicated back-end systems. Real estate companies that focus on property management, sales, lease, rehab, and construction. The sink is a hands-down winner for you. Hands-down. They’re who you should look at. I could only recommend this. You’re doing a multifaceted real estate business of intermittent size, or you own a very large one. There’s a great example. For those people who are listening to the show right now, go out and look at Tarvin Realtors in New Jersey. It’s a multi-focused, multi-generational real estate company, and each kid in the company has taken on a new real estate vertical, so they do everything in their part of New Jersey. I mean, everything. They do buying, selling, rehabbing, or at least they did when I last looked. And they do commercial, they do property management, they do everything. That would be who might look at sync. That’s the target customer profile for which this would still be a hands-down winner. Boomtown. The persona or Boomtown is still a leader in the small to mid-size team space. And for the customer’s persona, this is a little bit more complicated to explain, but I think that small to mid-size real estate brokerages without a competent CMO or CTO on staff, which is most of the teams out there.

[00:29:03.410] – Robert Newman

They need a tech person. They don’t have anybody that’s doing that for them. So when that is all the case, that’s when the customer service and the help, the outreach, the management that Boomtown does on the client-facing side, that’s when that money becomes justifiable. That’s when I am wrong about justifying the cost of the system. When you want to leverage that in-person training, you get assigned an account rep, or at least you did. Then, all the reports I got from Boomtown clients said that those training and one-to-one interactions were always precious. So, almost a universal five-star rating, which is why I say that’s where probably Boomtown shines. But who needs that specifically, John? That’s a little harder to answer.

[00:29:51.440] – Jonathan Denwood

You’re going to sit down again.

[00:29:54.810] – Robert Newman

Oh, sure. Sorry. I’m so sorry. I started pacing.

[00:29:57.360] – Jonathan Denwood

You did? He was getting excited there; no, I’m so sorry.

[00:30:00.660] – Robert Newman

I forgot that you were doing the screen thing. I’m so sorry.

[00:30:04.440] – Jonathan Denwood

I think I was getting where he was getting fed up looking at my phone.

[00:30:08.320] – Robert Newman

I was pacing. I forgot we were doing that.

[00:30:11.070] – Jonathan Denwood

He was pacing. I think it’s been an excellent show. We’re not gone too over. And I think we… So, to finish off, well, I think your answer number six is a good finishing point. So, back over to you, Rob. I think we will finish it.

[00:30:25.640] – Robert Newman

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for doing our updated review on these systems. If anybody wants to update my knowledge, I am always up for that. You can reach out to me at robert@inboundrem. Com. You can also go to my website, inboundrem. com Use any of my contact forms and say that you’d like to update my knowledge about sync or Boomtown. If you’re using these systems, if you’ve used them recently, or disagree with anything I said, I am always open to having another conversation about the platform. Over to you, John.

[00:30:55.500] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, and if you’re looking to have a nice-looking website on WordPress, we’re using Gutenberg, and we have a lovely platform for lead generation as part of our lovely WordPress website. So if that’s interesting, go over to Mail-Right. com and book a chat with me or Adam. Back over to you, Rob.

[00:31:17.060] – Robert Newman

Beautiful. Well, that’s it, ladies and gentlemen. The show is wrapped up. John and I are so grateful for your ears, eyes, and everything in between. Have a great day.