There are two completely different products being sold under the same label in this market, and the pricing pages do a poor job of telling you which one you are looking at.
The split
Platforms that sell you leads: CINC, Lofty, BoomTown and Top Producer all run or resell paid lead generation. For CINC in particular the lead generation is the product and the CRM is the wrapper around it.
Platforms that do not: Follow Up Boss, Wise Agent, IXACT Contact, Realvolve and Sierra Interactive. Sierra is explicit about it, positioning around leads you generate from your own site rather than leads you buy. Real Geeks sits in between: the platform is a website and CRM, with lead packages available as a separate paid add-on from $299/mo.
Why it matters more than any feature
If you buy a lead-selling platform, you are buying media, not software. Your monthly cost includes ad spend, and the thing that determines whether it works is lead quality, which you cannot evaluate from a demo.
This is not theoretical. Lead quality is by a wide margin the most common complaint from CINC’s own customers: a meaningful share of delivered contacts carry unusable phone numbers or fall outside the agent’s area, which pushes the real cost per workable lead far above the headline figure.
That is not an argument against buying leads. It is an argument for knowing that you are, and for asking the right questions before you sign.
Questions to ask a lead-selling platform
- How many leads per month, and is that a guarantee or an estimate?
- Are the leads exclusive to me, or shared with other agents?
- What share of the monthly fee is ad spend versus software?
- What is your definition of a lead: a form fill, a verified phone number, or a conversation?
- What happens to the leads if I cancel?
- Can I see contact-rate data from agents in a similar market?
The last one is the most useful and the least often asked.
The cheaper alternative most people skip
Before renting a lead source, it is worth being honest about whether your problem is lead volume or lead handling. If enquiries already come in and go cold, buying more of them makes the leak bigger, not smaller.
Fixing the handling costs about $49 to $108 a month with Wise Agent or Follow Up Boss. Renting a lead source starts around $300 and typically comes with a 6 or 12-month commitment. The order in which you solve those two problems matters a lot.
Where each platform sits
Our comparison tool now shows a “paid leads included” row on every comparison, precisely because this is the distinction most likely to cause an expensive mismatch. It sits alongside setup fees and contract terms, which are the other two things that rarely make it into a feature grid and always make it onto the invoice.