WAV Group is often contacted by companies who are looking to offer their products to agents through the MLS. The common term for this is site license – whereby every MLS subscriber will benefit from the service. Depending on the product, most site licenses are only pennies per member per month.
Although MLSs are legally prohibited from sharing details of their contracts and pricing with other MLS – there is no such prohibition for vendors. Goomzee lifted their skirt today and published their MLS pricing to the world. This move is sure to shake up the mobile providers who target site licenses to MLS. The leaders in MLS market penetration are normally the MLS vendor products, but third party leaders are probably Kurio, MobileRealtyApps, Smarter Agent, VoicePad and Goomzee.
In this era where agents are screaming for mobile solutions to enhance their productivity when they are away from the office – the fact that mobile is so affordable leaves no excuse for not offering a solution.
There is a bigger story here too. The pricing changes relative to the size of the MLS for the same service. A small MLS with fewer than 5,000 subscribers pays $1.25 per month for the Goomzee Home Connect Service. A large regional with more than 50,000 subscribers (ie. CRMLS is alone in this category) the pricing is only $.40. Perhaps this tells the story of why CRMLS is able to provide smaller Associations in California the ability to offer more MLS services for lower prices than they can negotiate on their own. This is not only true of Mobile, but true of all site licensed products. In this illustration, CRMLS would pay 1/3 the price of the Santa Barbara Associaton of REALTORS or even the San Francisco Associaton of REALTORS.
Here is the Goomzee Press Release and their Full Pricing Sheet:
PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
GOOMZEE GOES PUBLIC; OFFERS TRANSPARENCY IN MLS PRICING
October 10, 2012 – Missoula, Montana – Amidst the overwhelmingly positive response about Goomzee’s new Mobile MLS Apps during this year’s Council of MLS (CMLS) conference held in Boston September 26-28, the company just announced it will “go public” with its pricing models and offer a pre-sales discount incentive.
Goomzee, a longtime mobile technology provider for real estate professionals and MLS technology partner, introduced its Mobile MLS solution with rave reviews and was even touted as “Best New Mobile App” by industry veteran, Greg Robertson, on his popular blog, Vendor Alley. The company originally provided agents with text message marketing, QR code marketing and Mobile IDX tools, yet has been a Mobile MLS solution provider for large markets in Arizona, Texas, Colorado and Florida.
“Taking our lessons learned with our existing customers, we recognized the need to provide a tool to real estate professionals that exceeds the capabilities and performance of the popular consumer portal apps,” explains Mike Sparr, the company’s CEO and founder. “We began investing in the infrastructure and back end search engine, databases, and API servers long before we ever drew a single screen as we recognized speed was the most important factor in providing a productivity tool over mobile. It appears our bet will pay off as we’ve already had enormous demand even from the early demos we shared at CMLS.”
Traditionally, site license pricing has been more of a behind-the-scenes negotiation but Goomzee appears to be breaking out from the norm and is publicizing it’s pricing model, and incentive opportunity. The company is offering MLS clients 25 percent and 50 percent discounts respectively based upon a $10,000 or $25,000 initial deposit prior to the rollout of the product, coining it as it’s “sponsorship plan”.
“We decided to offer early adopters a financial incentive to chip in now, and save considerable expenses in providing these solutions to their clients,” adds Sparr. “Furthermore, I felt it was important to follow in the footsteps of folks like Greg Robertson of W&R Studios who promotes more transparency in the industry, and what could be more transparent than sharing our pricing model.”
Goomzee shared that it’s pricing will include a $500 monthly minimum, with $500 setup, but for any client over $1,000 monthly plan or greater the setup fee is waived. The pricing schedule is attached below and will soon appear on Goomzee’s website.
Here is Goomzee pricing.
Victor
Good post and a bold move by Goomzee. I think you should also include Mobile Realty Apps when you site leading MLS Mobile products. I believe they serve about 80,000 agents today.
Mike
Thanks mike. Dumb oversight. http://retechnology.com/companies/mobilerealtyapps_com-llc/contact-info