Estatik Alternatives

We’ve been getting calls recently asking us what are the differences between Estatik versus RETS PRO? So we thought it might be better to save everyone some time and write it out for those that would like to know more.

First of all they, like so many other real estate themes and plugins, they’re trying put Property Listings in using the WordPress data structure. This is the #1 Major Flaw with all of those that follow down this path. The WordPress data structure is NOT they correct type of data structure to use when dealing with RETS data – why? It’s not efficient enough to quickly insert-the-data nor designed to quickly query-the-data. In fact, as seen on their own websites FAQ, they warn you about these Limits as well as with possibly Slowing Down the site and causing Errors when you exceed adding in too many listings.

 

What this is telling you is that their RETS data (listings) are being stored as WordPress structured data – thus the Major Flaw with this and any other Property Listings Plugin or “real estate theme” is that WordPress isn’t made to efficiently manage this type of data. We know from testing this ourselves by using (WP All Import) that you will NEVER be able to insert or return results as fast as from software that’s using a “normalized” data table structure.
“become slower” means Slower Page Load = BAD FOR SEO! – So why would you even consider this?

So anyone thinking of doing CREA or TREB or any other RETS feeds like those that typically contain more than 20K+ listings would have a website that’s agonizingly slow for consumers to search listing and nearly impossible to maintain the daily updates for – in fact your website would be running non-stop cron updates! Which adds even more load times to your website….not good!

Okay so now for the main Pros and Cons:

Pros:

  • They are cheaper and unlimited use.
  • They are an ok concept for (very small) rets feeds.
  • They would be fine for someone looking for only what they offer and nothing else – like map searches.

Cons:

  • You will never be able to run this with a real maps search that includes polygon searches etc.
  • You are forced to download all data and images “per-site” that you want to deploy.
    (We have master remote data connection as well as hot-linking images so no images are ever require to be downloaded unless you just want to.)
  • You are forced to use the super slow and very limited WordPress structured data tables as opposed to normalized data structure.
  • They don’t include a shortcode builder to easily embed featured listings. ( Here’s ours on Youtube )
  • No Maps Search (wouldn’t work even if they did due to data structure)
  • No built in VOW manager. (Ours is built-in and Realtyna charges over 2k for this but it’s already included in ours for free!)
  • No way to do multi-rets into single db and maintain separate image sources.
    (Wouldn’t matter if they did since they would never be able to handle that many listings in the first place.)
  • There is a limit to how many listings can be maintained without severely hurting your page load speeds as well as being capable of even getting in all the active listings while trying to main updated changes – Totally not suitable for larger RETS feeds or feeds that will need to store and manage sold or historical data.

Summary:
We could list a lot more “cons” but there really isn’t any point since if you’re not already convinced by now then there isn’t really any point. We will say this though – “There are better alternative options out there without using a handicapped solution.”

Final Note and reminder. We’re a United States based company and have been doing RETS data projects since 2003. If that matters to you, like it does to us, then please support US!