Open-Realty Hosting: Compare Hosting

What is Open-Realty?

If you’re a real estate agent looking for an easy, user-friendly way to display information about the properties you have available, look into Open-Realty software. Open-Realty is a web-based real estate listing management application that has been at top choice for real estate web sites since 2003.

Written in the PHP programming language, the application is designed for ease of use and an easy set up. Open-Realty is the industry’s leading web-based property listing management and lead generation system. It is created, developed, and supported by Transparent Technologies. Open-Realty is designed with the objective of being an extremely powerful, reliable, and flexible framework for building and managing a professional real estate website.

Custom is the Name of the Game

Open-Realty is known for its customizable options, and provides a highly customizable HTML display template system that allows for many different looks. It also uses a powerful developer’s add on system and Application Programming Interface (API) that allows developers the freedom to customize features and integrate without much in the way of limitations. Many third party apps and systems have been integrated into the software for extreme flexibility. Out of the box it supports virtual tours, has many advanced search capabilities, and professional features that make real estate sites easy.

Designed with speed and flexibility in mind, Open-Realty software is a truly unique content management system (CMS) application that has been a leading choice for many real estate sites around the world. The application is supported by a large community consisting of more than 18,000 members around the world that share knowledge and support.

Open-Realty is an industry standard application that is often imitated and includes such features as virtual tour support, advanced search capabilities, search engine optimization, highly customizable templates, integrated blogging capabilities, easy installation and more. The application also has a number of commercial add-ons that truly set it apart including an RETS MLS data importer tool, advanced Google map integration and an IDX FTP MLS data importer tool.

Open-Realty is the classic foundation for countless real estate specialty web sites throughout the web. When you consider how alike many low-quality real estate sites can be, it is mostly due to many sites using the same cookie cutter solutions. Professionals looking for a site that is custom, unique and feature-filled are well-served by Open-Realty’s powerful, flexible and professional options.

Open-Realty software gives you a powerful tool to quickly and easily manage your listings, run your own blog, capture leads, and run your own virtual tours of properties. You’ll find it offers a number of highly customizable templates so you can customize the look and feel of your website. Everything is built with search engine optimization (SEO) principles in mind, to help ensure your listings don’t get lost in the shuffle of the Internet.

Where to start?

You’ll need to find a host that allows you to upload it to your server, so explore your options. You’ll need to know that Open-Realty is written in PHP and Javascript so be sure your host supports those requirements. The application also requires MySQL, which is fairly common, yet it always makes sense to verify that your host can support it. Transparent Technologies, Inc. provides ongoing development and professional paid support for the product for those that have critical support and development needs.

Hosting Considerations

Because Open-Realty must be installed on the server where your website will be hosted, you have two options. If you choose shared hosting for the price and convenience it offers, you must look for a shared hosting provider that supports the software on their servers so you can install it on your website. Though hosts like that do exist, Open-Realty is not commonly used software outside the real estate market. The other option is to opt for dedicated hosting, which will allow you to install the software yourself.

Some hosts that include Open-Realty software on their servers may offer to install and customize it to you for free—with the purchase of your hosting plan, of course.

Whatever you choose, make sure you select a host that provides support for PHP version 5.2.x or 5.3.x, MySQL 5 or higher, and Apache mod_rewrite (required if you want search-engine-friendly URLs.)