Choosing a CRM is one of the most consequential decisions a loan officer or mortgage team makes. Pick the wrong one and you are stuck with a tool that slows you down, costs too much, and never gets used. Pick the right one and it becomes the operating system for your entire business.
The problem is that most loan officers choose a CRM based on a demo, a recommendation from a colleague, or whatever their brokerage already pays for. They do not think critically about what they actually need. This mortgage CRM buying guide will fix that.
Forget the feature checklists with 50 bullet points. When you are evaluating how to choose a mortgage CRM, these are the eight capabilities that separate useful tools from expensive address books.
If your CRM only sends emails, it is already outdated. Modern mortgage marketing requires SMS, email, voicemail drops, and ideally social media messaging from one platform. Your borrowers text. Your realtors text. Your CRM needs to handle that natively.
What to look for: Built-in two-way SMS, email, and phone. Bonus points for Facebook Messenger and Instagram DM integration.
Drip campaigns are table stakes. What you really need is conditional automation. If a lead opens an email but does not reply, trigger a text. If a past client hits their two-year loan anniversary, start a refi review sequence. If a realtor has not sent a referral in 90 days, fire a re-engagement workflow.
What to look for: Visual workflow builders with if/then branching, multiple triggers, and the ability to move contacts between pipelines automatically.
You need to see every deal at a glance. What stage is each borrower in? Who needs follow-up? Where are deals getting stuck? A CRM without solid pipeline views is just a contact list with extra steps.
What to look for: Drag-and-drop pipelines with custom stages that match your loan process. Multiple pipelines for different deal types (purchase, refi, partner referrals).
When a lead comes in from your website, Zillow, LendingTree, or a realtor referral, how fast does your CRM respond? The data is clear: responding within five minutes increases contact rates by 10x. Your CRM should handle this automatically.
What to look for: Instant auto-responses via SMS and email. Round-robin lead distribution for teams. Webhook integrations to capture leads from any source.
Most mortgage CRMs force you to use a separate tool for landing pages. That means another subscription, another login, and a messy integration. The best CRMs include a page builder so you can create co-branded realtor landing pages, rate quote funnels, and lead capture pages without leaving the platform.
What to look for: Built-in funnel and landing page builder with templates. Custom domains. Form and survey builders.
Google reviews drive mortgage business. Period. Your CRM should make it effortless to request reviews from happy clients, ideally through an automated workflow that fires after closing.
What to look for: Automated review request campaigns. Google and Facebook review links. Review monitoring dashboard.
You need to know: Where are my leads coming from? What is my conversion rate by source? How long is my average sales cycle? Which campaigns are producing closed loans? If your CRM cannot answer these questions in under 60 seconds, it is failing you.
What to look for: Source tracking, pipeline conversion reports, campaign ROI tracking, and attribution.
Per-user pricing kills mortgage teams. When you are paying $150 per user per month and you have five loan officers plus two LOAs, your CRM bill hits $1,000+ before you send a single email. Look for platforms that charge flat rates or offer unlimited users.
Surefire charges $150+ per user per month. For a team of five, that is $750/mo minimum before add-ons. BNTouch starts at $165/mo for teams. HighLevel gives you unlimited users on every plan. For a growing mortgage team, this difference alone can save thousands per year.
| Feature | HighLevel | BNTouch | Jungo | Usherpa | Surefire |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $97/mo | $165/mo | Varies (Salesforce) | Contact for pricing | $150+/user/mo |
| Unlimited Users | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Built-in SMS | Yes (two-way) | Yes | Limited | Limited | Yes |
| Workflow Automation | Advanced (visual builder) | Basic drips | Salesforce flows | Basic | Moderate |
| Landing Page Builder | Yes | Limited | No (Salesforce) | No | Limited |
| Pipeline Management | Visual, multi-pipeline | Yes | Yes (Salesforce) | Basic | Yes |
| Review Requests | Built-in | Limited | No | No | No |
| Pre-Built Mortgage Content | Via Community Snapshots | Yes | No | Yes | Yes (extensive) |
| Learning Curve | Moderate | Low | High | Low | Low-Moderate |
BNTouch is purpose-built for mortgage. It comes with pre-loaded content, milestone automations, and LOS integrations out of the box. The downside: limited customization, basic automation logic, and pricing that climbs as your team grows. At $165/mo for a team plan, it is not cheap for what you get.
Jungo runs on top of Salesforce, which means you get enterprise-grade CRM capabilities. The downside: Salesforce is complex, expensive, and overkill for most independent LOs or small teams. The learning curve is steep and you will likely need an admin to maintain it.
Usherpa is the "set it and forget it" option. Automated marketing that runs in the background with minimal setup. The downside: very limited customization. You cannot build your own workflows, landing pages, or funnels. You are renting their system, not building yours.
Surefire has arguably the best pre-built mortgage marketing content in the industry. Compliance-reviewed, professionally designed, ready to send. The downside: you are paying premium prices ($150+/user/mo) primarily for content. The CRM and automation capabilities are secondary to the content library.
HighLevel is not mortgage-specific out of the box. That is both its greatest strength and its biggest barrier. You get a massively powerful platform with unlimited users, advanced automations, built-in SMS, landing pages, funnels, calendars, reputation management, and more. But you need to configure it for mortgage.
That is exactly what the HighLevel for Mortgage Pros community exists to solve. Pre-built Snapshots, mortgage-specific workflow templates, and a community of LOs who have already figured out the setup.
Here is the honest framework:
"The best CRM is the one you actually use. But the smartest CRM is the one that grows with you instead of billing you more every time you hire."
Before you sign up for any mortgage CRM, ask these questions:
The mortgage CRM market in 2026 is crowded but uneven. Most platforms do one or two things well and charge you extra for everything else. HighLevel is the only platform that gives you the full stack: CRM, automation, SMS, landing pages, calendars, reputation management, and unlimited users at a flat rate.
The tradeoff is setup time. HighLevel requires configuration. But with the right templates and community support, that setup time shrinks from weeks to hours. And once it is built, you own a marketing machine that no competitor can match at the price.
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