I am not generally known for being nice or sweet or any other euphemism for same. For some reason my rants tend to draw much more of a crowd than anything soft, squishy or plain inoffensive, so whether justly or not, my reputation as a nice person who pays people compliments is somewhat shot. With that in mind, when I do find something to praise – it is generally exceedingly well deserved. (and, somewhat belated)
A while ago we were asked to put together a Word Press site via a referral from our very own Slaybaugh for a very sweet youngster from El Paso, Texas. The youngster was IDX-less at the time, and in our conversation, I recommended that he look at Real Bird, being new to the biz and the finances being of obvious consideration. At the time, Jon and I had only had a few rather cursory looks at the Real Bird system, and for the price, it seemed like a worthy enough solution to the IDX problem.
As we embarked on our journey to developing the site, we ran into a rather standard 
problem. We wanted the Real Bird plugin to display info the way we wanted it displayed. We wanted some tabs gone, links to homes opening in the internal window of the site as well as colors and fonts to be what would make sense with our project. Ordinarily what happens in situations like this is the following: Jon and I attempt to change stuff we can change on our own, and what we can’t change, we ask the service provider to help with, and usually they tell us that it’s simply not part of the package, and it’s not customizable (unless one is willing to shell out $120 per simple line of CSS change, that is). See, we’ve heard that answer many times from rather expensive IDX providers, so needless to say, that’s what we expected.
Instead, what we got was a sea of emails and snippets of code exchanged for two weeks between us and Zoltan. At times, we would get emails back from him at 2 in the morning his time, and they were always extraordinarily detailed and helpful. Zoltan even went so far as test their new plugin on our site when for one reason or another it chose not to cooperate with us.
Over the course of the project – these folks have shown us that customer service rarely depends on the fee one pays for a service. It’s simply a business philosophy, and the way these guys do business is sadly becoming extinct.
By the way – here is the site in question: livingelpasohomes.com
As for the product itself – it’s not perfect, but it does work, and it works well. There are some modifications that are underway that will make it easier for developer types to do their own customizations, I am told. There are of course things that could probably be better, as with any product, but if nothing else, I know that these guys are working their butts off in just that direction. That they treat each request as a possible improvement to their product and not just another stupid question. And that their customers are, indeed, important to them.
So if you are on the fence about Real Bird – I would recommend them in a heartbeat. Follow this link to their site and take a look and then go to Zoltan’s AR blog for updates on their seminars (which are incredibly useful). Also, Katerina does Real Bird seminars as well.
In the interest of full disclosure the links to Real Bird in this article are NOT affiliate links, although I now do have an affiliate account with them. The reason is quite simple. It was offered to me well after I recommended their product to a few clients, and I don’t want to taint this review by anything. If you feel like mentioning my name to them, I’ll still get a pittance for my trouble – but that is entirely up to you.
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