SimplyFSBO: Should You Use It for Your FSBO Sale?

Overall rating | Quality of service | Marketing | Customer experience | Cost | User friendliness | Methodology

SimplyFSBO is a flat-fee listing service that helps FSBO sellers market their homes in the Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois: Davenport and Bettendorf of southeastern Iowa; Rock Island, Moline, and East Moline in northwestern Illinois.

Listing with SimplyFSBO will not get your home on the MLS. Instead, your property will be listed and marketed on SimplyFSBO’s own website, along with Zillow and Trulia. Its listing packages are pretty expensive ($499 for basic and $699 for premium), but they do provide essential services that could help FSBO sellers market their properties to buyers.

If you’re thinking about signing up with SimplyFSBO, let’s take a deeper dive into this flat-fee listing service and see if it’s worth your time.

Bottom line: Do we recommend SimplyFSBO?

Based on our assessment below, we don’t think SimplyFSBO is right for every FSBO seller.

Perhaps the biggest downside with SimplyFSBO is that it doesn’t place your property on a local MLS, which can shrink your pool of potential buyers. Instead, your home will be listed on SimplyFSBO’s own website, along with Zillow and Trulia. This might be okay if SimplyFSBO’s website got heavy traffic frequently. But, as we’ll see below, the site has only around 1,600 unique visitors each month—much less than the 20,000 they advertise.

SimplyFSBO is more expensive than other flat fee listing sites. While some of its services are unique and worth the price (such as Matterport-powered 3D tours and Google ads), you’re basically paying a markup to list your home on its website, which may not be the best value for your dollar.

If you’d like to explore some other options (especially ones that put you on the MLS), you can check out our guide to the best flat-fee listing services.

SimplyFSBO vs. top FFMLS alternatives

In-depth breakdown

Quality of services

FSBO Essential vs. FSBO Pro 3D

The FSBO Essential plan will keep your listing live until your home is sold. Other listing services will list your home between 6 and 12 months. You won't get on the MLS, which will limit your exposure. But your home will be listed to Zillow and Trulia, which can help you advertise to out-of-state buyers, especially those unfamiliar with SimplyFSBO’s webpage.

A professional photographer will visit your home to take pictures. Note: these photographs will be watermarked with the “SimplyFSBO” logo, which is very conspicuous and often distracting. Your Essential package will also come with printable flyers and a custom sign. But these services are pretty fluffy and don’t contribute to the $499 price tag.

In addition to the Essential services listed, Pro offers 3D showings powered by Matterport, which lets buyers "walk" around the home point by point, measure space with a ruler, view rooms in virtual reality, and share the space on social media. SimplyFSBO will advertise your home with geotargeted paid ads.

The Pro 3D plan will also connect you with a dedicated FSBO adviser to answer questions about the process — but they’re NOT licensed real estate agents and they can’t offer you the services a realtor can (such as assistance with pricing your home, negotiating, and closing).

Marketing

SimplyFSBO will list your home on its own website, Zillow, and Trulia, but it doesn’t put you on the MLS. That can severely limit who sees your home, as most licensed real estate agents will use the MLS to match listings with buyers. SimpleFSBO will also run paid ads on Facebook and Google (under the $699 plan). None of these replace an MLS listing, but they could expand your pool of potential home buyers.

Although SimplyFSBO claims it gets heavy website traffic, our analysis shows that the site gets only about 1,600 visitors per month. That’s not a large pool of buyers, especially if you’re paying up to $700.

Customer experience

Right now, SimplyFSBO has 61 reviews on Google, with an aggregate rating of 4.9 stars — no Better Business Bureau profile. When we ran those reviews through an emotional language detector, we found the following themes:

Cost

SimplyFSBO costs slightly more than the average FFMLS. Most listing services have basic plans that range about $300–400, while SimplyFSBO's basic plan for $499 and a premium plan for $699.

Under the Essential plan, you get a listing on simplyfsbo.com, professional photography, a custom sign, printable flyers, disclosures, and paperwork. These alone don't justify the high price. Other FSBO websites will give you all of these plus a listing on the MLS and other popular real estate sites for a much more reasonable price (usually somewhere around $300).

The FSBO Pro 3D plan, however, does offer unique value: a high-quality 3D showing of your home. If you're willing to spend more for this service, then the $699 Pro plan is a good deal. (A Matterport camera costs up to $4,000, plus the monthly subscription for the software to create the 3D design.)

User friendliness

The SimplyFSBO website is fast and easy to navigate. Customers who left reviews were generally satisfied with how user friendly and efficient they were. Here are the steps to list your home on SimplyFSBO:

1. Select a plan. You’ll fill out a questionnaire and add information on your property.
2. Finish your listing. SimplyFSBO will send a photographer to your home (or you can upload your own). You'll get a price estimate and then make edits to your listing before it goes live.
3. Find a buyer. All offers on your home will go to a digital portal.
4. Connect with an attorney. After you and the buyer make an agreement, SimplyFSBO will connect you with a real estate attorney to continue the transaction.

SimplyFSBO contact info

Next steps

If you’re determined to sell your home by yourself, we would recommend looking at other flat fee listing services first. The plans on SimplyFSBO are expensive and may not offer you the best value for your dollar. This is especially true if you want to be listed on the MLS, as SimplyFSBO doesn’t offer that service.

If you're on the fence about selling your home yourself, consider other ways to save money. A low-commission real estate company, for example, can connect you with agents who charge 2% or less without sacrificing services.

Methodology

We evaluated the value and quality of flat fee MLS (FFMLS) and for sale by owner (FSBO) listing services based on five core criteria:

• Quality and range of services
• Brand recognition and marketing methods
• Customer reviews and experience
• Cost value
• User friendliness