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This article was last updated Dec. 19, 2024.
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StackWrap is software for consolidating access to a brokerage’s tech stack.
Platforms: Web
Ideal for: Tech-forward brokerages, teams
Initial Review: June 2024
Updated: Dec 2024
Top selling points:
- Team-based “StackWraps”
- G-Suite integration
- Granular admin controls
- Highly scalable to brokerage size
- Current partner product selection
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Top concerns:
This application may encounter integration issues as its growing user base suggests more complex and sophisticated linkages. I suspect some added controls and directives related to what can become part of the system will be necessary.
What you should know
StackWrap is productivity software that serves as a top layer to a brokerage’s tech stack, enabling better organization, access and understanding of a company’s most-used applications. The solution was built by Max Fitzgerald, who owns the independent brokerage Craft & Bauer.
Users can connect any number of common systems — Follow Up Boss, SkySlope, their MLS, etc. — to the StackWrap interface, giving them a single place to begin their workday. The primary dashboard offers a modern, smart layout with a simple navigation design that allows one-click access to what you need when.
The company continues to branch out into the tech sphere to now help teams of all sizes link up with common productivity suites from the likes of Google, Slack and the popular industry emailer Happy Grasshopper.
Google’s G-Suite (Workspace) offers the real estate industry a dependable method of organizing email accounts, sharing documents and organizing its Drive folders based on agent, transaction or office. Now it’s a part of StackWrap and intricately integrated.
Users can access Drive’s sharing features and its file and folder access structure, create and manage Google Sheets, and stay synced with however the platform is used.
Teams have been a focus for StackWrap since my last look, likely a byproduct of its agent-founder’s understanding of how software autonomy is often intrinsic to a team’s production. As mega-teams have evolved into “internal brokerages” and their leaders have lobbied for independence, their technology decisions have become branding advantages.
StackWrap can enhance that by walling off its toolset, helping provide an enhanced sense of exclusivity as well as helping teams better measure user activity per software product.
The StackWrap dash will automatically display to users only the application widgets to which they’ve been given access. In summary, it offers a tighter, more closed working environment via tiered user groups and granular sub-account permissions that emanate from “master” accounts.
Team leads can incentivize new members by unlocking certain tools or features within a connected application but the more advantageous use is in training and peer support. Agents working alongside each other in designated “stacks” would be likely to adopt and benefit from each product at a faster rate because of “groupthink,” as well as from the absence of fragmentation that plagues so many brokers trying to implement multiple software products across large operations.
Need to check in on an agreement signature? Click your DocuSign link. Did a new lead sign up for a newsletter? Hop into Mailchimp or SendGrid to see what’s what. On the email front, the Happy Grasshopper link should make happy its wide swath of real estate users. The integration allows users a quick look into recent campaign statistics and should something need attention, a simple click will take the user to their actual account.
There are feature panels that list notifications, tasks, transactions and a daily calendar, all fueled by the respective product.
Beyond StackWrap’s inherent administrative flexibility, each panel can be resized, moved around and altered as needed to design as efficient a physical space as an operational one.
Admins can add products with a few clicks, require the product’s API code and decide in what category it should live. Savvy agents can set up hierarchies, such as “Productivity,” “Marketing,” “Communications” and “Internal,” for example. It can do what you want it to.
The intent of StackWrap is to make sense of all the disparate logins and domains an agent must interact with to function.
Through my own reporting, and backed by Fitzgerald’s impetus for creating the product, we know that agents are often given too many products to work with or eschew. This can make recruiting pitches from your competitors all the more attractive because of how a wooing brokerage may handle their technology.
In short, technology tools can all be too much for agents at times, which contributes to a lack of adoption or, worse, a general apathy toward tech.
A valuable byproduct of this software is that it can help brokerages better monitor what products get the most use and reveal product redundancies.
Because the admin can impersonate agent users, it becomes easy to oversee what software agents use (and for what) or to measure login frequency, for example. This is great data for deciding if licenses should be renewed or if account levels can be reduced in some way.
Think of StackWrap as your software foyer or receiving area, the entryway to your tech stack.
It has its own features, too. It can be arranged by teams or across offices, and again, the admin flexibility is impressive, even if most brokers will pass off such roles to marketing staff or ops executives, which is fine.
As I told Fitzgerald in our demo, I’m always happy to look at products that are trying to find ways to internalize efficiency. He’s not necessarily adding to the proptech noise; he’s offering a way to control its volume.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.
