I would point out that this is by no means just the new ones and the established players are equally as culpable in not having the best support teams.

But why should a software provider have to solve their issues without recompense, it simply hampers their own more important requirement of supporting the software they provide.

By all means have a pop when its warranted but to simply claim that there’s no work involved in these feeds is simplistic and naive.

A great website should possess large volumes of traffic and links. You have to put in a little bit of effort to market your website if you want to reach out to people on the internet and make your site noticeable. It is not necessary to spend a lot of …

It’s perfectly fair enough for a software provider to charge for feeding data to the portals. As Jay points out above, there are real costs (when you get to high scale – which none of the free software providers have yet reached) and those costs need to be met.

That said there are different ways that these costs can be met. Some of the free software providers (of which Charlie above, and we at http://www.homeflow.co.uk are examples), have chosen to provide the feeds to Globrix (and PropertyLive) for free. Homeflow have done this in a bid to gain market share against more established estate agency software systems, not because we think it costs us nothing. We swallow the costs – it’s essentially just a marketing cost for our products.

The costs are however not huge – and certainly not at the level that some of the larger software vendors seek to charge their clients. They’re treating it as an opportunity to eek a bit more money out of the system for their businesses in what is an equally tough market for them. If agents are having a tough time, just think how hard it is for the guys trying to sell to agents!

And that’s what this argument is all about.

Vebra (or GMG) are watching the likes of Rightmove making stellar profits (hats off to them), and watching Globrix ripping through the market making waves in their bid to disrupt Rightmove, and they’ve drawn their battle lines. They’re not the only ones.

The next few months are going to be very interesting, as Globrix and Vebra (and PropertyLive and other software vendors) start to engage in various largely under cover trade PR battles.

Anyone who wants to avoid the fight – give us a call!

Vebra does not have its client’s interests held first and foremost. It is a large scale market “buy-up”operation which has a reputation for ignoring its clients wishes.

Unless Vebra changes its outdated approach to business and ethics, its big bully tactics will not make it last forever and it will eventually start to wither and die, as all non-competitive organisations ultimately do.

I am all for healthy competition, but for Vebra to actually spend time and money restricting free leads to its clients websites is nothing short of outrageous profiteering.

Every penny Globrix is forced to pay Vebra is coming directly out of funds they could be spending promoting and developing the site.

As long as Globrix provides free traffic to agents websites, and continues to strive to improve its service, it deserves the number one spot in online property search.