Easy Property Listings Alternative: Is MLSImport Worth It?

Last updated: June 10, 2026

If you’ve been typing every listing into WordPress by hand and wondering whether there’s a faster way, you’re not the only agent hunting for an easy property listings alternative. Easy Property Listings (EPL) is a free WordPress plugin for managing listings by hand. It’s not an IDX tool, and it doesn’t sync with any US or Canadian MLS. MLSImport is a paid plugin ($49/month billed monthly, or $42/month billed yearly, which works out to $504/year) that connects to your board’s RESO Web API and pulls your MLS listings into WordPress, syncing changes every hour. In short, EPL fits low-volume, own-listing, custom-theme, non-MLS, or Australian-CRM setups. MLSImport wins when you have ten or more active listings needing constant updates, valid RESO credentials, and one of four supported themes.

Full disclosure: MLSImport is our own plugin, which is exactly why we’ve worked to apply equal scrutiny to both tools, including the cases below where Easy Property Listings is genuinely the right answer and a subscription would be wasted money.

What Easy Property Listings Actually Does (and Doesn’t Do)

Easy Property Listings is one of the steadier free real estate plugins around. Its WordPress.org listing shows version 3.5.24, more than 5,000 active installs, and a 4.7 out of 5 rating across 112 reviews, maintained by a single Australian developer, Merv Barrett. Install it and you get seven pre-built post types (property, rental, land, rural, business, commercial, and commercial land), over 150 custom fields, a photo gallery, Google Maps, and agent profiles. You add each listing the way you write a WordPress post: by hand.

Here’s the part the plugin’s own readme half-hides. EPL has no native connection to any US or Canadian MLS, and no RESO Web API sync in the core. The “REAXML, JUPIX and worldwide MLS systems” line on its page refers to batch XML and CSV import add-ons, not live sync. For US and Canadian agents, every listing on an EPL site has to be entered by hand.

Elementor Compatibility: Shortcodes, Not Drag-and-Drop Blocks

Searching for “easy property listings elementor”? Here’s the honest answer. EPL works with Elementor, but through shortcodes, not native drag-and-drop blocks. Its changelog confirms the listing_results shortcode displays search results “in Page Builders like Elementor, Divi, WP Bakery.” It works, but you need to know the listing_results and listing_element syntax to place listing data inside an Elementor layout (syntax you won’t pick up from the changelog, which is light on examples). By contrast, MLSImport feeds WpResidence and Houzez, both of which use Elementor as their builder, so imported listings show up inside Elementor-built pages through the theme.

📌 Pro Tip: If your build is Elementor-based but not WpResidence or Houzez, shortcodes are your only native EPL option. Test the listing_results shortcode in a sandbox page before you build your site around it.

Extensions, Support, and AUD Pricing

EPL’s free core covers the basics, but the useful extras are paid, billed yearly, and priced in Australian dollars. The Core Extension Bundle is AUD $297/year for a single site; individual extensions like Advanced Mapping (AUD $87/year single site) or Listing Alerts (AUD $47/year) sell separately (per easypropertylistings.com.au/extensions/, billed yearly in AUD), foreign-currency billing for US agents. Support is paid too: by its own policy the team doesn’t support the WordPress.org forums (paid plans only), and a personal plan starts around AUD $97 for 45 days (the support page skips the currency label, but every other EPL price is in Australian dollars). One reviewer flagged the tutorial videos as outdated, worth knowing if you’re learning it yourself.

What MLSImport Does Differently

MLSImport solves a different problem: instead of typing listings in, you pull them from your MLS. The plugin connects to your board’s RESO Web API (the current standard, not obsolete RETS) and imports approved listings as native WordPress property posts. It then syncs hourly, updating changed fields and removing off-market listings on its own.

One hard gate comes first: you need your own active MLS membership and board-approved RESO Web API credentials. There’s no workaround. By the vendor’s own published guidance, board approval typically takes 7 to 14 days and varies by board. So sort the paperwork before you build. The board fees themselves (often $5 to $30 per month, plus a one-time IDX setup or connection fee of roughly $50 to $300, while in Canada CREA’s DDF feed is usually free for members) go to the MLS, not to MLSImport; see MLS access costs for the full breakdown.

📌 Pro Tip: Apply for your RESO Web API credentials the day you decide to switch, then build the site while you wait. Agents who install first and apply later sit idle for two weeks.

Two more constraints. MLSImport runs on four themes only: WpResidence, Houzez, Real Homes, and WpEstate (around $79 one-time each on ThemeForest, pricing varies), one required. And photos are served from your MLS CDN rather than your media library, which saves disk space but means no local image optimization or backup, and display depends on the MLS CDN staying up. Two costs to budget: it’s a per-domain subscription (one license per WordPress site), and large imports want a VPS or managed WordPress plan ($20 to $50 per month), not basic shared hosting (per mlsimport.com/mlsimport-extra-costs-mls-fees-hosting/). If you’re still surveying the wider field, the best IDX plugins for WordPress guide covers the broader market. MLSImport’s own homepage describes importing 8,000 properties on a WpResidence site “in just a few hours,” a capability demonstration, not typical solo-agent behavior.

EPL vs MLSImport at a Glance

Here’s the head-to-head from each vendor’s pages.

Two footnotes. EPL’s extension prices are in Australian dollars; convert before judging cost. MLSImport includes a 30-day free trial and charges no setup fee; full plan details are at MLSImport pricing.

The Real Cost of “Free”: The Manual Entry Math

Now the math, because “free” is never free once your time counts. Honest caveat: the minutes-per-listing figures below are estimates built from task components, not a published study, so benchmark them against your own workflow.

Picture the actual workflow. You open a new listing post and key in the address, price, beds, baths, and the rest of the roughly 40 fields a full listing needs, write the description, then upload and reorder 15 to 20 photos. A simple listing with no original copy runs 15 to 20 minutes; a full one runs 45 to 60. On the MLSImport side, you configure one import task a single time and the hourly sync carries the changes after that. We’ll use 45 minutes as a mid-range figure that absorbs routine updates too; that 45 is an assumption, not a law.

An agent with around a dozen active listings sits between the 10 and 20 rows. At those assumptions, that’s $375 to $750 of time a month against a $49 bill, assuming the credential gate is clear.

📌 Pro Tip: The $50/hour column is itself an assumption. At $80/hour, the cost at 10 listings jumps to about $600/month against a $49 subscription. Drop in your own rate before you decide.

The update treadmill is the part that wears agents down. It is not the first entry; it is the price drop at 9pm, the active-to-under-contract-to-sold move, the open-house edit at 11. Each is another trip back to WP admin. A stale listing isn’t just lost time: a sold home still showing “active” wastes a buyer’s afternoon and dents your credibility.

Below five listings, EPL’s free core is hard to beat. Above that, the time math leans toward MLSImport, if you can clear the credential prerequisite.

When Does Staying on EPL Make Sense?

Not every agent needs automated sync, and for a meaningful share of EPL’s users, switching makes no sense. Here are the situations where EPL is the right call:

1. Low volume, own listings only. You manage 5 to 10 of your own listings and rarely update them, so manual entry is a few hours per quarter and a subscription doesn’t pay off.
2. No MLS membership or RESO API access. This is a hard gate; agents who aren’t licensed, sit in MLSs without RESO certification, or lack board-approved API access can’t use MLSImport at all.
3. Australian agent with a CRM. EPL plus FeedSync (from AUD $228/year) handles REAXML feeds from Australian CRMs including REX, Locked On, AgentBox, Reapit, and PropertyMe; MLSImport doesn’t serve the Australian market.
4. Zero software budget. The EPL core plugin is genuinely free; if you must avoid all recurring spend, see free IDX plugin alternatives for a full breakdown of what is available at no cost.
5. Custom or unsupported theme. MLSImport needs one of four premium themes; if you have built on something else, you cannot use it without switching.
6. Non-MLS property types. Off-market deals, development lots, FSBO referrals, and commercial or rural listings that never hit an MLS feed are handled by EPL’s seven post types.
7. Portfolio and developer display sites. A client site with 5 to 10 curated properties has no sync need, so EPL is the efficient choice.

In practice, the credential gate is the most common reason agents stay on EPL even when they would prefer automation. There’s no plugin that gets around it.

When the Math Says Switch to MLSImport

Flip the picture and the case for sync gets strong. Switch when:

1. You hold valid MLS membership with board-approved RESO Web API credentials (the hard prerequisite above).
2. You have 10 or more active listings needing regular price or status updates, where the time math clears the fee.
3. You want to display the full board inventory, not just your own; EPL cannot, while MLSImport filters to any subset.
4. You use, or will install, WpResidence, Houzez, Real Homes, or WpEstate, the four compatible themes.
5. Listing freshness matters; stale active listings and lagging prices cost buyer trust a $49/month subscription recovers quickly.

Meet all five and the time math closes the case.

How to Choose: EPL or MLSImport

Run your situation against both lists.

Choose EPL if:

1. You have fewer than 10 active listings and update them infrequently.
2. You don’t hold MLS membership, or your board hasn’t approved your RESO Web API credentials.
3. You are an Australian agent on a REAXML CRM (FeedSync is your path, not MLSImport).
4. Your theme is outside WpResidence, Houzez, Real Homes, or WpEstate.
5. You manage non-MLS property types (off-market, development, commercial, FSBO).
6. Your software budget is zero.

Choose MLSImport if:

1. You hold active MLS membership with board-approved RESO Web API access (required, no workaround).
2. You have 10 or more active MLS listings needing regular price and status updates.
3. You want buyers to find every active listing in your market, not just your own.
4. You use or will install WpResidence, Houzez, Real Homes, or WpEstate.
5. You run a single domain, since each additional site needs its own subscription.
6. Your time is worth more than $49/month, which at the tiers above describes most agents with an active pipeline.

Key Takeaways

1. Easy Property Listings is a free manual listing manager, not an IDX or MLS sync tool; every listing requires a human to enter and update it.
2. MLSImport costs $49/month (or $504/year) and requires valid RESO Web API credentials from a US or Canadian MLS board before it works at all.
3. At 10 active listings needing regular updates, the opportunity cost of manual EPL entry typically passes MLSImport’s $49/month fee, assuming 45 minutes per listing fits your workflow.
4. EPL’s FeedSync add-on (from AUD $228/year) syncs Australian CRM feeds in REAXML format; it doesn’t connect US or Canadian agents to their MLS.
5. MLSImport works with only four themes (WpResidence, Houzez, Real Homes, and WpEstate); agents on other themes cannot use it without switching.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Easy Property Listings sync with a US MLS?

No. The EPL core plugin has zero native connectivity to any US MLS or RESO Web API. Its FeedSync add-on (sold separately at feedsync.com.au) syncs from Australian CRM systems using REAXML feeds, not from US or Canadian MLS boards. US agents who need live MLS sync need a different tool, such as MLSImport, which connects directly to your board’s RESO Web API.

Does MLSImport work with any WordPress theme?

No. MLSImport is compatible with four premium WordPress themes: WpResidence, Houzez, Real Homes, and WpEstate. These sell on ThemeForest for around $79 each as a one-time fee at the time of writing, and at least one is required. An agent on a different theme cannot run the plugin without switching to a supported theme first.

Is Easy Property Listings really free?

The core plugin is free (its WordPress.org listing shows no price). Premium functionality (maps, sliders, listing alerts, gallery, and 30-plus other extensions) is sold separately, billed yearly and in Australian dollars; the Core Extension Bundle is AUD $297/year for a single site. Free developer support isn’t provided, and paid plans start around AUD $97, unlike MLSImport, which bundles import assistance into its subscription.

How long does it take to get MLS credentials for MLSImport?

Board approval for RESO Web API credentials typically takes 7 to 14 days according to MLSImport’s guidance, and varies by board. It’s a common stumbling point: agents install the plugin expecting listings immediately, then learn they must first complete IDX paperwork and wait for approval. The fix is simple: get your credentials before you start the WordPress setup.

Bringing it all together: Strip away the features and this is one decision: manual control with Easy Property Listings, or automated sync with MLSImport. The right one depends on four things you already know: your listing volume, your MLS credentials, your budget, and your theme. A handful of your own listings on a budget? EPL earns its keep. A real pipeline, valid RESO access, and a supported theme? The time math points to MLSImport.

What’s your setup? Share your listing count in the comments, or reach out to the team for a second opinion. We’re happy to help, even if the answer is “stay where you are.”