What made Japan's leading real estate firm switch from Salesforce to open-source NocoBase?

Introduction

They had options like Salesforce and Kintone. So why did this leader in Japan’s real estate industry ultimately choose an open-source platform—NocoBase?

Who is HouseWell?

In Japan, Century 21 is a household name. Since it entered the Japanese market in 1983, Century 21 has opened nearly a thousand stores across the country, becoming a leading brand in Japan’s real estate agency industry.

Century 21

Within this huge franchise network, one company’s performance really stands out. For years, it has consistently been among the top performers in Century 21 Japan, making it one of the most respected and influential franchisees. That company is HouseWell.

HouseWell

Based in Saitama, HouseWell has a very diverse business model. It covers a wide range of areas, including property sales and purchases, rental management, renovations and construction, insurance consulting, and IT services.

HR: The Missing Piece in HouseWell’s Digital Puzzle

HouseWell has grown fast—and so has its team, now reaching over 110 employees.

While the company had already gone digital in many areas—using Salesforce for customer data and business workflows—their HR and internal admin processes told a different story. Most of it still ran on paper forms and spreadsheets.

Take leave requests, for example. About 30 are submitted each month, but the process still involves printing, signing, and passing papers between departments. Delays, lost forms, and missed details were common—driving up costs and frustrating staff.

Managing HR data—from team structures to job changes and annual hiring plans—was no better. Info was scattered across files, with no clear system to track or analyze it. That lack of visibility was slowing down decisions and weakening management efficiency.

As the business expanded, it became clear that CRM alone couldn’t cover it all. HR needed a digital upgrade too.

So HouseWell launched a deep search for a system that could work alongside their existing tools—while staying flexible for the road ahead.

A Carefully Considered Choice

HouseWell had three main options on the table, each with its own strengths:

Continue with Salesforce: Salesforce is the world’s top CRM. It’s feature-rich, uses mature technology, has a strong ecosystem, and boasts many success stories in real estate.
Adopt Kintone, a low-code platform: Kintone is Japan’s leading low-code platform. It’s simple to use, quick to deploy, and very well-known with a large market share among Japanese companies.
Choose open-source NocoBase: As an open-source no-code platform, NocoBase offers highly flexible data modeling and UI customization. It also supports on-premise deployment and a one-time purchase model.

Before making a final decision, the team did a deep dive comparison of these three options:

1.Salesforce: Powerful but Pricey

Salesforce is widely seen as a powerful tool in real estate. It offers rich CRM features, standard processes, and many third-party integrations. It’s great for large companies needing customer management, data analysis, and sales automation.

However, during their detailed evaluation, the HouseWell team found a few issues:

High Costs: Salesforce charges a monthly fee based on the number of users and features. As employee numbers and business size grow, this model leads to very high long-term costs, making it less economical over time.
Limited Customization: While feature-rich, Salesforce’s interface and process customization options are limited in practice. This made it hard to precisely meet the specific needs of HouseWell’s diverse business areas. The cost of extra custom development was also alarmingly high.

2.Kintone: Easy to Use, but Lacks Flexibility

As a homegrown Japanese platform, Kintone has clear advantages in ease of use, operation, and quickly launching new processes. Many small and medium-sized businesses are fond of it. HouseWell initially had high hopes, but a deeper look revealed:

Modules Too Rigid: Kintone’s low-code model allows for fast deployment of business processes. However, its system modules are quite standardized, offering limited room for personalization. This made it difficult to meet the precise needs of complex business scenarios.
Limited Scalability: HouseWell planned to integrate its CRM, HR systems, and administrative workflows later on. Kintone’s closed architecture and limited API capabilities proved to be a drawback, unable to support their long-term strategy.

3.NocoBase: Both Powerful and Flexible

Initially, NocoBase was just another option on their evaluation list. But as the comparison deepened, it increasingly showed its strong flexibility and control.

Highly flexible data modeling and interface design capabilities, which could almost perfectly match HouseWell’s business needs.
A one-time purchase model, meaning no ongoing high subscription fees, keeping overall costs manageable.
Strong API integration capabilities, allowing seamless connection with existing systems like Salesforce and providing room for future system integrations.
Completely open-source, making deep customization and further development easier. This also provides a technical foundation for potentially standardizing the system for external use later.

After detailed functional testing and cost assessment, the team found that NocoBase was not only flexible enough in its features but also had a total cost of ownership far lower than Salesforce. At the same time, its openness and scalability were much better than Kintone’s.

After careful consideration, HouseWell ultimately chose NocoBase.

From Decision to Go-Live: How Did NocoBase Change Things?

Once they decided on NocoBase, the HouseWell team quickly got to work on implementation.

Phase One: Quickly Setting Up an Admin and HR System

As their first project, HouseWell started by moving their paper-based and inefficient HR and administrative processes onto the NocoBase system:

Fully digitizing the leave request process

Previously, about 30 leave requests each month had to be passed around as paper copies within the company. With NocoBase, employees simply submit requests via an online form. Approvers get instant notifications and can approve them online. The whole process is smooth and straightforward, greatly reducing human error and lost information. Once the system was live, this frequent process became almost entirely paperless right away, leading to a clear boost in management efficiency.

Fully digitizing the leave request process

Clearer visibility of HR information

Using NocoBase’s flexible data modeling and customization features, HouseWell quickly built modules for things like employee organizational structure, recruitment channels, and HR statistics. The HR department can now see real-time hiring status for each department and how staff are distributed across different roles. The company’s overall HR picture became much clearer.

Compared to managing information through scattered spreadsheets and emails before, the efficiency gains were substantial.

Clearer visibility of HR information

Phase Two: From Integration to Replacement

Before bringing in NocoBase, HouseWell was already using Salesforce for their customer management. All their customer details and transaction records were stored there. As they used NocoBase more, they gradually realized something: NocoBase wasn’t just good for flexible HR management. It was also fully capable of building a CRM system.

So, the tech team quickly got to work on system integration:

They used NocoBase’s powerful API capabilities to sync existing customer data from Salesforce, allowing data to be shared. This efficient data integration meant the team could access both customer information and internal operational data in one place. It avoided duplicate data entry and improved data consistency.
Even more significantly, HouseWell is now planning to gradually move their CRM system from Salesforce over to NocoBase. They aim to use NocoBase’s customizable data models and page layouts to build a customer management solution that better fits their specific business logic and gives them more control.

Through this process, NocoBase evolved from just a “supplementary tool” into the core platform for HouseWell to create a unified business system.

Real Feedback After Implementation

After implementing NocoBase, the HouseWell team shared clear feedback:

The system’s flexibility and UI customization met their expectations perfectly.
The API integration capabilities exceeded their expectations, making data integration smoother.
Overall costs were significantly reduced, making it much more economical for long-term use.
The NocoBase support team was very responsive, and any issues they encountered were resolved quickly.

Bigger Ambitions: From System User to Solution Provider

HouseWell isn’t just stopping at upgrading its own internal systems. Drawing on their deep experience in real estate, they plan to use NocoBase to create standardized information management systems for the industry. They then aim to offer these as replicable solutions to other businesses.

Thanks to NocoBase’s open-source nature and flexible one-time purchase model, HouseWell can freely customize and develop it further. This allows them to perfectly tailor solutions to the specific needs of various clients in the real estate industry.

This strategic move is transforming HouseWell from simply a user of internal systems into a solution provider for the entire real estate industry.

This not only helps them quickly recoup their system development costs but also opens up new revenue streams for the company, multiplying the value of their IT investment.

Conclusion

HouseWell’s decision to choose NocoBase over Salesforce and Kintone wasn’t just a simple software selection. It was a precise and strategically farsighted move:

Moving from high long-term costs to a flexible, cost-effective one-time purchase model.
Shifting from rigid functional modules to a highly customizable open architecture.
Transforming from a system user to a developer and provider of industry solutions.

HouseWell’s success story reminds us:

The key to true digital success isn’t about choosing the most famous or most expensive tools. It’s about finding solutions that genuinely match your business needs and future strategy.

We hope HouseWell’s story inspires other businesses.

Related reading: