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XML / FTP COLLECTION
The portal can collect your data in OUR format. We switch on our XML/FTP feed, give you (the agent) the access codes and then you give these to whoever you want to have access to your data. This whole process (including the feed format) is explained here. You need to be aware that the XML feed counts as one of the three free portal feeds that you get per branch. So, if you already upload to Rightmove, Prime Location & Fish4homes, your XML/FTP feed will cost you an extra £20 per month per branch. From the portal perspective, this route is free.
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We don’t – well not for most members. Most member branches upload to 3 portals or less. We only charge when you step beyond 3 portals per branch. So, you can send to your choice of 3 out of the 18 or so premium portals that we upload to WITHOUT extra charges. Our Users Group helped us to come up with 3 as a fair usage level . Portals swallow up internet bandwidth which is expensive but, much worse, they swallow up support team time. When you call us to explain that 5 Acacia Avenue isn’t on, for example, Look4aProperty.com, it takes us half an hour to check the property, check our feed, call their support team and call you back. By definition, if you upload to 4 or more portals, you are moving away from the premier league portals into the league division 2 ones. Consequently, in our experience, the quality of feed processing and quality of support on offer can diminish making our job harder still.
We also count our XML feed as an extra portal. So, if you have a website powered by someone else and they collect data from us, if that feed pushes you over the three free feeds we bill for that too for the same reasons as above.
The charge for fourth and subsequent portal uploads is £20+VAT per month per branch.
A premium flag is applied by Rightmove once the feed is processed – you will need to make contact with them directly to discuss this further.
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We commence our portal uploads at 19:00 daily, this means that any data that is added or properties put on market after this time, WILL NOT BE ILLUSTRATED until the next feed has run and been processed by the portals the following evening.
We currently do not run the portal uploads on a Sunday evening, this is because so little is changed after Saturdays feed thus not needing to be refreshed on the portals.
We use this time to Run Re-indexing on our servers, which ensures that we are running at optimum speed for Monday Morning.