Who owns your database? Read the terms.

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By Kasey Jorgenson, designated broker, Jorgenson Real Estate · November 7, 2025 · Updated October 3, 2026

The short version: Follow Up Boss’s 2025 terms don’t say you own your data. You grant Zillow a broad license to use it, de-identified data can be used to train AI and build products even after you leave, and exporting before you cancel is on you. Under the terms, any contact with their own Zillow relationship (like an account) is a Zillow “mutual customer” that Zillow may market to, and the terms give agents no role in that call. Read your CRM’s terms and ask the seven questions below.

I was a Follow Up Boss customer from 2016 on. When the company sent out its first big Terms of Service update since Zillow bought it, I read the whole thing. Most agents didn’t, and I get it: nobody reads terms of service. But your database is the most valuable thing you own in this business, and the terms are where you find out whether it’s actually yours.

We left before the new terms took effect, so this is about what the documents say, not how Zillow applies them day to day. Here it is in plain English. Read them yourself, too. They’re linked at the bottom.

Some background

Zillow announced it was buying Follow Up Boss on November 1, 2023, for roughly $400 million in cash plus up to $100 million more in earnouts, and closed that December. The updated Terms of Service and a new Follow Up Boss addendum to Zillow’s Privacy Notice took effect November 15, 2025. The terms now describe Follow Up Boss as a brand of Zillow, Inc.

What the terms actually say

• Nothing says you own your data. The “Ownership” section covers Zillow’s platform. The customer data section is about the license you grant.
• The license is broad. You give Zillow a worldwide, royalty-free license to host, copy, process, transmit, and “otherwise use” your customer data. That includes to “improve and develop the Services” and for anything the privacy documents allow.
• De-identified data is fair game, forever. Zillow can use de-identified or aggregated data, before and after your subscription, to build new products, including to train and fine-tune AI models “or for other purposes.” The privacy addendum says aggregated data isn’t covered by it and can be shared with third parties.
• Zillow decides who’s a “mutual customer.” Any client of yours who also has their own relationship with Zillow, like a Zillow account, is a “Mutual Customer.” The privacy addendum doesn’t say how Zillow identifies who that is, and nothing in it gives the agent a role in the decision. Once someone counts as a mutual customer, their data is also governed by Zillow’s own privacy notice, and Zillow says it may market to them. Only “Agent-Only” contacts are kept out of Zillow’s marketing.
• Your conversations count as data. “End Customer Data” includes the content of your texts, calls, and emails with clients.
• Leaving is on you. Downloading your data before your term ends is your responsibility. After you cancel, you have 30 days to ask support for help retrieving your contact list, and Zillow keeps no obligation to store or back up your data after that.

Is it a data grab?

Reasonable people disagree. Zillow’s FAQ says it only uses account data for its own purposes when it has a direct, independent relationship with the contact. Some industry voices argued Zillow already had most of this access and the new terms just said it out loud.

My view hasn’t changed. Under the terms, the protection for your database depends on the “Agent-Only” label, and whether a contact keeps it turns on Zillow’s own relationship with that person, not on anything you control. Nearly every buyer and seller has a Zillow account, so in practice a large share of anyone’s database can end up as Zillow’s “mutual customers,” people Zillow is free to market to. In a business built on relationships, the company that hosts your relationships shouldn’t also get to decide which of them it can compete for.

Whatever you decide, decide it on purpose, after reading the terms. Don’t decide by default.

Seven questions to ask any CRM vendor

1. Does the contract say I (or my brokerage) own my contacts, notes, and call and text content? “We protect your data” isn’t the same thing.
2. What license am I granting, for what purposes, and does it survive cancellation?
3. Can a parent company or affiliate market to my contacts, including ones who also use the parent’s app?
4. Is my data, including de-identified data, used to train AI models? Can I opt out?
5. Can I export everything (contacts, notes, recordings, texts, tags) in a standard format at any time? Is there a deadline after I cancel?
6. Will you delete my data on request and confirm it in writing, including backups and anything derived from it?
7. How much notice do I get when the terms change, and can I leave without a penalty?

Where JRE landed

We moved off Follow Up Boss and built our own CRM, so our agents’ client relationships aren’t sitting inside a portal company’s product. We also put in writing that an agent’s personal database stays theirs. If that matters to you, let’s talk.

General information, not legal advice. TREC says I can’t practice law, and I like my license. Run your specific situation past your broker or a real estate attorney.

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