AutoStar Solutions Alternative for Car Dealerships

A straight comparison for independent and buy here pay here stores, including the parts of the job we do not do.

Dealer software gets discussed as one lump, and that is why so many software changes disappoint. AutoStar Solutions sits in the dealer management category, which for an independent or buy here pay here store usually means the back office: deal posting, accounting, loan servicing, payment collection, forms and reporting. A lead generation platform with a CRM sits somewhere else entirely. It handles what happens before the deal exists and how a customer is worked in between visits.

So before you take a single demo, write down the sentence that describes your frustration. If it is my collections and payment history are painful to manage, you are shopping for a dealer management system and this page will only get you halfway. If it is we are not calling our leads back fast enough, follow up dies after two touches, and nobody can tell me where our deals came from, you are shopping for a CRM and a lead source, and changing your DMS will not fix any of it.

The stores that get burned are the ones that swap the back office hoping the front office improves. It almost never does, because the two problems have almost nothing in common except the invoice they arrive on.

AutoStar Solutions is known in the market as dealer management software for independent dealers, with a particular history serving buy here pay here operations. That corner of the business has requirements a generic system does not cover: originating your own paper, servicing loans in house, tracking payment histories over years, running collections, and keeping the accounting straight when the store is also the lender.

If that describes your operation, the value of a system built for it is real. Loan servicing and collections are unforgiving. A store that finances its own customers lives or dies on payment tracking and on knowing, at any moment, which accounts are current and which are not. Software that was designed around that problem will beat software that treats it as an afterthought.

Packaging, modules and pricing change over time, and no comparison page can be a substitute for the vendor's own answers. Confirm current capability, contract terms and cost directly with AutoStar Solutions before you make a decision based on anything written here or anywhere else.

LeadLocate started from the opposite end of the store. It is a lead generation platform with a full CRM built around it, and it is sold month to month to dealerships and to individual salespeople.

On the lead side you pick a territory around your store and leads inside that zone come to you exclusively rather than being resold to three competitors. There are two families. Inbound buyer leads come from shoppers in market, arriving as a mix of VIN specific inquiries and open shoppers describing what they want. Opt in seller leads come from local owners who filled out a vehicle offer request and asked a dealership to contact them about selling. Nothing is filtered or scored. Every submitted lead in your zone is delivered, and problems are handled by post delivery replacement review rather than by a quality claim made in advance.

On the CRM side you get lead management, SMS and MMS with RCS and automatic SMS fallback, a click to call dialer with a VoIP softphone, call recording with transcription, voicemail drop, email with a real inbox and composer, bulk email, automations and follow up processes, drip campaigns with a drip editor, reminders, appointments, and a desking tool covering loan and lease with a fifty state tax matrix. There are also tools most dealers do not expect from a CRM at all: a phone validator, an email validator, and lead pages you build yourself. More detail sits on the CRM features page.

Features and pricing change. Confirm anything that will drive your decision directly with each vendor, in writing, before you sign.

We would rather tell you this before you switch than after. Stay where you are if any of these describe your store.

• You originate and service your own paper, and loan servicing, payment posting and collections are the daily work of your office.
• Your accounting, deal posting and floorplan tracking live in the same system and you have no appetite for separating them.
• Your state forms, title work and registration process run through the system and your office staff know it cold.
• Your frustration is really a staffing or process problem in the back office, which new software will expose but not solve.
• You are mid year, mid audit, or mid anything that makes a back office conversion reckless right now.

None of those are reasons to avoid looking at your lead and follow up layer. They are reasons not to rip out your back office.

The case is strongest when several of these are true at the same time.

• Your real complaint is lead volume, response time or follow up depth rather than accounting.
• You are buying leads from one vendor and a CRM from another, and paying with your own time to make them talk.
• You want exclusive local leads instead of shared internet leads that three stores are calling at once.
• Your salespeople are working customers from their personal phones, which means your reporting is fiction.
• You want acquisition volume too. Opt in seller leads from local owners are covered on the seller leads page.
• Contract length is a sticking point. Month to month means we have to earn the business every month.

The important thing is that this is not an either or decision. Most independent stores that come to us keep their existing dealer management system exactly where it is and add the lead and communication layer on top of it. No DMS integration and no inventory feed is required to operate, which is why solo salespeople and brokers can run on the same platform a twenty car a month store does.

No hedging here, because a vague answer costs you a wasted demo. LeadLocate is not a dealer management system and does not pretend to be one.

We have no general ledger, no accounts payable or receivable, no payroll, no bank reconciliation, no deal posting into accounting, no floorplan or vehicle accounting, and no sales tax filing. We do not process titles or registrations. We do not manage parts inventory or a parts counter, we do not write repair orders, we do not schedule service against shop capacity, we do not run a technician time clock, and we do not handle warranty claims. We are not an OEM certified CRM and we do not build OEM compliant websites.

On the finance side, SecureWebX handles secure credit applications, shareable apply links you can text to a customer, document collection, identity verification at intake, a compliance module with versioned consent, worksheets and eFax. It does not do eContracting with lenders, direct lender portal submission, automated decisioning, or menu selling with product rating. Those are not built, and a vendor telling you otherwise about their own product is worth a follow up question.

The subscription difference is usually the smallest number in a software change. The expensive parts never appear on a quote.

1. Data. Settle what you can export, in what format, and whether communication and payment history comes with it. Do this before you give notice, not after. Your leverage is at its highest the moment before you sign anything and at its lowest the day you cancel.
2. Overlap. Plan to pay two vendors for a few weeks. Stores that cut over with no overlap are the stores that lose leads and records during the change.
3. Adoption. Expect a productivity dip of two to four weeks while people relearn habits. This is a management cost, not a training cost, and it is the one most owners underestimate.
4. Repointing. Every third party that currently sends data in has to be redirected: website forms, third party lead providers, chat, phone. Make that list before you start.
5. Reporting continuity. Pull the historical reports you will want to compare against next year while you still have access to them.

Our CRM migration checklist walks it in order and is written to be used with any vendor, not only with us.

Take these into every demo. Answers separate vendors faster than a feature list does.

What is the total monthly cost with every module I actually need, and what happens to that number at renewal? What is the contract length and what is the cancellation process in writing? Exactly what can I export if I leave, in what format, and does it include communication history and payment history? Who owns the customer data? How long is implementation and what does my store have to supply? What does support look like at six o'clock on a Saturday evening? If leads are included, are they exclusive to my store, how is my territory drawn, and what happens when a lead is bad?

Write the answers down. Vendors comfortable being pinned down in writing tend to be the ones still worth having in year three. If you want ours answered live, start with the demo, or contact us and just ask whether we fit before you sit through anything.

Can LeadLocate replace AutoStar Solutions?

Not for the dealer management side. There is no general ledger, no loan servicing, no collections, no accounting and no title or registration work. If those are why you are looking, you need another dealer management system. If lead flow, follow up and desking are the problem, that is what we replace.

Do we have to drop our current system to use LeadLocate?

No, and most independent stores do not. The platform runs alongside whatever back office system you keep. No DMS integration and no inventory feed is required to operate.

Does LeadLocate include leads or only software?

Both are available. CRM Only starts at $199 a month if you already have your own lead sources. Plans that include exclusive local leads start at $799 a month, and combined buyer and seller programs start at $1,599.

Are the leads exclusive to my store?

Yes. You choose a territory around your store and leads in that zone are delivered to you and not resold to other dealerships. Nothing is filtered or scored, so every submitted lead in the zone is delivered and problems are handled by post delivery replacement review.

Will this improve our numbers?

We cannot guarantee lead counts, close rates or sales results, and no vendor honestly can, because those depend on your market, your pricing and your team. What we can do is show the platform running on real lead flow and price it month to month so staying is your decision every month.

How should an independent store evaluate this without betting the business?

Run a pilot. Put one team or one salesperson on the platform for three or four weeks with a defined slice of lead flow, and measure time to first response, follow up touches per lead and appointments set against your current process on the same period.

We will map a territory around your dealership, show you the CRM working real lead flow, and give you a straight number. Month to month, no long term contract.