CarNow vs LeadLocate

One of these lives on your website and converts the traffic you already have. The other supplies the traffic and runs the follow up. Know which problem you have.

Most head to head comparisons pit two versions of the same thing against each other. This one does not, and pretending otherwise would waste your time.

CarNow is publicly positioned as a digital retailing and shopper engagement platform. It sits on a dealership's website and works on the traffic that is already there: messaging, payment and trade tools inside the vehicle listing, and a path toward starting a deal online. The premise is that a meaningful number of shoppers on your site are ready to go further than a contact form and will do it if you let them.

LeadLocate starts one step earlier. It is a lead generation platform with a full CRM built around it, so the product's first job is putting people in front of you who were not on your website at all, and its second job is making sure they get worked properly afterward. It also includes a free live chat widget for dealer sites and customer facing deal pages, so there is genuine overlap. But the center of gravity is different.

So the honest first question is not which vendor is better. It is which failure is costing you more right now: not enough people, or enough people and not enough conversations. If your website gets real traffic and your close rate on it is poor, a retailing layer is the right tool. If your salespeople have downtime and your CRM is a spreadsheet with delusions, that is a different purchase.

Features and packaging change on both sides, so verify anything that will drive your decision directly with the vendor rather than with a comparison page, including this one.

Working only from public positioning, CarNow is a website conversion product for franchise and independent dealerships. The recognizable pieces are real time messaging with the shopper, tools embedded in the vehicle detail page so somebody can work with payments and a trade estimate without leaving the listing, and a route toward beginning a transaction online rather than only requesting information.

The strategic argument behind that category is sound. A shopper who has already found your listing has done the hard part. Every extra step you put between them and a conversation costs you a percentage of them, and a static contact form is a large step. Giving them a way to ask a question, see a payment, or value their trade in the moment is a legitimate lift on traffic you have already paid for.

If your store spends significantly on manufacturer tier three advertising, third party listing sites and paid search, and all of that traffic lands on a website that converts at a low single digit rate, the retailing layer is where the next percentage point comes from. That is a real business case and we are not going to argue against it.

What we will not do is describe CarNow's current feature set, pricing, contract terms or integrations in detail, because we do not have inside knowledge of them and inventing specifics would make this page worthless. Ask the vendor directly and write down the answers.

LeadLocate is a lead generation platform with a full CRM built in, sold to dealerships and to individual salespeople on month to month terms.

On the lead side, you pick a territory around your store and inbound leads inside that zone come to you exclusively rather than being resold to three competitors. There are two families. Buyer leads come from in market shoppers, and they are a mix of VIN specific inquiries and open shoppers describing what they want in general terms. Seller leads are opt in: local owners who filled out a vehicle offer request and asked a dealership to contact them about buying their car. Nothing is filtered, scored or quality tested. We ask pre screening questions at capture and deliver every submitted lead in the zone. Problems are handled by post delivery replacement review rather than by a promise made up front. The seller leads page explains the acquisition side in detail.

On the CRM side the surface is wide: lead inbox and distribution rules, SMS and MMS with RCS and SMS fallback, click to call 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 an editor, appointments, reminders, and a desking engine covering loan and lease with a fifty state tax matrix, semimonthly payment frequency, trade credit caps and three lease tax methods.

Two tools most dealers do not expect from a CRM: a phone validator and an email validator, built in house, which catch bad contact data before it costs your team a day of calls or damages your sending reputation.

The overlap is on your website, and it is worth being specific because this is the part where a store might reasonably choose one instead of both.

LeadLocate includes a free live chat widget you can put on your dealer site, so inbound website conversations land in the same inbox as everything else rather than in a separate tool with its own login. There is more on that at live chat for car dealers.

It also includes lead pages, which is a landing page builder with per page URL settings, plus personal salesperson websites. So a store that wants focused conversion pages does not need a separate website vendor to get them.

On the money side, the customer facing deal page is the closest thing we have to digital retailing. A deal desked in the CRM becomes a page the shopper opens on their own phone, showing their actual numbers with electronic signature available, rather than a photograph of a four square texted from somebody's personal phone. The desking tool page covers the engine behind it.

And on the finance side, SecureWebX provides secure online credit applications and apply links, which are shareable application URLs you can text or place on a page so a customer applies privately from home. See online credit application software. What it does not do, and we will say it before you ask: no lender portal submission, no automated decisioning, no menu selling with product rating, no eContracting.

Features and pricing change on both sides. Confirm anything decision critical with each vendor before you sign.

We would rather tell you now than have you switch and switch back. Stay with CarNow, or choose it over us, when these describe your store.

• Your website already produces substantial traffic and your problem is the conversion rate on it, not the volume reaching it.
• You want transaction style tools living inside the vehicle detail page itself, so a shopper never leaves the listing to work with numbers.
• Your manufacturer or your website provider has requirements or preferred integrations that the retailing layer has to satisfy.
• You already have lead sources you are satisfied with and a CRM your team genuinely uses.
• Your marketing spend is heavy enough that a percentage point of website conversion is worth more than an additional lead channel.

If that is you, adding our lead layer later is a separate decision, and there is no reason it has to be made this quarter.

The case for us is strongest when several of these are true at once.

• Your salespeople have downtime. No conversion tool fixes an empty pipeline, and that is the problem a lead program is actually for.
• You want leads and CRM from one vendor on one bill rather than stitching two together and owning the integration yourself.
• You want exclusive leads in a defined zone rather than shared internet leads that three stores are calling within the same minute.
• You want the acquisition side too, because you are short on used inventory and buying every unit at auction is getting expensive.
• Your website is thin or you do not really have one, and lead pages plus personal salesperson sites would cover you.
• Contract length matters to you and you want the freedom to leave if we stop earning it.
• Individual salespeople, not just the store, need to be able to run on the platform.

These are not mutually exclusive and plenty of stores would be better off with both than with either alone. The retailing layer lifts conversion on traffic you already bought. The lead layer supplies traffic that never touched your site and gives you a system to work it. Those are additive, not competing.

If you do run both, decide two things up front. First, where the customer record lives, because two systems each holding half a conversation is worse than either one holding all of it. Second, who owns the response when a website conversation and a lead submission come from the same person, because a customer contacted twice by two different reps within an hour draws exactly the wrong conclusion about your store.

If budget forces a choice, use this rule of thumb. Count how many real two way conversations your team had last week, then count how many hours they spent waiting. If the waiting number is large, buy volume first. If your people are already at capacity and losing deals late, buy conversion first.

Pilot rather than switch. Run one store, or one team inside one store, for three to four weeks while everything else stays where it is. Point a defined slice of lead flow at it and measure three things against your current setup over the same period: time to first response, number of follow up touches before the trail goes cold, and appointments set. Those three tell you more than any demo.

Month to month pricing exists precisely so this is possible on our side. A vendor that requires a multi year commitment before you can evaluate is asking you to carry a risk they will not. If the pilot goes badly you have lost a month and learned something real.

Take the same questions into both demos. What is the total monthly cost with every module I actually need, and what does it renew at? What is the contract length and the cancellation process? What can I export if I leave, in what format, and does it include conversation history? Who owns the customer data? If leads are included, are they exclusive and how is my territory drawn? What happens when a lead is bad? Our CRM migration checklist works through the switching mechanics in order, and it is written to be used with any vendor. You can also just watch ours run on the demo page.

One closing note on honesty. We cannot guarantee lead counts, close rates or sales results, and neither can anybody else, because those depend on your market, your pricing and your people. Any vendor who does guarantee them is selling something other than software.

Is LeadLocate a digital retailing platform?

Not in the full sense. It includes customer facing deal pages with electronic signature, a payment calculator, an online trade in path, live chat and secure credit applications through SecureWebX. It does not do lender submission, automated decisioning or eContracting.

Can we run CarNow and LeadLocate at the same time?

Yes. They address different halves of the funnel. If you do, decide up front where the customer record lives and who owns first response, so the same shopper is not contacted twice by two different people within an hour.

Does LeadLocate require a website to work?

No. Lead pages with per page URL settings and personal salesperson websites are included, so a store with a thin website or a solo salesperson can operate without a separate website vendor.

Are the leads exclusive?

Yes. You choose a territory around your store and leads submitted in that zone are delivered to you and not resold to other dealerships. Nothing is filtered or scored; everything submitted in the zone comes through.

Do we need a DMS integration or an inventory feed?

Neither is required, which is why brokers and individual salespeople can run on the platform. If you do have an inventory feed, Inventory Link can ingest it and advertise your actual vehicles.

How do we compare pricing fairly?

Ask both vendors for the total monthly cost with every module you would actually turn on, plus the renewal price and the contract term. Our figures are public: CRM Only from $199 and lead programs from $799, month to month.

We will map a territory around your store, show the CRM working real lead flow, and give you a straight number. Month to month, so staying is your decision every month.