Dealer.com Alternative for Car Dealerships

Before you shop replacements, work out whether your problem is the website or everything that happens after a shopper fills out the form.

Searches for a Dealer.com alternative come from two very different frustrations, and mixing them up leads to buying the wrong thing.

The first is genuinely about the website. Page speed, how inventory search behaves on a phone, how much control you have over the design, what changes cost and how long they take, what the managed advertising is producing, and how the whole package is priced. If that is your complaint, you are shopping for a website platform, and you should compare website platforms. Your franchise site stays with its provider, and LeadLocate works right beside it on every lead.

The second is about what happens after the form is submitted. Leads land in a CRM that nobody works properly, texting happens on personal phones so nothing is logged, follow up stops on day three, and nobody can say which advertising produced which sale. That is a follow up problem that lives downstream of the website. Changing website vendors will not fix it, and a fair number of stores discover that after spending six months and real money on a redesign.

Pin down which one you have before you sit through a single demo. The test is simple: look at your form submissions per month against your appointments set from those forms. If the first number is fine and the second is not, your website is doing its job and the problem is downstream.

Dealer.com is part of Cox Automotive and is one of the established franchise website platforms in the market. Its reputation is built on the full package: dealer websites with inventory merchandising, digital advertising, and managed services delivered by an agency team, with manufacturer program participation on the franchise side.

That last part matters more than dealers outside franchise stores realize. Manufacturers run certified website programs, sometimes with co-op money attached and sometimes with requirements about what your site must do and how it must present. A vendor inside those programs handles compliance work you would otherwise own. If your store is a franchise point where OEM program participation affects your money, keep that site in its program and run LeadLocate beside it.

Product packaging, pricing and program participation change over time. Confirm current pricing and terms with each vendor directly before you rely on any comparison page. If you want the shorter head to head format, Dealer.com vs LeadLocate covers the same ground more briefly.

Leave your number and a lead specialist calls you back to answer your questions about pricing, coverage, and setup. Mon - Sat, 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM Pacific.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.

Here is exactly how LeadLocate fits beside your other vendors, all in one place.

Your franchise dealer website stays with its provider, and LeadLocate connects to it on request. Any site your manufacturer program requires stays with the provider your program names, and LeadLocate connects to it the same way. Managed digital advertising is included with every plan through the webXintel Ads Network, built and run by our team from the selections you make in Leads Manager, and your full site with its search result pages, vehicle detail pages, incentive feeds and manufacturer program compliance stays with its provider, connected on request. Keep your website platform vendor for that job, and manufacturer website programs explains what those programs typically involve so you can shop them properly.

On the web side, LeadLocate gives you conversion tools built for campaigns. Lead pages, which is a landing page builder with per page URL settings, so a campaign can have a purpose built page rather than dumping traffic on a homepage. Personal salesperson websites, so an individual can have their own site pulling from the store's inventory. A free live chat widget you can put on the site you already have, whoever built it. And customer facing deal pages, where a shopper sees their own worked numbers on a link with e-signature rather than a photograph of a worksheet.

Inventory Link handles the inventory side: it ingests your live feed and advertises your actual vehicles, and it can serve per salesperson inventory sites from a template with a public inventory API for other consumers. We advertise your real inventory, straight from your live feed. And because a feed is optional, brokers and solo salespeople run on the platform just as easily as a full lot.

We are a lead generation platform with a full CRM built around it, sold month to month.

The lead side delivers exclusive local leads inside a territory you choose, in two families. Inbound buyer leads from in market shoppers, and opt in seller leads from local owners who filled out a vehicle offer request and asked to be contacted about selling their car. Leads are a mix of VIN specific and open shoppers depending on how they arrived. Each lead is prescreened at capture. Every submitted lead in your zone comes to you exclusively rather than being resold to three stores, and every lead is backed by a post delivery replacement review, so a bad lead costs you nothing.

The CRM side is where the day runs: lead inbox with distribution rules, 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 composer and a real inbox, bulk email, automations and follow up processes, drip campaigns, appointments and reminders, and three layers of reporting. There is an email validator and a phone validator built in, which most dealers do not expect a CRM to have and which quietly protect every campaign you send.

Desking is included: loan and lease, a fifty state tax matrix, semimonthly payment frequency, trade credit caps and three lease tax methods, with the same engine driving what the customer sees on their own deal page. Detail is on the desking tool page.

Features, packaging and pricing change on both sides. Confirm anything that will drive your decision with each vendor directly before you sign.

Keep your website platform doing its job and add LeadLocate behind it when any of these describe your store. That way every dollar goes to the right category.

• You are a franchise point and manufacturer website program participation affects your co-op money or your compliance standing.
• Your primary complaint is about the website itself: speed, inventory search, design control, or how the pages convert.
• You like the managed advertising tied to your site, and you want exclusive local leads from the webXintel Ads Network added on top.
• You need a full site with search result pages, vehicle detail pages, incentive feeds and manufacturer content maintained for you.
• You want your website vendor to keep the site while LeadLocate runs everything downstream of the form.

If you are shopping website platforms seriously, the website provider alternatives page compares that category properly, and the website migration checklist covers the redirect and content work that sinks most site changes.

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

• Your form submissions are fine and your appointments are not, which means the loss is happening after the website did its job.
• You want leads and CRM from one vendor on one bill instead of stitching several together.
• You want exclusive local leads in a defined territory rather than shared leads three stores are calling at once.
• Your team communicates with customers on personal cell phones, so your reporting is fiction and your opt out records exist nowhere.
• You want campaign landing pages you can spin up yourself instead of filing a ticket with a website vendor and waiting.
• You want month to month terms, with LeadLocate earning your business every single month.
• You are independent, or a used car operation, or a solo salesperson, and franchise website program depth is surface area you pay for and never use.

For a lot of franchise dealers, this is not an either or decision. Keep the website platform, because the OEM program and the site itself are worth what they cost, and change the layer behind it.

That arrangement works cleanly. Your existing site keeps its forms and its inventory pages. Those forms post into the CRM instead of wherever they go now. The live chat widget can sit on the site you already have rather than replacing anything. Campaign traffic goes to lead pages you build in minutes when the website vendor's queue is three weeks long. And every text, call and email happens in one place with a record attached.

The piece stores usually gain from this is attribution. When the conversation lives in one system, you can finally connect a source to an appointment to a delivery instead of guessing. Our page on website lead attribution covers how to set that up without a data project.

Plan the website side on purpose too: your site stays with the provider that owns it, and LeadLocate connects to it on request, so nothing falls between vendors in week two.

Take these into every demo, ours included. The answers separate vendors faster than a feature grid does.

What is the total monthly cost with every module I actually need, and what happens at renewal? What is the contract length and what does cancelling involve? If this is a website, who owns the domain, the content and the URL structure, and what happens to my search rankings if I leave? Exactly what can I export, in what format, and does it include communication history? How fast does a page change get made, and what does it cost? If leads are included, are they exclusive to my store, and how is my territory drawn? What happens when a lead is bad?

Write down the answers and get the ones that matter in writing. Vendors comfortable being pinned down tend to be the ones still worth having in year three. If you want ours answered live, start with the demo or contact us directly. Pricing is on the pricing page, month to month, with no long term contract and every conversation on the record from day one.

Is LeadLocate a replacement for Dealer.com?

It replaces everything behind the website. Your franchise site stays with the provider your manufacturer program names, and LeadLocate builds the lead pages, campaign sites and salesperson sites around it, connected on request. We take over the lead generation, CRM, communication and desking layer behind the site, which many stores find is where the actual loss is.

Can we keep our Dealer.com website and use LeadLocate behind it?

Yes, and for franchise stores that is usually the sensible arrangement. Your site keeps its forms and inventory pages, the forms post into the CRM, and the live chat widget can sit on the site you already have.

Do you build dealer websites at all?

We build lead pages, which is a landing page builder for campaigns, and personal salesperson websites that pull from your inventory. That sits beside your full franchise dealer website rather than replacing it.

Do you advertise our inventory?

Yes. Inventory Link ingests your live feed and advertises your actual vehicles, with a public inventory API and per salesperson inventory sites. A feed is optional: the platform runs without one and puts it to work when you have one.

How do we tell whether our problem is the website or the follow up?

Compare form submissions per month against appointments set from those forms. Healthy submissions with weak appointments means the website is working and the loss is downstream, which a new site will not fix.

Are your leads exclusive?

Yes. You pick a territory around your store and leads in that zone come to you rather than being resold to other dealerships. Every lead in your zone is delivered to you and only you, prescreened at capture, and backed by a replacement review, so a bad lead costs you nothing.

Keep your website. We will show you what happens to a lead after the form, from routing through follow up to a worked deal page. Month to month, no long term contract. Call 844-376-2274.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.