DealerOn Alternative for Car Dealerships

Before you shop replacements, be sure you are shopping the right category. Half the stores looking do not have a website problem.

DealerOn is known in the retail automotive market as a dealer website platform and digital marketing provider. Publicly, that means responsive dealership websites, inventory display and vehicle detail pages, search engine optimization, and paid search and display management, sold as a package to franchise and independent stores. They have been in the market a long time and a very large number of rooftops run on them.

That package is a real product category with real specialists in it, and it is not the category we are in. Website platforms are judged on page speed, template quality, inventory merchandising, manufacturer program compliance and how well the agency side manages a paid search budget. Those are the questions you should be asking a website vendor.

Packaging, program certifications and pricing all change over time, so confirm any current capability, contract term or fee directly with the vendor rather than trusting any comparison page, including this one.

We are not going to bury this three sections down. LeadLocate does not sell a full dealer website platform. We do not build and host your main site, we do not manage manufacturer website programs, and we are not an OEM compliant website provider. If your franchise agreement requires a certified website vendor, we cannot be that vendor and no amount of feature comparison changes it.

So if you are looking to replace a website platform with another website platform, the honest advice is that your shortlist should be other website companies. Ask them about mobile load time measured on a phone over cellular rather than showroom wifi, about who owns the site content and the URL structure if you leave, about how vehicle detail pages are built from your feed, and about what the paid search management fee is as a percentage of spend. Our website provider comparison is written for exactly that shopping trip and does not pretend we belong on the list.

What we would ask you to do before signing anywhere is check whether the problem you are solving is actually the website. In our experience, it often is not.

The reasons dealers start searching for a website vendor replacement fall into a few groups, and only some of them are solved by changing sites.

Not enough leads. The most common trigger, and the most commonly misdiagnosed. Before you rebuild, look at whether your traffic is flat or whether your conversion is. A site getting the same visitors and producing fewer names has a conversion problem. A site producing the same conversion rate on falling traffic has a marketing problem. Those need different vendors.

Cost and bundling. Site, hosting, SEO and paid search sold as one bill, with the management fee hard to separate from the media spend. Reasonable thing to shop.

Attribution you do not believe. Reports crediting the same sale to three channels. Also reasonable, and usually not fixed by a new site either.

The leads arrive and then nothing happens. This is the one worth being honest about. A site can send you a form fill at 9pm Saturday and it is worth nothing if the first human contact comes Monday at 10am. Changing website vendors does not fix that, and it is where a very large share of dealership marketing money quietly dies. What to expect from car sales leads covers how those shoppers actually behave.

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

The lead side delivers exclusive local leads. You map a territory around your store and leads inside that zone are delivered to you and are not resold to three other dealerships. There are 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. Nothing is filtered or scored. We ask pre-screening questions at capture and deliver every submitted lead in your zone, exclusively, and lead problems are handled by post delivery replacement review rather than by a quality claim made up front.

The CRM side is where the traffic actually gets converted: lead distribution with rules, SMS and MMS, RCS with SMS fallback, a VoIP softphone with click to call, call recording with transcription, voicemail drop, a real email inbox and composer, bulk email, automations and follow up processes, drip campaigns, appointments and reminders, desking covering loan and lease with a fifty state tax matrix, and three layers of reporting.

There is also a conversion layer that overlaps a website vendor's territory without replacing the site: lead pages, which is a landing page builder with per page URL settings, personal salesperson websites, a free live chat widget you can drop onto the site you already have, and customer facing deal pages with e-signature. Plus tools most dealers do not expect from a CRM, like an email validator and a phone validator.

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

We would rather tell you this now than have you buy the wrong thing from us.

• Your manufacturer requires a certified website provider and program compliance affects your money.
• Your site itself is the weak link: slow on a phone, badly merchandised vehicle detail pages, a search that returns nothing for reasonable queries.
• You want website, hosting, SEO and paid search managed by one accountable vendor rather than assembled from parts.
• You need an agency relationship with people who will manage a media budget and defend the reporting.
• You have no interest in owning the technical side and want a platform decision you can stop thinking about.

None of that is our product, and it is a legitimate way to buy.

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

• Your site is fine and your problem is what happens after a form is submitted. Response time, follow up depth and appointment setting are the leaks.
• You want a vendor to supply exclusive local leads rather than shared internet leads that three stores are calling simultaneously.
• You are buying leads from one company and a CRM from another and want them on one bill and one record.
• You want the acquisition side as well as the buyer side, meaning opt in seller leads from local owners who asked to be contacted.
• You want campaign specific landing pages you can build yourself without filing a ticket with a website vendor.
• Contract length matters to you and you want the freedom to leave monthly.
• You do not have, or do not want to depend on, a dealer management system integration or an inventory feed. Neither is required to operate.

For most stores this is not a replacement decision at all, and framing it as one wastes money.

Keep your website vendor doing what they are good at: the site, the merchandising, the organic footprint and the paid media. Put the conversion and follow up layer behind it. The site's job ends the moment a shopper becomes a name and a number, and everything after that is CRM work.

In practice that looks like this. Website forms and chat post into the CRM where distribution rules assign them by source and hour, with escalation if nobody touches the lead. Campaign traffic lands on lead pages built for one offer rather than on a general inventory page. The free live chat widget can sit on the site you already have. Attribution ties a sale back to a source rather than to the last person who touched the record, which usually settles the argument about which channel deserves next quarter's budget. Website lead attribution covers that measurement in detail.

Run that way, the website vendor conversation stops being about lead volume and becomes about traffic and site quality, which is a much fairer conversation for everyone.

Take these into every one of these meetings. The answers separate vendors faster than a feature list does.

What is the total monthly cost with everything I actually need switched on, and what does it do at renewal? What is the contract length and the notice period to cancel? If this is a website, who owns the content, the URL structure and the domain, and what happens to them if I leave? If it is media management, what is the fee as a percentage of spend and is it disclosed separately on the invoice? What exactly can I export, in what format, and does communication history come with it? If leads are included, are they exclusive to my store and how is my territory defined? What happens when a lead is bad?

Write the answers down. Vendors who are comfortable being pinned down in writing tend to be the ones still worth having in year three. Ours are published rather than quoted: pricing lists all six plans, the recorded demo shows the product without a sales call, and you can contact us if you would rather just ask whether we fit. We cannot guarantee lead counts, close rates or sales results, and neither can anybody else in this market.

Can LeadLocate replace our dealership website?

No. We do not build or host full dealer websites and we are not an OEM compliant website provider. We build the conversion layer around a site you already have: lead pages, a live chat widget, salesperson sites and customer facing deal pages.

Then why compare the two at all?

Because the reason most stores go looking for a new website vendor is lead volume, and lead volume is often a conversion and follow up problem rather than a site problem. It is worth ruling that out before you pay for a rebuild.

Can we run both companies at once?

Yes, and that is the usual outcome. The website vendor handles the site, traffic and merchandising. Forms and chat post into the CRM, where routing rules, automated follow up and reporting take over.

Do your leads come from our website?

No. They are exclusive local leads generated in a territory you define, delivered only to you. They are a mix of VIN specific shoppers and open shoppers, nothing is filtered or scored, and lead problems are handled by post delivery replacement review.

Do we need an inventory feed or a dealer management system connection?

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

How is DealerOn priced compared to LeadLocate?

We will not quote another company's pricing, and you should be skeptical of any comparison page that does. Ours is published: CRM Only from $199 a month, plans with exclusive local leads from $799, month to month. Verify theirs with the vendor.

We will look at your current lead flow and tell you honestly which one it is, even when the answer means keeping the vendor you have.