For dealers
Digital retail platforms for dealerships
A lead generator is not a transaction tool. Most of this category calculates a payment, captures a pre-approval or generates a lead, and then stops at the handoff to a person. The deal still finishes in the store.
Ekho carries it the rest of the way, on your own brand, your own rooftops and your own inventory. Everything after the buyer says yes.
Where the tools you already run stop short
These are different categories of software, and a dealership commonly runs several at once. Conflating them is how a stack ends up with no one owning the finish.
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A lender aggregator is not a checkout
Route One is a lender aggregator and an e-contracting and deal-submission backbone, and it does that job well. It is not a buyer-facing checkout, and where a dealership site shows a buyer-facing widget under that name, the widget is a front-of-funnel payment estimate rather than a transaction. Ekho runs alongside it rather than replacing it, submitting credit applications and pulling offers through it into your own lender waterfall.
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A payment estimate is not a purchase
AutoFi calculates a payment or captures a pre-approval, then hands the buyer to a salesperson. Dealers who have run it report two failure modes: not enough top-of-funnel education to drive buyers into the tool in the first place, and no way to finish the deal once they are in it.
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A lender is not a platform
Upstart is a financing source, and often the credit application already sitting on a dealership website. Naming it as digital retail confuses a lender with the system that has to carry the deal past the approval.
What a transaction platform has to finish
- Financing
- Pre-qualification standardized across the storefront, the checkout and the chat widget, and it carries into checkout so the buyer is not asked twice. Each lender offer appears as its own card with a price and payment breakdown, and a conditional approval shows its terms and outstanding stipulations plainly.
- F&I
- Coverage is presented inside the checkout rather than after it, and the menu adapts to the buyer and the dealer. An account can hold several coverage providers at once, each with its own products, and the buyer still sees one menu.
- Signing
- Documents are signed online, in a set order of signature execution, and the signing links stay valid however long a signer takes.
- Titling and registration
- Title work, registration filings and DMV submissions across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, for every titled vehicle type Ekho supports, including off-road classifications and their temporary tags.
- Fulfillment
- Temporary tags ship with tracking, buyers picking up in person can choose from multiple pickup locations, and delivery runs through a partner network at rates negotiated for Ekho dealers.
- Inventory
- Two-way sync with your DMS, or an existing XML feed with no re-platforming. Units a DMS reports as available stay live, rental units are excluded, and listing price and availability stay in step with your own site.
By dealership type
The paperwork and the competitive picture both change by segment, so each has its own page.
Go deeper
How the Transaction Engine finishes a deal
The eight questions that separate real infrastructure from a checkout button
Questions dealers ask
Software that lets a buyer move through a vehicle purchase on the dealership’s own website. The category name covers two very different things: front-of-funnel tools that estimate a payment or capture a credit application and then hand the buyer to a salesperson, and transaction platforms that carry the deal through financing, F&I, signing, titling, registration and delivery. The distinction worth testing is where the software stops and your team starts.
A lead form ends with your team calling someone back. Digital retail is supposed to end with a completed purchase. In practice much of the category is a better-looking lead form, because it stops at the point where the deal has to be financed, contracted and titled. If the tool cannot finish those, it is generating leads rather than transacting.
Ekho syncs two ways with your DMS, and can alternatively ingest inventory over an existing XML feed with no re-platforming. Units your DMS reports as available stay live on the storefront, rental units are excluded from inventory and accessory totals, and listing price and availability stay in step with your own site. Dealer groups that list every rooftop on a single inventory page can sync each rooftop separately.
A group runs a parent account with a child account for each rooftop, so every store has its own inventory and routing while the group keeps one set of defaults. Conversions can be reported per rooftop into your own analytics and ad accounts, express checkout carries each dealer’s own logo, and someone working at group level can create widget links for the whole group.
It has to finish the deal, and it has to live on your site rather than behind a redirect to someone else’s. Ekho embeds buy buttons that render only on units a shopper can actually purchase online right now, presents F&I inside the flow, itemizes the fee breakdown, prices in every promotion the buyer qualifies for, and carries a pre-qualification through so nothing is asked twice. Checkout can also be started from the Ekho SDK if you would rather wire it yourself.
No. Inventory can be connected over an existing XML feed with no re-platforming, and the buy buttons and chat widget embed into the site you already run. Ekho also builds websites, but the transaction does not require one.
It handles them. Title work, registration filings and DMV submissions are processed across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, for every titled vehicle type Ekho supports, including off-road classifications and their temporary tags. There is no third-party title service to contract separately, and your title clerk supervises exceptions rather than processing every packet.