Compare Autotrader vs. Upstart Auto Retail

Vehicle Acquisition Network (VAN) is an automotive software platform built to help car dealerships acquire high-quality used vehicles directly from private sellers—without relying on auctions. As wholesale prices rise and vehicle availability tightens, VAN empowers dealers with tools to source inventory faster, more profitably, and with greater control. VAN aggregates local FSBO (for-sale-by-owner) listings, applies real-time market data to assess profitability, and automates communication with sellers at scale. Buyers can manage leads, track seller conversations, and streamline acquisition workflows through an intuitive CRM-style dashboard designed specifically for dealership teams. For dealers who don’t have dedicated acquisition staff, VAN offers a Managed Buyer program, pairing stores with expert buyers who actively source, engage, and negotiate with private sellers on their behalf—saving time and boosting acquisition volume without internal hiring. VAN is trusted by hundreds of dealerships across North America—from independent rooftops to franchise groups—looking to beat Carvana and CarMax at their own game. It's the smarter way to buy cars.

CDK provides a unified, SOC 2-compliant dealership software solutions designed to simplify dealership operations, improve profitability and create a better customer experience across every department. Instead of relying on disconnected tools for Sales, Service, Inventory and Accounting, CDK brings everything together in one place through the CDK Dealership Xperience Platform. CDK offers six connected suites inside the Dealership Xperience Platform, each one solving for a specific area of dealership operations: • Foundations Suite: Ideal for enterprise and multistore dealers, this suite delivers advanced Accounting, DMS functionality, centralized management and CDK SimplePay for smooth deal workflows. • Fundamentals Suite: Created for independent dealerships and smaller franchise operations, the Fundamentals Suite offers streamlined core tools with the same data connectivity as the Foundations Suite. • Vehicle Inventory Suite: Uses AI and real-time market insights to help dealers source, price and manage inventory more effectively and profitably. • Modern Retail Suite: Combines CRM, Digital Retailing and F&I workflows so customers can start buying online and complete the process in the dealership without rework. • Fixed Operations Suite: Supports Service and Parts departments with communication tools like video and texting, accurate estimates and to-the-penny Service pricing. • Intelligence Suite: Brings advanced analytics, forecasting and performance visibility across departments so decision-making is faster and more data-driven. Dealers choose CDK for its ability to connect once-separate systems, support day-to-day operations, and provide measurable improvements in efficiency, profitability and customer satisfaction.

Bullseye is the visionary dealer and store locator platform that wins more clients. Bullseye is more than a standard locator. It allows companies to engage customers through local content, increase lead capture and drive traffic. It also helps them build relationships with agents, dealers, and other partners. Bullseye partners love because it has SEO-friendly landing pages and automated real-time leads management. Integrate partner pages to your website easily to show their work and build trust with customers. Bullseye has 20 years of experience and includes all the features that you would expect from a modern locator. These include user-friendly search interfaces and an API, in-depth reports, 3rd-party integrations and extensive tools to manage users, categories, locations, custom data fields, and location management. It is a comprehensive solution that allows you to manage all of your location data and direct customers to dealers, agents, stores, and other locations.

Partful is a 3D Explosion Parts Catalog and Work Instructions Platform. Showcase your products and parts in stunning 3D. Let your customers and dealers instantly find the right parts and click to order in one exploded view. No more incorrect orders, only a superior customer experience. From paperback catalogues to legacy, old-fashioned and slow static systems, Partful can completely replace them and take away your daily time wasters. Our Work Instructions let you customise and provide your end users a unique training experience in stunning 3D. It allows your end users to instantly find the right instructions and steps. Say goodbye to digging through stacks of PDF manuals trying to match things up. Say hello to an immersive training experience at your fingertips.

MetaLocator makes it easy to create a store locator or product finder, dealer or partner locator, where-to-buy feature or agent, hospital or physician searcher, and much more. MetaLocator allows you to create highly configurable locator software. You can search by zip code, address, or auto-detect your location. Fully integrated mapping and automatic geolocation. Mobile-friendly with support for all languages. Analytics and business intelligence tools allow for optimization and visibility of user-paths. Our comprehensive web-based control panel allows you to manage settings, locations, data quality, analytics, and many other things. You have access to over 300 features that allow you to control your location content and search applications. Complete security for banking, medical, and secure websites. Our support, design and development teams are available to work seamlessly with you to get you up to speed or to create custom solutions. MetaLocator provides a simple 3-step set up for users: 1) Create an account 2) Upload your data 3) Install on your website Visit our website to get started!

iPaper is a premium SaaS solution that allows you to convert your printed leaflets and catalogs into fully interactive shoppable flipbooks that can be pushed across all your digital channels. You can embed and share your flipbooks across all marketing channels and your website. Our platform automatically makes sure that it looks good in any scale and on any device. iPaper’s main features are all focused on enabling you to drive traffic and increase sales. You can create a shopping basket inside your flipbook and provide a way for your visitors to buy directly from within the catalog. You can also enrich your flipbooks with images, videos, product links, forms, newstickers, pop-ups and call-to-actions to make them more engaging for visitors and guide them further along their buying journey. However, adding or editing these enrichments manually can be very time consuming. With iPaper this can be done automatically with enrichment automation. Getting started with iPaper is much more than just creating a catalog that looks good. It is built to help retailers create an automated interactive marketing channel that will drive traffic and inspire shoppers to buy.

Bidlogix provides auction software for auction houses all over the world. We offer webcast auction software and timed auction software. Our software is embedded on your website with fully customizable styling. Bidlogix, a UK-based company, began providing auction software in 2013. Our software is constantly being improved by our 2 in-house development teams. We have over 10 auctions running per day using our software. Our software can handle the largest auctions in real-time, and can be translated into multiple languages.

Smart, efficient, anonymous People Counters & Analytics to the real world. Our solution allows for easy deployment, capture, analysis, and reporting of the number people who enter a physical place. Optionally, we can also capture and report occupancy in real time. We assist Retailers, Universities, Casinos, Places of Worship, Office Buildings, and other industries in analyzing and taking action on their people traffic trends. We offer a special package for retailers to measure performance on traffic, including conversion rate and service levels. Our direct integrations make it easy to combine POS data with staff data. The Retail Equation simulator lets users run simulations to improve sales. It can also be used as a learning tool to understand how traffic, staffing, conversion rates, and quality service relate.

Jesta I.S. has been in business for over 50 years. Jesta I.S. is a global provider of enterprise software solutions to retailers, etailers, wholesalers and brand manufacturers, specializing in apparel and footwear. The Vision Suite is a cloud-based, organically engineered platform that optimizes back/front-end supply chain operations. This includes everything from trade/product/demand management to merchandising and POS. It eliminates inefficiencies caused by disjointed apps and provides real-time visibility into enterprise inventory, cross-channel orders and AI-driven CRM data. It supports multiple brands, currencies, languages, and helps businesses create seamless omnichannel shopping experiences.

Shopify is a comprehensive commerce platform designed for entrepreneurs and enterprises to launch and grow their retail businesses with ease. Users can build fully customized online stores or use pre-built themes, manage inventory, track orders, and accept payments both online and offline through Shopify POS. The platform provides powerful marketing tools like social media integrations, email marketing, and customer insights to boost sales and loyalty. Shopify also enables global selling with localized storefronts, flexible payment options, and efficient shipping solutions. Developers benefit from extensive APIs and tools to create custom apps, themes, and storefronts tailored to unique business needs. Shopify’s checkout experience converts shoppers 15% better than other platforms and supports millions of daily transactions with low latency. Regular feature updates through Shopify Editions keep merchants at the forefront of e-commerce innovation. Overall, Shopify empowers merchants to sell anywhere, anytime, with a trusted and scalable platform.