Podium does not publish a dealership price. Its general rate card shows Core at $399 a month and Pro at $599, but the AI a dealer actually buys Podium for, Jerry booking test drives and service appointments, sits either on the custom-priced Signature plan or in an AI Employee add-on with no published price. Podium's old dealer pricing page, podium.com/pricing/auto, now returns a 404. So the honest answer for one rooftop is a published floor of roughly $729 a month and $9,248 in year one on Pro with a five-seat phone team, before any AI add-on or usage overage.
Every figure below was read from podium.com/pricing and automotive.podium.com in a full browser on 18 September 2026, in US dollars. Anything a third party claims that Podium does not print is flagged as such.
How much does Podium cost for a car dealership?
There is no dealer rate card, so you have to build the number from the general one. Podium prints three plans: Core at $399 a month, Pro at $599 a month, and Signature at custom pricing. Every card carries a Talk to Sales button, and there is no checkout. The page footnotes that pricing may vary by industry, partnerships, integrations, volume and carrier fees, which in practice means your dealer quote will not match the card.
On top of the plan, Podium publishes a fee schedule that most dealers will trigger in full. Each US location pays a $5 monthly 10DLC fee for business texting. Core includes 5 phone numbers and Pro includes 15, with every extra number at $5 a month, which matters when you run separate numbers for sales, service and parts or for tracking ad sources. Podium Phones seats cost $30 per user per month for one to four users and $25 from the fifth, and there is a $500 network optimization fee per location.
We cover every line in detail on our Podium pricing breakdown. For a dealership, three of those lines do most of the damage, and they all scale with rooftops.
Where is Podium's dealer pricing page?
Podium used to run a dedicated auto page at podium.com/pricing/auto. On 18 September 2026 it returned Podium's own 404 page, even though a search for Podium pricing for car dealers still lists it as the first result. The general pricing flow now starts at podium.com/getpricing, which asks you to choose your industry before routing you to sales. Auto Dealerships is one of the options, next to Aesthetics, Home Services and Retail.
That tells you how Podium sells into automotive: by conversation, not by published rate. It is a normal enterprise sales motion. It also means that any specific dealer figure you read online, whether it is a four-user limit, a Signature price of several thousand dollars a month, or an AI Employee add-on at about $99, did not come from Podium's pricing page. We looked for each of them and could not find any of them there.
How much does Podium AI cost for car dealers?
Podium publishes no price for its AI Employee. The pricing page says you can add AI Employee to any plan and sends you to a demo. Some AI is bundled by tier: AI review responses and AI suggested replies on every plan, the AI Concierge and AI call summaries on Pro, and the AI Scheduler, AI Salesperson and AI Marketer on Signature only.
That last detail is the important one for a dealer. Podium's automotive site describes Jerry as the agent that books test drives, schedules service appointments, follows up on multi-point inspection recommendations from your DMS data, and hands hot leads to the sales floor. Scheduling and selling are exactly the Signature-only capabilities on the general grid. So the version of Podium most dealers are shown in the demo is, on the published rate card, either the plan without a price or the add-on without a price.
What usage limits does Podium put on its AI?
This is the part of the bill you cannot calculate in advance. Podium's pricing FAQ lists Scope of Use limits: AI Messaging includes 1,500 segments a month, Voice AI includes 300 minutes a month, Phones include 1,000 minutes per user a month, and Automations include 4,000 segments per location a month. Overage on each is billed at Podium's then-current rates, and none of those rates is published.
| Podium allowance | Included per month | What it covers at a dealer, on stated assumptions |
|---|---|---|
| AI Messaging | 1,500 segments | About 300 lead conversations at 5 AI-sent segments each, or 150 at 10 segments |
| Voice AI | 300 minutes | 100 AI-answered calls at 3 minutes each, a little over 3 a day |
| Phones | 1,000 minutes per user | About 45 minutes of talk time per user per working day across 22 days |
| Automations | 4,000 segments per location | Review requests, service reminders and follow-ups combined |
| Bulk messages | 250 credits on Core, 500 on Pro | Credits expire at month end. At the limit, bulk sends stop until next month |
A text segment holds up to 160 standard characters, or 153 when a message runs across several segments, so a friendly two-paragraph reply with a trade-in question can be two or three segments on its own. Run the numbers against your own internet lead count and inbound call volume, not against a demo. A store with an active service drive can pass 300 voice minutes well before the middle of the month.
What does Podium cost for one rooftop, fully loaded?
Here are two published floors, using only numbers Podium prints. Neither includes the AI Employee add-on or any overage, because Podium does not price either.
| Line | Core, 3 phone users | Pro, 5 phone users |
|---|---|---|
| Plan | $399 | $599 |
| Podium Phones seats | $90 (3 x $30) | $125 (5 x $25) |
| 10DLC fee | $5 | $5 |
| High-volume messaging | not included, $15 if needed | included |
| Monthly total | $494 | $729 |
| Network optimization fee | $500 per location | $500 per location |
| Year one | $6,428 | $9,248 |
For a dealer group, multiply the per-location lines. Four rooftops pay $2,000 in network optimization fees and $20 a month in 10DLC before a single seat or plan is counted, and the Automations allowance is counted per location too. Podium does not say on the page whether the plan price itself is per rooftop, so ask for a quote that shows each line per location in writing.
Is Podium worth it for a car dealership?
It can be, if you use the suite. Podium bundles Google and Facebook review management, text to pay, a VoIP phone system, lead consolidation from third-party sites and more than 200 integrations, and its automotive site says Jerry responds in 36 seconds on average with inventory context. A dealer that wants reviews, payments, phones and AI lead handling from one vendor with a dedicated success manager is buying something a single-purpose tool will not replace.
It is harder to justify if the problem you are solving is narrower. If what is actually costing you deals is slow replies to internet leads, Facebook Marketplace and Instagram messages sitting unanswered overnight, and nobody following up on the Saturday shopper until Monday, then you are paying for a suite to use one part of it. And that part is the capped, unpriced one. Worth remembering too: the public lesson in this category is the December 2023 case where a shopper talked a California Chevrolet dealer's website chatbot into agreeing to a Tahoe for $1. Whatever you buy, check that pricing and deal terms are fenced off from the AI.
What are the alternatives to Podium for car dealers?
They split by the job. Automotive-native vendors such as Matador and Numa go deeper into the dealership stack: two-way sync with CRMs like VinSolutions and DMS platforms like CDK and Reynolds, and voice-first handling of the service drive. Neither publishes a price. If DMS write-back or outbound calling is a hard requirement, start there. Our dealership chatbot pricing comparison lays out what each automotive vendor does and does not publish.
MessageAgent is the narrower, published-price option. It answers, qualifies and books across SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, web chat and email from one inbox with one AI, and it costs a flat $79, $199 or $499 a month, with 1,000, 5,000 or 20,000 AI conversations included and carrier fees passed through at cost. We are straightforward about the limits: we do not place phone calls, we do not integrate with a DMS, and we do not write deals back to CDK or Reynolds. If phone coverage is the gap, pair it with an AI receptionist that answers every call and books into the same calendar. For the full dealer workflow, see our car dealership AI agent and the car dealership use case. If you are weighing software against more staff, our AI BDC vs outsourced BDC comparison runs that math.
What should a dealer ask Podium before signing?
Five questions, none of which the pricing page answers. First, the monthly price of AI Employee for your rooftop, and whether test drive and service booking require Signature. Second, the overage rate per AI Messaging segment and per Voice AI minute above 1,500 and 300. Third, whether the plan price is per rooftop or per group. Fourth, whether the $500 network optimization fee is one-time and whether it applies if you skip Podium Phones. Fifth, the contract term, the notice window and the renewal increase.
Get those five answers in writing and you can compare Podium against any alternative on a like-for-like annual number. Without them, the only figure you can be sure of is the floor. If you would rather start from a price you can read today, see MessageAgent's plans and put the AI on your inbound leads this week.
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