I have not been a big CoBalt fan, and they still have a very long way to go before turning me into a fan....BUT....I am forced to use them by MINI, Hyundai, and VW. Even though they still have some of the most antiquated technology on the planet, their people have been very helpful.
Good people still don't overcome a bad product. CoBalt's system still does not fully account for SEO. It's inventory searches are the most difficult of almost all the website providers' solutions, and the site manager piece just isn't intuitive. Dealers who have not seen anything but the CoBalt system, take 30 minutes for a demo of another website platform and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Maybe it is because I'm on OEM-level-bottom-of-the-line CoBalt platforms, but reporting is in a total different area and you have to login way too much to get to too many important things. I have also never been able to get reporting to load for my MINI site. Not that I really care because I trust more in Google Analytics and will soon be able to place Dealer.com analytics code in there too.
This whole thing brings me to another topic that EVERYONE SHOULD THINK ABOUT:
If you have 4 Volkswagen dealerships in the same market all using the same tools then you have a DECREASE in sales, service, and local retail parts sales. Competition and Capitalism cannot flourish when everyone is constrained to the same level. Manufacturers are so caught-up in online image that they forgot what we're all here to do: make money. They force us to use the same website hosting platform in order to maintain the same look/feel and specials updating. Then they choose platforms in a political manner instead of a business manner (someone explain how an OEM would pick CoBalt over some of the other players who kill CoBalt in conversion) - I can't believe that the deal with CoBalt can't be matched by some of these other companies.
If I'm VW, who is trying to be a player on par with Toyota, and need to compete against Ford, Toyota, Honda, etc, and limit my dealers' ability to play a competitive game, then VW cannot get past these other manufacturers. They have to build a better car, create a better ad campaign, and do everything at the OEM level. If they simply allowed dealers more choices in who they could use as a website host, they will allow their dealers to compete more and that will ultimately help VW pick up more market share.