Sundial is a DealerRefresh sponsor. This review introduces the product from the platform documentation its team shared with us and from its founder's post in the forum. Sundial is new to the community, so this isn't a summary of member experience yet. We'll expand it as members weigh in.
The founder will be a familiar name to some longtime members. Andrew Smith spent twelve years as CTO of The Higher Gear Group, later OneCommand and then Affinitiv, so this is not his first dealership software platform. His forum post, "There is no AI silver bullet — and that's fine", is the best summary of how the product thinks: AI is a dial you turn up as you trust it, not a switch that replaces the BDC.
Sundial does not ask you to replace your CRM. It's built to run alongside one, but today that means HubSpot, and the documentation lists other CRMs as coming next. For most franchise stores running VinSolutions, eLead, DealerSocket or a DMS-tied CRM, the integration question matters most (see below). Multi-rooftop groups get a parent account over the stores, with pooled seats and branding and phone numbers set per store.
Book a demo →
Overview
Sundial is a contact-center and revenue-operations platform for dealerships: the phone system, the texting, the AI agents and the follow-up queue in one place. Most stores run those as four or five separate tools. The phones come from one vendor, texting from another, the chat widget from a third, and the BDC keeps the follow-up list in the CRM. Sundial's pitch is that all of it should live in one system, with AI working the same queue as your people.The founder will be a familiar name to some longtime members. Andrew Smith spent twelve years as CTO of The Higher Gear Group, later OneCommand and then Affinitiv, so this is not his first dealership software platform. His forum post, "There is no AI silver bullet — and that's fine", is the best summary of how the product thinks: AI is a dial you turn up as you trust it, not a switch that replaces the BDC.
What it does
- Phones. A browser softphone, inbound queues (round robin, ring-all, longest idle), an IVR builder, call recording and transcription. Reps can also call from their own cell phone and show the store's caller ID. A caller who waits past the hold limit goes to overflow (voicemail, an AI agent or another number) instead of holding until they hang up.
- AI voice and chat agents. Inbound and outbound voice agents plus website and WhatsApp chat. They use the newer full-duplex voice models, so a caller can interrupt the agent the way they would a person. Each agent has a set list of what it collects and what it's allowed to do. An agent can be told to take a full intake and promise a callback without ever offering to book.
- One inbox. Calls, voicemails, SMS, WhatsApp, email and web chat show up as conversations in one team inbox, with claim, assign and snooze.
- Speed-to-lead. Leads come in by API or ADF email, get routed (including round-robin to whoever has waited longest), and are timed against a response target. Late leads alert the owner and then escalate. Leads it can't read are kept and listed for retry instead of being dropped.
- Coaching and insight. Live call coaching, transcripts and summaries, scoring against the store's own scorecard, and a weekly digest of what customers are asking about across every channel.
- Battlecards. The store's own talk tracks show up on the rep's screen during a live call. When a customer brings up a competing store, says "Carvana offered me more for my trade," or pushes back on the payment, AI matches what the caller means and pops up the right card in the rep's window: what's true, why it matters to the customer, and what to say next.
- Deal desk. A live payment grid with no "save and calculate" step. Front and back gross are visible only to F&I and management, and a plain view hides cost when the tablet gets turned toward the customer.
- Attribution. Tracked links and call-tracking numbers credit sold deals to the campaign that earned them, and holdout groups measure whether a campaign actually changed outcomes. Won deals can be sent back to Meta and Google Ads so their bidding optimizes for sales instead of form fills.
- Compliance. Compliance controls are built in, not bolted on: DNC lists, opt-out and STOP handling, per-purpose consent records with an audit trail, configurable TCPA calling hours, and a self-serve A2P 10DLC registration wizard. Most controls are set by the store owner, and explicit opt-outs (STOP, unsubscribe) are always honored on automated sends.
Where it fits
The clearest fit is a store or group with a BDC that's drowning in phones: missed after-hours calls, voicemails nobody returns, and leads that sit for an hour. The "dial" approach is a sensible way in. Start with an AI line that only takes messages after hours, check what's waiting each morning, and widen what it's allowed to do as the team trusts it.Sundial does not ask you to replace your CRM. It's built to run alongside one, but today that means HubSpot, and the documentation lists other CRMs as coming next. For most franchise stores running VinSolutions, eLead, DealerSocket or a DMS-tied CRM, the integration question matters most (see below). Multi-rooftop groups get a parent account over the stores, with pooled seats and branding and phone numbers set per store.
Honest questions to ask on a demo
- Your CRM, specifically. Run-alongside is HubSpot today. Ask exactly what syncs with your CRM and DMS right now: contacts, activity, appointments, deals. Ask what happens when the two systems disagree.
- Breadth vs. depth. The platform is organized into six areas, each with real depth: phones and contact center, AI agents and coaching, inbox and lead follow-up, campaigns and attribution, deals and revenue operations, and compliance and multi-rooftop administration. Ask which parts dealers use in production today and which are newest. Then decide whether you're buying the phone/BDC layer, the whole stack, or something in between.
- The AI line on your calls. Ask to hear real recordings of the voice agent with service and sales callers, including the handoff to a person. Ask what it is explicitly not allowed to say or promise.
- Service scheduling. Ask which scheduler it books into for your DMS, or whether it takes the intake and hands off to a person.
- Pricing and seats. Sundial publishes its pricing at sundial.click/pricing: a free single-user tier, then $19, $79 and $199 per seat per month, with custom Enterprise pricing for groups. Usage allowances are shared across the store. Extra minutes, texts, emails and AI credits come in prepaid top-up packs that are used after the monthly allowance, last 90 days, and are never billed after the fact. Ask which tier your BDC actually needs and how much usage a store your size burns in a month.
Bottom line
Sundial is an ambitious platform from a founder who has built dealership software before, and it's honest about AI in a way a lot of this category isn't. The "turn the dial up as you trust it" approach is the right one. The phones, inbox and speed-to-lead core is what most stores will feel first. What it doesn't have yet is a track record here, and its CRM integration is HubSpot-first today. Treat this as an introduction. Take the demo, push on how it fits your CRM, and come back and tell the community how it went.Book a demo →
