We rank vendors based on rigorous testing and research, but also take into account your feedback and our commercial agreements with providers. This page contains affiliate links. Advertising Disclosure
Selling cars requires skill, but attracting buyers to your lot often begins online. Whether you’re a small local dealership or a growing used car business, your website needs to look professional, clearly showcase your inventory, and make it easy for visitors to get in touch or schedule a test drive.
That sounds simple, but not every website builder makes it easy. Some lack good gallery layouts, others hide key marketing features behind expensive plans, and a few simply don’t provide enough control over your design. Finding a builder that strikes a balance between usability, features, and customization can prove challenging.
To help you make the right decision, I tested the top website builders to identify those that truly deliver for car dealerships. During my tests, Wix stood out for all the right reasons. It offers dealership-ready templates, robust photo and video galleries, and built-in tools to help you attract and convert buyers. It’s flexible enough for any dealership size and intuitive enough to launch a polished site in a single afternoon.
Try Wix for free, or keep reading to explore more builders that could be a better match for your dealership’s goals.
What We Look For in the Best Website Builders for Car Dealerships
The best builders make it quick and easy to create a site that’s both visually appealing and simple for potential customers to navigate. It should also provide tools to help with marketing, branding, and visibility. I focused on these features:
Ease of Use. Running a business is hard; designing your website shouldn’t be. These builders offer user-friendly editors that make it easy to create an attractive, well-functioning website.
Mobile-responsive design. Most customers browse dealership websites on their phones. I selected builders with templates that adapt to any screen size for a smooth browsing experience.
SEO features: Creating a great car dealership website doesn’t mean much without an SEO strategy to help potential clients find you online. The website builders on this list either have integrated SEO tools or powerful apps and integrations that you can add on.
A variety of gallery layouts: Your clients want to see what cars you have on offer before heading to the lot. The website builders on this list have plenty of options for displaying photos and videos of the cars you’re selling.
Marketing and promotional tools: Get the word out about new arrivals and sales with integrated marketing tools. These builders have tools for creating email campaigns and reaching buyers on social media.
Wix offers full-featured templates built specifically for car dealerships
Wix is my top pick as it comes with everything you need to create a car dealership site that draws visitors in. You can browse a selection of Wix templates for car dealerships with varied designs and layouts. Most come with the essential features you’ll need already built in, such as lead capture forms, customizable galleries, and appointment scheduling tools for test drives.
If you can’t decide which template to begin with, Wix’s AI Website Builder can create a customized design for your car dealership site. Simply answer a few questions about your business’s needs, and it will recommend a design tailored to your requirements. From there, all you have to do is upload your content and make any minor changes you want.
Wix SEO Setup Checklist: Get a personalized SEO plan that helps potential customers find you online. All you have to do is go through your customized checklist to see whether your site’s optimized for search engines. You can also pick and analyze keywords, index your site on Google, and track your progress.
VIN Decoder integration. Automatically pull vehicle details using Vicario VIN Decoder via Zapier, ensuring accurate and up-to-date listings on your site.
Wix App Market: Wix offers plenty of marketing tools in its App Market. You can add Google AdSense to create ads online, Wix Bookings to allow clients to reserve a time slot to come test drive a car, and Wix Chat to communicate with visitors on your site.
Business management solutions. Ascend is a suite of helpful business tools that includes a CRM, email marketing, an invoice generator, and video maker. Tools let you automate tasks like welcome emails, thank you emails, and targeted offers, all of which can help you grow your business.
Squarespace business templates boast striking, fully responsive designs
Squarespace offers visually appealing templates and customizable gallery designs, making it ideal for showcasing your vehicles. There aren’t any templates specifically designed for the automotive industry, but Squarespace’s advanced Blueprint AI can generate one for you. Alternatively, you can easily customize any one of Squarespace’s 180+ designs to your liking.
Besides Squarespace’s fantastic options for displaying images and striking website designs, it also offers one of the most comprehensive and easy-to-use marketing suites out there. Squarespace offers special features for appointment booking, invoicing, and creating attractive and unique email marketing campaigns.
Squarespace is as much about substance as it is about style. Business and e-commerce toolsgive you everything you need to run your dealership, from inventory management to payment solutions and automatic tax collection. On a final note, before publishing your site, you’ll want to go through the SEO checklist to ensure it’s optimized for search engines.
Image galleries: Squarespace gives you two ways to display your car images: in Gallery Sections or Gallery Blocks. You can add a Gallery Section to an existing page (like your homepage) or create an entire page dedicated to photos of your cars. When you add a Gallery Block, you can share images or videos, but only on certain pages, like product detail pages.
Scheduling. When you add Squarespace Scheduling, your clients can check availability and book appointments for test drives online, leaving you free to focus on your business. You can sync appointments to your Google, iCloud, or Office 365 calendar.
Integrated email marketing: You can add a simple form to your site so visitors can sign up to your mailing list. Squarespace offers a variety of mobile-responsive email templates you can use to create a newsletter or promotional campaign. You’ll even get analytics to see how your campaign is performing.
Map Block: You can easily embed a map on your website using a Map Block. Select a pinned location in Google Maps and have it displayed on your site so that visitors can easily locate your dealership when they’re ready to pay you a visit.
Use Hostinger’s AI tools to tweak any of its templates to your liking
Hostinger Website Builder simplifies the process of creating a car dealership website with its advanced AI tools. If you’re not tech-savvy, Hostinger’s AI Writer, AI Image Generator, and AI SEO Assistant can help you design a professional site in minutes. These tools are particularly useful for generating content and optimizing pages for search engines.
Hostinger’s affordable plans make it a great choice for small to mid-sized dealerships. The entry-level plan costs just $2.99/month and includes 150 templates, 25 GB storage, unlimited bandwidth, marketing integrations, and an AI builder that can create an entire car dealership website for you. However, if you want access to all of Hostinger’s AI tools, you’ll need to upgrade to the Business plan, which starts at $3.99/month.
While Hostinger’s AI tools are powerful, it offers few third-party integrations compared to builders like Wix. This could limit advanced functionality for larger dealerships with more complex needs. However, if you’re looking for a budget-friendly, beginner-friendly option, Hostinger is a solid choice.
Inventory management. Hostinger includes a simple system to showcase vehicles, update availability, and manage listings. It’s not as robust as dedicated dealership platforms, but it works well for smaller inventories.
Lead capture forms. Hostinger makes it easy to collect customer inquiries and contact details with customizable forms. Doing so can help streamline communication and follow-ups with your potential buyers.
AI Heatmap. This tool highlights the areas on your site that receive the most attention, allowing you to see what’s working and what’s not. With this insight, you can gain a deeper understanding of visitor behavior and optimize your site’s layout for improved engagement.
Live chat integrations. Hostinger allows you to integrate live chat tools, such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, into your car dealership site, enabling you to communicate with potential buyers quickly.
IONOS offers attractive templates and solid business features
If you’re in a hurry to set up your website, you can opt for IONOS’ MyWebsite Now Starter plan, which provides you with pre-designed templates. But if you need more creative control over your website design, you can upgrade to MyWebsite Now Plus. Alternatively, if you prefer to leave the design work to professionals, IONOS also offers its Website Design Service for your car dealership website.
With IONOS, you add widgets to enhance features and functionality. You can connect your social media accounts (such as Facebook and Instagram) to increase your dealership’s visibility, boost traffic, and promote your services. You can also use widgets to integrate videos from YouTube or Vimeo to give potential customers a virtual tour of your cars.
All in all, IONOS offers a range of business features at an affordable price, including a business email address aligned with your domain, which conveys professionalism and help build credibility. That said, IONOS only offers one car dealership template, and it doesn’t have a free plan. However, it does have a 30-day money-back guarantee, allowing you to try out the service risk-free.
Features
Personalized content: Customize messages, invitations, and prompts to match the device a visitor is using. You can even tailor special offers that visitors see based on how many times they’ve viewed your site or whether they’ve previously purchased a car from you.
Image editing: You can edit photos on your website with the built-in image editor. You can adjust saturation, crop, resize, and add text and background videos to make your product pages shine.
Logo generator: IONOS makes it simple to create a memorable logo for your brand. You can browse a selection of logo designs recommended for your industry or choose an icon that appeals to you. Then use your custom logo on your website, newsletter, and marketing materials.
List local. Add this tool to promote your business and optimize it for local SEO. Your dealership will be listed in key online directories, which can make it easier for customers to find your company’s location, contact details, and web address.
SITE123’s AI will generate a car dealership website for you
SITE123’s easy-to-use editor allows you to build a site quickly, upload your content, and make simple edits. It could be a great choice if you’re just starting out – just keep in mind that the customization options are limited compared to other builders.
The template selection is not as varied as Wix’s. However, the templates aren’t overly complicated and come with all the basic elements you’ll likely want, such as built-in contact forms, location maps, and image blocks. You might also appreciate SITE123’s handy tools, including a simple CRM and an AI content writer, which can help you craft and update your site’s headers and other content.
SITE123 offers a free forever plan you can use to test whether it’s a good fit for your dealership. But you’ll probably want to upgrade to a paid plan to collect payments, allow clients to schedule service appointments, or enable automatic multilanguage site translation.
Features
Media galleries. Slideshow, carousel, and rounded image galleries showcase your cars and enhance your site’s content. SITE123 even lets you add both images and videos to the same gallery for a more dynamic presentation.
SEO tools. SITE123 allows you to set up meta tags and keywords, as well as attach meta information to images on your site. This gives you the optimal chance to achieve a high ranking in search engine results. Moreover, the builder generates a sitemap – an invaluable SEO tool that streamlines search engines’ indexing of all the individual pages on your site.
Marketing tools from the App Market. In addition to Google Analytics and AdSense, you can add social media apps like Pinterest for Business, Twitter Conversion Tracking, and Facebook Pixel to reach a broader audience.
Great customer service. SITE123’s Support Center provides detailed guides on how to build your site. If you get stuck, live chat support is available 24/7.
Webador’s AI-generated template is simple yet professional
Though all the builders in this list are easy to use, Webador is by far the best builder for beginners looking to create a site quickly. It lacks advanced customization options, but that might not be an issue if you just want a functional website fast.
Due to its limited customization options, I can only recommend Webador for simple one-page websites that don’t require anything flashy to attract visitors.
Webador offers a free forever plan and several affordable paid plans, including one for e-commerce websites. That said, if you really need to sell online, Shopify is a better option.
Features
Unlimited storage. Every Webador plan, including the free plan, offers unlimited storage, so you never have to worry about uploading too many photos to show off your cars. Webador also lets you add video to your site, which can make it more engaging and help boost auto sales.
No sales commission. Webador doesn’t charge a commission fee on sales in addition to what your payment processor charges. This can result in significant savings for car dealers, especially on high-value transactions, maximizing profit margins.
Client ratings. You can add a 5-star rating widget to any page to display client testimonials. For car dealers, this feature is invaluable as it showcases customer satisfaction, builds trust with potential buyers, and enhances your credibility and reputation.
Embed third-party tools. With Webador’s embed code element, you can add extra functionality to your website, including live chat, animated banners, calendar/reservations systems, and marketing tools.
Shopify themes can be customized for car dealerships – or choose a third-party themeWhen it comes to selling, Shopify has a slight edge over other popular builders. Shopify’s robust marketing tools and customer-friendly features can help you create a pleasurable shopping experience that drives appointments or online sales.
With Shopify’s customer segmentation feature, you can send individual customers email buy-back offers and recommendations for new vehicles based on their initial interests or prior purchases. You can also automate service appointment reminders, order confirmations, and maintenance recommendations.
Note that Shopify is quite expensive, and its 3-day free trial might be too short for you to fully explore its capabilities. However, despite the higher price point compared to other builders on my list, Shopify’s retail features make it a versatile option for auto dealers of different sizes and scopes.
Features
Multimedia product descriptions. Not only can you provide comprehensive details about each vehicle, including features, variants, and history, but you can also use 3D modeling and augmented reality to give customers a virtual tour.
Simplify inventory management. Shopify gives you tools to efficiently track and manage vehicle and parts inventory, so the inventory displayed on the website is current and accurate.
Sell everywhere customers shop. Utilize multiple channels, including social media (Facebook, Instagram), your online store, and Shopify’s fully integrated POS (point-of-sale) system. This allows you to reach customers however they prefer to shop.
Discounts and promotions. Use Shopify’s reporting to analyze customer behavior and set up automated systems to apply discounts and promotions. This can enhance your sales strategies and help you build relationships with valued repeat shoppers.
BigCommerce’s templates include enterprise-level tools for large car dealershipsBigCommerce is a solid option for larger car dealerships that need advanced e-commerce features. It supports unlimited products for extensive inventories, and lets you create customer groups and segments for targeting specific buyer demographics or offering tailored promotions.
Just note that BigCommerce’s editing interface can be complex, so it might not be suitable for you if you’re not tech-savvy. BigCommerce is also more expensive than the other builders on my list, so I wouldn’t recommend it for smaller dealerships.
WordPress.com offers extensive customization options for its car dealership websites
WordPress.com is a flexible platform for car dealerships that want complete control over their website’s design and functionality. With a wide range of plugins and themes, you can add features like vehicle search, appointment scheduling, and customer reviews. The platform’s blogging tools are also useful for sharing industry news, promotions, and customer stories to build trust and engagement.
That said, WordPress.com has a steep learning curve, especially for beginners. While it offers great customization, you’ll need to invest time in learning how to use WordPress.com effectively or hire a developer to set up your site. The higher-tier plans, which include access to plugins and advanced features, can also get expensive.
How To Build a Car Dealership Website
Anyone can build a site that looks like a pro made it – all you need is the right website builder and a bit of guidance. Here’s the step-by-step process I followed when creating my own car dealership website:
Choose the right website builder. I chose Wix because it has car dealership-specific templates and features, including inventory listings, contact forms, and appointment scheduling.
Select a template that aligns with your brand. There are numerous templates specifically designed for automotive businesses. I found one that had a clean layout, modern fonts, and space to feature new arrivals. A few tweaks later, it looked custom-made.
It’s super easy to customize Wix’s car dealership templates
Add key pages and features. The template I selected had almost everything I needed. However, if yours doesn’t, be sure to include essential sections such as vehicle listings, financing information, “About Us,” and contact details. It’s also crucial for each vehicle to get its own detailed listing.
Optimize for mobile and SEO. I previewed the site on mobile to double-check everything lined up. I also followed Wix’s SEO checklist to ensure the site was optimized for search engines.
Wix’s SEO Setup Checklist is especially helpful for beginners
Integrate tools and third-party services. I connected my site with CRM systems, lead capture forms, and marketing tools to manage inquiries and expand my reach.
So, Which Option Is the “Ferrari” of Best Website Builders for Car Dealerships?
It depends on your dealership’s needs. That said, you should prioritize ease of use and make sure your pick has all the tools you need to build a sleek, professional-looking site that attracts clients to your lot.
Wix is my top recommendation for most car dealerships. Its extensive library of automotive templates, flexible drag-and-drop editor, and powerful integrations, such as the Vicario VIN Decoder, make it a versatile choice for showcasing your inventory and managing leads.
If you prioritize visual appeal and built-in marketing tools, Squarespace is a strong contender. Its customizable image galleries, beautiful templates, and marketing integrations make it ideal for creating an engaging and effective online presence.
If you prefer a more hands-off approach, Hostinger Website Builder offers multiple AI tools to help you expedite the website creation process. These include an AI Writer, AI Image Generator, AI SEO Assistant, and AI Heatmaps.
Take a look at the chart below for a quick summary.
Free Plan
Best Feature
Best For
Starting Price
Wix
✔
60+ automotive templates
Dealerships needing flexibility and advanced customization
What is the best website provider for car dealerships?
Wix is the best website provider for car dealerships. It offers 60+ automotive-specific templates, SEO tools, appointment scheduling, and integration with tools like Vicario VIN Decoder. Its drag-and-drop editor makes it simple to create a professional site without technical expertise.
How do I build a website for a car dealership?
To build a car dealership website, select a builder that offers automotive templates and features such as inventory management. Customize the design, add vehicle details, and ensure the site is mobile-friendly and optimized for search engines.
How much does a car dealer website cost?
A car dealer website typically costs between $3 and $50 per month, depending on the website builder you use and its features. For example, Hostinger Website Builder costs $2.99/month and includes 150 templates, an AI website builder, marketing integrations, SEO tools, and lead capture forms.
Is Wix good for a car dealership website?
Yes, Wix is the best builder for car dealership websites. It offers plenty of templates built specifically for car dealerships, so it will be simple to get started. It also offers great features like beautiful media galleries for images and videos of your vehicles, and the Wix SEO Setup Checklist is very helpful in making sure that your potential clients can find your website in the first place.
How can you promote your car dealership?
To successfully promote your dealership, you first need to optimize your website for SEO. Other effective marketing solutions include targeted email campaigns, social media integration, limited-time promotional offers, and lead gathering. Adding a blog can also be a powerful way to build your brand, especially if you post helpful tips and advice.
What makes a good car dealership website?
A good website for a dealership should include an up-to-date selection of new and used cars on your lot, with multiple images, detailed information, and even a video of each one. You’ll also want to include a map with your location, information about your company and staff, contact forms for your clients to reach out to you, and a list of any other services you offer.
Regardless of which builder you choose, our step-by-step guide to creating a website can help.
Dawn specializes in writing about a range of software products, including website builders, backup services, credit card processing solutions, and project management platforms. She has 10+ year’s experience as a technical writer and has written a number of articles for CEOs and senior executives at client companies that have appeared under their bylines. When she’s not researching and testing digital services, she brainstorms with educators to ensure all students have access to enriching learning opportunities.
Thank you, - your comment was submitted successfully!
We check all user comments within 48 hours to make sure they are from real people like you. We're glad you found this article useful - we would appreciate it if you let more people know about it.
Share this blog post with friends and co-workers right now:
Thank you, , your comment was submitted successfully!
We check all comments within 48 hours to make sure they're from real users like you. In the meantime, you can share your comment with others to let more people know what you think.
Thank you for signing up!
Once a month you will receive interesting, insightful tips, tricks, and advice to improve your website performance and reach your digital marketing goals!