BIGContacts

BIGContacts is something of an outlier in the automotive CRM space. It's a general-purpose SMB CRM platform — not built specifically for dealerships — that has found occasional adoption among smaller dealer operations, particularly for Business Development Center (BDC) follow-up and lead management. Developed by a company called AppJetty and based in the United States, BIGContacts positions itself as an affordable, easy-to-use contact management and CRM tool for small businesses across all industries. It offers contact management, email tracking, task automation, and pipeline management at a price point that undercuts even the budget-friendly automotive-specific CRMs. For a dealer who finds the automotive CRMs too expensive or too complex, BIGContacts represents a potential alternative — but it comes with important caveats about automotive-specific functionality.

What It Does

BIGContacts is a general CRM designed for contact management and customer relationship tracking. Here's what it offers in the context of dealership use:

Contact Management. At its core, BIGContacts is a sophisticated address book. You can store unlimited contacts with detailed fields for name, company, phone, email, address, notes, and custom fields. For a dealership, this means storing customer and lead information with notes about vehicle interests, communication history, and purchase timelines. The contact records can be organized into groups and tags for segmentation.

Email and Communication Tracking. BIGContacts connects to your email (Gmail, Outlook, or any IMAP account) and tracks communications automatically. When you send an email from the CRM, it logs the interaction. When a customer opens an email or clicks a link, you get notified. For BDC teams doing outbound follow-up, this visibility into whether prospects are engaging with communications is genuinely useful. The system also supports email templates and mass email campaigns.

Task and Activity Management. The platform includes task management with due dates, reminders, and assignment capabilities. You can create follow-up tasks for leads, set recurring activities for regular customer outreach, and track completion. For a dealership BDC manager, this provides at least basic visibility into whether the team is following up on leads.

Pipeline Management. BIGContacts offers a visual sales pipeline with customizable stages. You can move leads through stages from "new lead" to "in negotiation" to "sold" (or whatever stages match your process). The pipeline view provides a quick snapshot of where deals stand. It's not as sophisticated as a purpose-built automotive CRM pipeline, but it provides enough structure for a small operation to track deals through the sales process.

Appointment Scheduling. The platform includes a basic appointment scheduling feature. You can create appointments, send calendar invites, and sync with Google Calendar. For booking test drives or service appointments, this can be functional, though it lacks the specialized scheduling logic that automotive-specific tools offer.

Reporting. BIGContacts includes standard CRM reports: activity reports, pipeline reports, team performance reports, and email engagement reports. The reporting is adequate for a small team but lacks the automotive-specific metrics that dealer managers need — things like lead source ROI, cost-per-sale, inventory turn rates, and finance penetration.

Integrations. BIGContacts integrates with Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar, Office 365, Mailchimp, QuickBooks, and a handful of other business tools. It does not have native automotive-specific integrations with DMS platforms, inventory management systems, listing services, or automotive websites.

Mobile Access. BIGContacts offers mobile apps for iOS and Android that provide core CRM functionality on the go. Salespeople can access contacts, log calls and emails, view tasks, and update deal stages from their phone. For a dealer whose sales team spends time on the lot or at off-site locations, mobile access ensures that customer information is always available and that follow-up activities are logged in real time. The mobile experience is clean and functional, though it lacks some of the advanced features of the web version.

Custom Fields and Workflows. The platform allows users to create custom fields for contact records, enabling dealers to track automotive-specific information like vehicle interest, budget range, trade-in status, and preferred communication method. Custom workflows can be created to automate routine tasks — for example, automatically creating a follow-up task when a lead's status changes. These customizations help bridge the gap between BIGContacts' general-purpose design and the specific needs of a dealership operation.

Import and Export Capabilities. BIGContacts supports data import from CSV, Excel, and other common formats, as well as export capabilities for moving data out of the system. For a dealer transitioning from spreadsheets or another CRM, the import process is straightforward. Data can be mapped to the appropriate fields during import, and the system will flag any issues that need attention before the import is finalized.

Email Templates and Mass Campaigns. BIGContacts includes an email campaign builder that allows dealers to create and send mass communications to their customer database. Templates can be branded with the dealership's logo and colors, and campaigns can be sent to targeted segments based on contact tags, groups, or other criteria. For a dealer running seasonal campaigns — "winter tire sale," "summer service special," "year-end clearance" — this capability provides a basic but functional email marketing tool that avoids the cost of a separate platform like Mailchimp or Constant Contact. Open rates, click rates, and bounce rates are tracked within the platform, giving dealers visibility into campaign effectiveness.

Notes and Activity History. Every contact record in BIGContacts maintains a complete activity history — every call logged, every email sent and opened, every note added, every task completed. This historical view is invaluable when a customer returns to the dealership weeks or months after their initial visit. Any salesperson can pick up the conversation armed with the full context of previous interactions: what vehicles the customer looked at, what their budget parameters were, whether they test drove anything, and what follow-up has already occurred. This continuity prevents the frustrating experience of a customer having to repeat their story.

Collaboration and Sharing. BIGContacts supports team-based collaboration, allowing multiple users to work with shared contacts and pipelines. Tasks can be assigned to specific team members, notes can be shared, and activity is visible across the team. For a small dealership with two or three salespeople, this shared visibility ensures that leads don't fall through the cracks when one salesperson is out or when a customer interacts with multiple team members.

Why Dealers Care

1. The price is dramatically lower than automotive CRMs. This is the single biggest reason a dealer might consider BIGContacts. Where automotive-specific CRMs like Elead, VinSolutions, or even AutoRaptor cost hundreds to thousands per month, BIGContacts starts at a fraction of that — often under $30 per user per month. For a very small lot with one or two salespeople, that's a meaningful difference.

2. It's extremely simple to learn and use. BIGContacts has a clean, intuitive interface that requires virtually no training. Salespeople who would resist learning a complicated CRM will adopt BIGContacts because it feels like an upgraded contacts app rather than a complex business system. For dealers whose teams have resisted CRM adoption, the low barrier to entry matters.

3. Email tracking provides useful BDC visibility. The email open and click tracking, while not unique to BIGContacts, is genuinely useful for a BDC team doing phone and email follow-up. Knowing which prospects are opening emails helps prioritize follow-up efforts. The email template system helps maintain consistent messaging.

4. Task management creates basic accountability. The task assignment and due date features give a manager at least rudimentary visibility into whether follow-up is happening. For a dealer who currently has no system at all, this is a meaningful improvement.

5. It can be used alongside (not instead of) other dealer tools. Some dealers use BIGContacts as a lightweight BDC overlay on top of their existing DMS or inventory management system. The CRM handles the follow-up and communication tracking while the DMS handles inventory, accounting, and deal processing. This hybrid approach can work for small operations that can't justify a full automotive CRM investment.

Strengths

Affordability. BIGContacts is one of the most affordable CRM options available at any level. The pricing makes it accessible to even the smallest dealership operations.

Ease of use. The interface is clean and intuitive. Adoption barriers are low. A dealer can typically set up the system and be productive within hours rather than days or weeks.

Email tracking. The automatic email logging and engagement tracking provides useful insight for BDC teams doing follow-up.

Unlimited contacts. Most plans offer unlimited contact storage, which means you can build a comprehensive customer database over time without worrying about hitting limits.

No long-term contracts. BIGContacts offers monthly billing with no long-term commitments, giving dealers flexibility.

Watch-Outs

No automotive-specific features. This is the most significant limitation. BIGContacts has no native understanding of dealership workflows. There's no integration for vehicle inventory, DMS platforms, or listing services. It cannot automatically import leads from your website or third-party marketplaces. It cannot track ROIs by lead source in any meaningful way. It cannot handle desking or payment calculations. You're getting a general CRM and figuring out how to make it fit your dealership process.

No lead source attribution. Automotive CRMs automatically track where each lead came from — website, phone call, walk-in, third-party marketplace, etc. BIGContacts has no such capability. You would need to manually tag or categorize each lead's source. This makes marketing ROI analysis effectively impossible.

No automotive reporting. The reports in BIGContacts are generic CRM reports. You won't get reports on lead source performance, salesperson effectiveness by inventory type, finance penetration rates, or any of the other metrics that dealer managers need to run their business.

Manual data entry burden. Without integrations to your website, DMS, or inventory system, most data entry in BIGContacts will need to be manual. Leads that come in through your website won't auto-populate. Deals won't sync from your DMS. You'll be copy-pasting information between systems.

Scaling limitations. As a dealership grows, BIGContacts' limitations become more pronounced. Adding more users doesn't unlock automotive-specific features. The lack of automation and integration creates more work, not less, as volume increases.

Who It's Best For

Good fit:

• Very small independent lots selling under 15 cars per month with no current CRM
• Dealers who need a basic contact management and follow-up tracking tool at the lowest possible cost
• Operations that are willing to manually enter and manage lead data
• BDC teams who want email tracking and task management for outbound follow-up
• Dealers who want to try CRM concepts before committing to an automotive-specific platform
• Operations that already have a functional DMS and just need lightweight BDC support

Bad fit:

• Any dealer who needs automatic lead capture from their website or third-party marketplaces
• Operations that need marketing ROI tracking across multiple lead sources
• Dealers who want integrated desking, payment calculations, or F&I tools
• High-volume dealerships that need automated workflows and lead distribution
• Any dealer who expects automotive-specific integrations or industry-standard reporting
• Multi-location groups that need centralized management and cross-rooftop reporting

Demo Questions

1. How can I automatically capture leads from my dealership website into BIGContacts?

2. Can I track which marketing sources (website, phone call, walk-in, etc.) produce the most valuable leads?

3. Does the system integrate with any automotive DMS, inventory management platforms, or listing services?

4. Show me how you would set up a sales pipeline that mirrors a typical car-buying process.

5. Can I send automated follow-up sequences to leads based on their behavior (e.g., visited website, opened email)?

6. How are phone calls tracked? Can I log calls and associate them with customer records?

7. What reporting is available for tracking team performance on lead follow-up?

8. Can I import my existing customer data from spreadsheets or other systems?

9. How does the system handle multiple users? Can I control what each salesperson sees?

10. If I later upgrade to an automotive-specific CRM, can I export my data?

Bottom Line

BIGContacts can work for a very specific type of dealer: the very small operation that needs basic contact management and follow-up tracking at the lowest possible cost, and is willing to accept manual data entry and the absence of automotive-specific features in exchange for that cost savings. For a dealer moving 10 to 15 cars a month who currently has no CRM at all, BIGContacts provides a functional starting point. But for any dealership that has grown beyond the absolute minimum level of operation, the lack of automotive integrations, lead source tracking, automated workflows, and industry-specific reporting will quickly become a bottleneck. The cost savings disappear the moment you have to spend manual labor hours compensating for the missing automation. If you can afford even the entry-level automotive CRMs like AutoRaptor or SalesBoom, you'll get dramatically more value for a relatively modest price increase. BIGContacts is a bridge CRM — useful for getting started, but one that most dealers will want to move beyond as their business grows.