Written for the owner of the rooftop, not the GM or the controller. Read it once. Take it into the next vendor meeting. Every line is a clause we have committed to in writing.
The five questions
No question here is unique to Gladius. Each one is a clause the incumbents have spent decades avoiding. Read both answers. Decide for yourself.
Incumbent
Buried contract language about “data extraction”. Per-record export fees. CSVs that drop relationships and stripped of activity history. A six-week migration project the day you try to leave.
Gladius
You own your Postgres schema. Full database export — leads, customers, vehicles, activities, calls, every row — in standard SQL takes two minutes. No fees. Written into the MSA.
Incumbent
Silence. The CDK incident in June 2024 left thousands of rooftops down for three-plus weeks with no public timeline. The pattern is industry-standard.
Gladius
72-hour disclosure SLA written into the MSA. Status page updated every 60 minutes during an active incident. AWAIS, our autonomous defense mesh, propagates fixes across every rooftop in under 30 seconds.
Incumbent
Because each vendor owns one piece. Four logins. Four contracts. Four invoices. Four renewal cycles. Four account managers who do not talk to each other.
Gladius
One platform. One login. One contract. The lead, the call recording, the desk, the F&I deal, the recon photo, and the post-sale follow-up live on the same row in the same database.
Incumbent
Opaque. Per-seat fees. Add-on surcharges for SMS, voice, DMS integration, OEM reporting, after-hours support, premium training. The quoted number is rarely the invoiced number.
Gladius
Flat per rooftop. $999 (Independent, up to 5 users) · $1,997 (Growth, up to 3 rooftops) · $3,497 (Enterprise, unlimited rooftops). AI, call tracking, payments, and DMS integration included at every tier.
Incumbent
The incumbents will tell you they are the safe choice. They will also tell you it took fifteen years to ship a mobile-responsive UI, that their roadmap is opaque, and that the contract auto-renews.
Gladius
Honest position: we are early. Three pilot rooftops live. The founder is a 20-year automotive operator — Sales, F&I, GSM. Every engagement starts with a 90-day pilot agreement, cancel-without-penalty. If we are not earning the seat, you walk.
Principal’s checklist
Print this. Take it into the meeting. Walk every vendor through it line by line. The ones who flinch are telling you the answer.
Request a copy of the data-export clause from the MSA before signing. Confirm format (Postgres / SQL / CSV with foreign keys), timeline (hours, not weeks), and cost (free, or itemized).
Ask for the published incident-disclosure SLA. “Within a reasonable time” is not an SLA. 72 hours or better is the modern standard.
Inventory every vendor invoice currently paid: CRM, DMS, call tracking, SMS, BDC, reputation, inventory, F&I, desking, recon. Total it. That is your true cost of incumbency.
Demand a written list of every surcharge — SMS overage, voice minutes, integration fees, after-hours support, training, OEM reporting. “Included” should appear or it should not.
Confirm the auto-renewal language. Annual auto-renew with a 30-day-out window is a vendor-friendly default that costs dealer groups millions per year nationally.
Ask for three reference customers in your rooftop count and your region. Speak to all three without a vendor representative present.
Verify the founder or leadership team has dealership operating experience. Twenty years in software is not the same as twenty years on a floor.
Review the security posture publicly: status page, SOC 2 report, encryption at rest, MFA enforcement, breach disclosure history. “We take security seriously” is not a posture.
Test the AI claims with one phone call. Ask the AI receptionist a hard question. Listen to the answer. The demo is the floor, not the ceiling.
Confirm the DMS integration story before signing. “We integrate with every major DMS” is rarely true. Ask for the specific provider, the data fields, the cadence, the cost.
Run a 90-day pilot before a full deployment. Any vendor that refuses a pilot is a vendor that is not confident in the product.
Read the offboarding section before reading the onboarding section. If the exit is hard, the relationship is hostage, not partnership.
Multi-rooftop pricing
The math is the math. No per-seat fees. No SMS overages. No DMS integration surcharge. No after-hours premium. No OEM reporting upcharge. Same number quoted, same number invoiced.
3 rooftops
Professional ($1,997 / mo)
Single flat rate covers up to 3 rooftops
$1,997 / mo
5 rooftops
Professional + add-on rooftops
$1,997 base (3 rooftops) + $999 × 2 add-on rooftops
$3,995 / mo
10 rooftops
Enterprise ($3,497 / mo flat)
Unlimited rooftops at one flat rate
$3,497 / mo
50 rooftops
Enterprise ($3,497 / mo flat)
Unlimited rooftops at one flat rate
$3,497 / mo
Worked example, 10 rooftops at Enterprise: $3,497 / mo flat, unlimited users, full platform, AI included, call tracking included, payments included, DMS integration included. No surcharges. The same group on the incumbent stack is paying $76,000 to $110,000 per month across 8 to 12 vendors.
Direct line
No SDR queue. No qualification call. I do my own LinkedIn and my own email. Tell me what is broken inside your group and I will tell you honestly whether Gladius is ready for it.
Gladius Technologies LLC · Tampa, FL · 2026