Ekho AI Sales Agent vs Numa
Numa owns the phone and the service lane. Ekho owns the website conversation and the deal that follows it.
Numa is the most established product in this category and it is not really an AI BDC in our sense: it is an operating layer for dealership customer operations, anchored on the phone. Their Smart Inbox carries context across calls, texts and chats, Operator answers the main line and routes across service, sales, BDC and parts, LiveCSI watches retention risk in real time, and it writes outcomes back to the DMS with around 90% DMS coverage across roughly 1,300 rooftops. If missed calls and fixed-ops throughput are your problem, they are very good at that and we do not compete with it. Ekho does a different job: it answers the buyer on your own website and over text in under five seconds, sells from your live inventory by name and price, pre-qualifies against real lenders, builds the payment in checkout, and can carry a ready buyer through a completed, compliant purchase in all 50 states. We do not touch the phone. Many franchise stores would sensibly run both, and if you sell powersports, marine, RV, golf carts or LSVs, Numa is not built for you.
SIDE BY SIDE
Ekho AI Sales Agent and Numa (Voice AI, Smart Inbox, Operator), capability by capability
| Capability | Ekho AI Sales Agent | Numa (Voice AI, Smart Inbox, Operator) | Stronger |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where the customer reaches you | Your website and text. Not the phone | Answers every inbound call and message on the main line, across service, sales, BDC and parts | Numa |
| Chat on your own website | A first-class channel, with a greeting your team writes and targets to the kind of page a visitor is on | Not the focus. Their published material centres on the phone line | Ekho |
| Selling from live inventory | Names the actual unit, the actual price and real availability from your feed, and answers questions about it | Routes the caller and books the next step. Answering from live vehicle inventory is not described on their site | Ekho |
| "Can I get approved?" | Soft-pull pre-qualification in the thread against real lenders, with a credit range you set | Not described on their site | Ekho |
| "What's the monthly on this?" | Surfaces a pre-qualification CTA when payments or financing come up, and the approval range comes back in the thread. The agent does not quote a monthly on the unit; the payment is built in checkout | Not described on their site | Comparable |
| How far the conversation can go | Your choice, per rooftop. Stop at the appointment, or let the same thread run through pre-qualification and a completed compliant purchase in all 50 states | Ends in a booked appointment, a routed call, or a task for a person | Ekho |
| Who configures it | Your team, per rooftop, from the Admin Portal, live and without a release | Not described on their site | Ekho |
| Guardrails on what it promises | Scoped to the brands and categories your rooftop actually carries, and it will not offer a service you do not provide | Escalates to a person where judgement is needed | Ekho |
| A group of several rooftops | One parent account with an agent per store, group defaults inherited, cross-location routing, and one place to see every lead | Sold to multi-rooftop groups, configured per store | Ekho |
| Manufacturer-level deployment | A brand-scoped agent on a manufacturer's own site that hands each buyer to the nearest authorised dealer | Not described on their site | Ekho |
| Vehicle segments | Automotive, powersports, golf carts and LSVs, marine and RV | Franchise automotive | Ekho |
| DMS depth | Two-way sync with the dealer CRM and DMS platforms we support, writing outcomes back, plus ADF lead delivery into any CRM without a direct integration. | Around 90% DMS coverage, writing outcomes back to the DMS | Comparable |
| Scale | Newer, and growing fast. Three manufacturers deploy Ekho across their dealer networks, and stores run it across automotive, powersports, marine, RV, golf carts and LSVs. | Over 1,300 rooftops | Numa |
WHERE WE WIN
Where Ekho is stronger
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It answers on your website, where the buyer already is
Most shoppers never call and never fill in a form: they browse a unit late at night and leave. Ekho answers there in under five seconds, with a greeting your team writes and targets by page type. A phone-first product cannot reach that visitor at all.
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It sells from live inventory rather than routing the enquiry
Our agent names the actual unit, the actual price and whether it is really available, and answers questions about it from documents you upload.
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The two questions that stall a deal get answered in the thread
Soft-pull pre-qualification against real lenders, with a credit range you set deciding who is approved and who goes to a finance manager. On the monthly, the agent surfaces that same pre-qualification rather than quoting a payment on the unit.
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The conversation can finish the sale, if you want it to
Where you switch it on, the same thread carries a ready buyer through checkout, taxes and fees, signing, titling and registration in all 50 states. A toggle per rooftop, off until you choose it.
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It is your agent, and your team changes it
Name, personality, permissions, greeting and the documents it answers from, all set per rooftop from the Admin Portal, live and without waiting on a vendor ticket or a release.
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Built for what you sell, not only for cars
Powersports, golf carts and LSVs, marine and RV alongside automotive, with the titling and registration work each vehicle type actually involves.
BY WHAT YOU SELL
Segment by segment, and how deep it goes
The same product across every kind of titled vehicle. This is what else you will run into in each segment, what runs the back office there, and what is specific about selling that vehicle type.
| Segment | What else you will see | Systems Ekho connects to | What is segment-specific |
|---|---|---|---|
| Automotive | Crowded, and the segment the voice-first platforms are built for | Two-way sync with the dealer CRMs we support, ADF lead delivery into any CRM, inventory over your existing feed | Choose on which end of the funnel hurts. Voice AI answers the phone and fills the service lane. Ekho answers the buyer on your site and by text, sells from live inventory, pre-qualifies, and can finish the sale. |
| Powersports | Thin. The automotive voice platforms are not built for it and do not position for it | Direct integrations with the DMS and CRM platforms powersports stores actually run, plus scheduled inventory feeds where there is no direct connection | Multi-line stores carry brands with different rules, and the agent is scoped per rooftop to only the brands you are authorised on. Unit-level titling and registration is handled rather than handed back to you. |
| Marine | No automotive voice platform positions here | Feed-based inventory sync, plus the CRMs marine dealers already run | Boat, motor and trailer are three items on one deal and the trailer is the part that needs a title. A group running a marine division alongside powersports needs an enquiry with no location on it to reach the right division. |
| RV | No automotive voice platform positions here | Feed-based inventory sync, plus the CRMs RV dealers already run | Long consideration windows on high-ticket units, follow-up with no fixed cut-off, and financing terms different enough from automotive that a generic pre-qualification is worse than none. |
| Golf cart and LSV | Effectively nobody | Inventory over an existing XML or CSV feed where there is no DMS, which is most of this segment | LSVs are titled vehicles with state-by-state rules an automotive phone product has no concept of. Street-legal configuration and the paperwork that follows are part of the sale. |
HOW TO EVALUATE
4 questions that settle it in ten minutes
Put these to any AI sales agent you are evaluating, including ours. The answers tell you more than any comparison table, including this one.
- 01
"Is this exact unit still available, and what is the out-the-door price?"
Tests whether the agent reads live inventory and can add up fees and tax, rather than routing the caller to a person.
- 02
"Can I see if I would get approved without hurting my credit?"
Either a soft pull comes back with a range, or the buyer waits for a callback. The question most likely to end a conversation.
- 03
"What is the monthly on this with 20% down?"
Ask it of both. The agent surfaces a pre-qualification CTA rather than quoting a monthly, so you should hear what each product actually returns before you decide how much that matters.
- 04
"Can I just buy it now?"
The clearest dividing line between a product that books the appointment and one that can complete the sale.
Go and try to catch it out
A live store with a live agent. Ask it all four, right now, and see what comes back.
IN DEVELOPMENT
What we have not shipped yet
- Voice, and the phone line In development
Numa answers your inbound calls. Ekho does not answer or place calls at all today. If the phone is where your leads and your service customers actually arrive, that is a real gap and the main reason to pick them over us.
- The service lane Not on the roadmap
Service scheduling, repair-order status and fixed-ops workflows are core to Numa and are not something Ekho sells. If fixed ops is the problem you are solving, we are the wrong tool.
- Cross-conversation memory at their depth Partial
Our agent carries summaries of a buyer's earlier conversations into a new one and will not re-ask what they already answered. What it does not do is span the phone or write back to the DMS, and Numa's Smart Inbox does both, which makes theirs the deeper system of record.
WHICH TO CHOOSE
It depends on what you sell and where the deal ends
- A store missing inbound calls
Numa
Answering the main line, routing across departments and booking into the DMS is their product. We do not do it.
- A store whose fixed-ops throughput is the problem
Numa
LiveCSI, heat cases and declined-work recovery are a real product line we do not have.
- A store whose website traffic goes nowhere
Ekho
Most shoppers never call. We answer on the page they are already on, sell from live inventory, and qualify them.
- A dealer who wants ready buyers to finish online
Ekho
Checkout, taxes and fees, signing, titling and registration in all 50 states.
- A powersports, marine, RV, golf cart or LSV dealer
Ekho
Numa is built for franchise automotive. These segments need titling work and brand rules their product has no concept of.
- A franchise group that wants both
Run both
Numa on the phone and the service lane, Ekho on the website and the sale. They do not fight over the same work.
Frequently Asked Questions
The channel and the finish line. Numa answers your phone with deep DMS context and is built around fixed ops. Ekho answers the buyer on your website and by text, sells from live inventory, pre-qualifies, and can complete the purchase. Neither replaces the other.
No. Website chat and text only, with voice in development. Numa does answer the phone and does it well. If that is the requirement, pick them.
Not in the sense of a sales-lead handler. They describe themselves as an AI operating system for dealership customer operations, anchored on the main phone line and weighted towards service and retention.
Ekho. Numa is built for franchise automotive and does not position for these segments, which carry brand rules and titling work a car-phone product does not model.
Yes, and for a franchise group it is often the right answer. They cover the phone and the service lane; we cover the website conversation and the sale.
Neither publishes a rate card. Ekho is priced per rooftop and quoted on a call, because what you need depends on which products you turn on.
Three things, and we would rather you heard them from us. It does not answer email. It cannot tell a buyer what their trade is worth. And when someone asks what the monthly would be, it surfaces a pre-qualification rather than pricing the unit, with the payment built in checkout. Website chat, text, soft-pull pre-qualification and the full compliant checkout are live today. Put the same question to Numa and compare what comes back.
Sources
Every claim about Numa on this page comes from their own published material on the date shown. We re-check this page quarterly. If something here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will fix it.
- Numa homepage retrieved 2026-08-25
- Numa AI receptionist FAQ retrieved 2026-08-23
- Numa dealership integrations retrieved 2026-08-23
- Numa launches four AI products, Jan 2026 retrieved 2026-08-23
- Ekho changelog, AI Sales Agent retrieved 2026-08-23
Last reviewed August 25, 2026
Put the two side by side on your own inventory
Ask our agent the four questions above on a live store, or have us walk your team through the differences on your own leads.