Elead CRM API
Elead's APIs live inside CDK's Fortellis exchange: Sales Opportunities, Sales Customers, Sales Activities, and Product Reference Data families. Production requires Fortellis app registration, a dealer-approved subscription, and partner onboarding. No spec or sandbox is public outside login.
Frequently asked questions
Elead CRM scores F on the API Report Card. Elead's APIs live inside CDK's Fortellis exchange: Sales Opportunities, Sales Customers, Sales Activities, and Product Reference Data families. Production requires Fortellis app registration, a dealer-approved subscription, and partner onboarding. No spec or sandbox is public outside login.
Without a usable official API, teams fall back on manual exports, file drops, or one-off vendor integrations. The other option is an unofficial API layer like Supergood that automates the authenticated web app directly.
Elead CRM (originally ELEAD1ONE, founded in Valdosta, Georgia by Hugh and Judy Hathcock) is an automotive-retail CRM that CDK Global acquired in September 2018 for an estimated ~$550M.
Auto Dealer Management. A shopper submits a lead through a dealer's website, third-party listing (Autotrader, Cars.com), OEM lead source, or phone call routed through Elead's CTI.
Very high inside U.S./Canada franchise auto retail. Elead served approximately 4,000 dealerships at the time of the 2018 CDK acquisition and has been actively cross-sold into CDK's ~15,000-rooftop DMS base since.
Elead CRM holds the operating record of a franchise dealership's customer-facing operations: every internet lead, phone-up (with CTI call recording), walk-in and prior customer (with full contact, household and credit-prequal context); every sales activity, BDC touch, appointment and follow-up; every desked deal with vehicle of interest, trade, F&I products, lender selection and gross/finance terms; every service appointment, RO history and warranty record flowing in from CDK Drive's Fixed Ops side; and every marketing campaign and equity-mining trigger run through the embedded CDP.
Mature. ELEAD1ONE was founded in the late 1990s / early 2000s and operated as the largest privately-held automotive CRM until the 2018 CDK acquisition.
Fortellis community threads show developers waiting on basic documentation and access for Elead APIs, with availability gated on the Elead/ELEADS team rather than self-serve. Developers report opaque errors from the Fortellis API simulator on Elead Sales Customers endpoints with no public troubleshooting docs. Full sourced list under Sources below.
Common alternatives include VinSolutions (Cox Automotive), DealerSocket (Solera), Tekion ARC, Reynolds & Reynolds (FOCUS CRM, ERA-IGNITE/Power), Dealertrack DMS (Cox Automotive), DriveCentric. Graded alternatives appear under "More from the report card" below.
Grades measure one thing: can a customer's engineering team get their own data out programmatically? We check six things (whether a real API exists, how access is gated, data coverage, auth quality, docs and developer experience, and stability) and roll them into a letter grade. Grades get re-verified, and they only move on evidence.
Yes. Supergood maintains an unofficial Elead CRM API and MCP server so AI agents and internal tools can read and write Elead CRM data. See the Elead CRM integration docs at supergood.ai/docs/elead-crm-api.