At a glance
- What it is
- A web page about one car on a dealer's lot, usually sent by text or email
- What's inside
- Window sticker, history report, reconditioning records, warranty and more, depending on the dealer
- Who makes it
- AutoIPacket, LLC of Williamstown, West Virginia; about 4,000 dealerships use it, by its count
- Cost to shoppers
- Nothing. Dealers pay, and iPacket doesn't publish its prices
- Privacy
- The salesperson gets an alert when you open it and can see which parts you viewed
On this page
What is an iPacket vehicle presentation?
An iPacket is what its maker calls a digital vehicle presentation: one web page that gathers the paperwork for a specific car on a dealer's lot. Dealers used to keep that paperwork in a printed folder for each car. iPacket describes its product as turning those paper "evidence manuals" into digital packets, filled in automatically from the dealer's own systems, with no scanning or uploading.
A salesperson usually sends you an iPacket by text or email after you ask about a car, often straight from the dealership's CRM, so the link is made for you. Some dealers also put an iPacket button on the car's page on their website. The packet opens in your browser like any web page, and dealers can show it in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese or Polish.
iPacket is made by AutoIPacket, LLC, based in Williamstown, West Virginia. Its co-founders lead it: Seve Astorg is the CEO and Ken Wilkinson is the CTO. Dealers are its customers, and by its own count about 4,000 dealerships use it, with more than 14 million vehicle records and 100 million documents on file.
What's in an iPacket?
Each packet holds what the dealer has for that car, so two packets can look quite different. These are the parts iPacket's shopper app and help center list:
| Part of the packet | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Original window sticker | What the car cost new, with every factory option and package. iPacket pulls it by VIN and says it covers more than 30 automakers. |
| Vehicle history report | Accidents, owners, title problems and reported service, from the dealer's CARFAX report. |
| Reconditioning and service records | What the dealer fixed after taking the car in, and sometimes what it spent, from the repair orders in the dealer's management system. |
| Warranty information | The factory or dealer coverage that comes with the car. |
| Vehicle brochure | The model's features and specifications. |
| Price and fees | The asking price. Since May 2026, a packet can show a breakdown of the dealer's fees, and dealers can show a message such as "Contact Dealer for Price" instead or leave the price out. |
| Dealer contact details | Who sent the packet, how to reach them and whether the car is still available. |
From iPacket's website, help center and shopper app listing, checked October 30, 2026. Recalls aren't among the parts iPacket lists.
Does the dealer know when you open an iPacket?
Yes, and that's a big part of why dealers send them. iPacket alerts the salesperson when a shopper opens a packet, and its heatmaps show which parts shoppers spent the most time on, such as the window sticker or the history report. iPacket says the average shopper views a packet 4 times.
The alerts come from links a salesperson sends you. iPacket's help center tells dealers that the iPacket button on their website is "only informational" and gives the sales team no tracking or credit, which is why salespeople are told to send each shopper a link of their own.
None of this is a reason not to open one. A packet is a normal web page, and opening it tells the dealer you're interested, much like replying to an email would.
How to read an iPacket before you buy
A packet puts a lot of paperwork in one place. Go through it in this order:
Match the VIN
Check that the VIN in the packet matches the one in the listing and on the car's dashboard. Each packet is built for one VIN, so a mismatch means you're reading about a different car.
Read the window sticker
It shows the car's price when new and every factory option. Check that the options match the listing and the car itself. If the packet has no sticker, try the VIN in our free window sticker lookup.
Read the history report
Look for accidents, title brands such as salvage or flood, the number of owners and gaps in service. Note the report's date: it covers what was reported up to that day.
Read the service records
Repair orders show what the dealer fixed after taking the car in, such as tires or brakes. iPacket shows only repair orders closed after the car went into the dealer's stock and within 500 miles of its current mileage, with customer details removed, so earlier owners' service records usually aren't there.
Check for open recalls
Recalls aren't among the parts iPacket lists, so enter the VIN on NHTSA's recall lookup. It's free and shows any safety recall that hasn't been repaired on that car.
Get the price in writing
If the packet says "Contact Dealer for Price" or shows a price without fees, ask the salesperson for the out-the-door price, with every fee, in writing.
How dealers use iPacket
For a dealership, iPacket is mainly a follow-up tool. Salespeople send packets from the CRM or from the iPacket Dealer app, and the alerts tell them when a shopper is looking. iPacket says it works with more than 150 platforms, including leading CRMs. Repair orders load from the dealership's management system once a day from CDK, DealerTrack, AutoMate, AutoSoft and DealerBuilt, and daily or weekly from Reynolds and Reynolds stores through DealerVault.
The company sells more than the packet:
- Sticker Puller: a Chrome extension, for iPacket dealers only, that spots VINs on any web page and pulls the original window sticker or build sheet. iPacket says it has 20 million MSRPs from more than 30 automakers.
- iPacket Recon: software for tracking cars through reconditioning.
- OnTargeting: ads for a specific car that follow a dealer's most interested shoppers wherever they browse online.
- iPacket Value: an appraisal and pricing tool built on the MSRP data iPacket has stored for more than a decade.
iPacket also publishes its own results: a 47% lift in website engagement, sessions "in excess of 38 minutes" and 20% faster inventory turn. Those are the company's figures, not independent studies.
How much does iPacket cost?
iPacket doesn't publish its prices: dealers book a demo and get a quote. GM dealers can use co-op money, since iPacket is an approved turnkey product in GM's iMR program, with co-op match on all iPacket services.
If you'd rather skip the demo, CarShots Car Pages is self-serve: you sign up on our site, every car you shoot gets its own page, and pages come with the $50-a-month plan. Our CarShots vs iPacket comparison sets the two side by side.
For a sense of the market, here's what tools that do part of the same job publish:
| Tool | What it does | Published price |
|---|---|---|
| iPacket | Packets with live view alerts and heatmaps, CRM and DMS links, window stickers, recon, ads and valuation | Not published; demo first |
| DealerAddendums | Addendums, Buyers Guides and info sheets with a QR code, printed from any device; in business since 2014 | $100, $150 or $200 a month, month to month, with a free trial |
| CarWhere | A "View Window Sticker" button on your website's car pages, with original stickers for 12 brands | $99 a month per rooftop, with a 14-day free trial |
| AutoBio | A vehicle report on your website's car pages: history, safety ratings, awards, photos, videos and window stickers, with an alert when a past lead comes back to it | Not published |
From each company's own website, checked October 30, 2026.
How can a small dealer send a vehicle packet without iPacket?
A packet is a car's paperwork plus good photos, in one place a shopper can open. An independent dealer can put one together from free and low-cost parts:
- Window sticker: pull the original by VIN with our free window sticker lookup, which links to the automaker's own copy when it's posted online.
- History report: your CARFAX or AutoCheck dealer account.
- Recalls: the VIN on NHTSA's recall lookup.
- Service and reconditioning: scans of your repair orders, with the customer's name and address blacked out.
- Buyers Guide: the FTC form a dealer must post on each used car for sale. Our free Buyers Guide maker prints it in English or Spanish.
- Photos and a walkaround video: the part shoppers look at first. CarShots turns phone photos into studio-quality listing photos and a 15-second 360° walkaround video, so every car looks its best before anyone opens the paperwork.
Put it where shoppers already look: the car's page on your website and your listings, and text a shopper that link when they ask about the car. You won't get iPacket's alerts and heatmaps that way, but every shopper sees the same paperwork.
Or let CarShots put it together. With Car Pages, each car's studio photos, 360° walkaround video, window sticker, recalls and a link to its history report land on one page a salesperson can text in one tap, and you find out when a real shopper opens it. For the other ways to do it, with prices, see our roundup of the best iPacket alternatives.
