Last updated: 6 October 2026
TL;DR
- The cost of answering reviews per dealership is minutes per review times reviews per month times hourly rate; at dealer groups this quickly adds up to dozens of hours a month.
- One dealer group with dozens of dealerships spends 2.5 hours a day on reviews; at an assumed hourly rate of 40 euros that is roughly 2,100 euros a month in manual work.
- Review software is cheaper once it saves more time per dealership than it costs; for Repmanager Pro the break-even point is around 37 to 45 minutes per dealership per month (prices as of October 2026).
- In Repmanager you answer positive reviews automatically with reply rules and keep complaints with a person on purpose, so the saving never comes at the expense of customer contact.
How do you calculate what answering reviews costs per dealership?
With one formula: minutes per review times reviews per month times hourly rate, divided by sixty. That gives you the monthly cost per dealership. Add the dealerships together and you have the bill for the dealer group. The only hard part is being honest about the minutes, because there is more to it than typing.
Writing a reply is quick. The time goes on everything around it: logging in to the right Google Business Profile, reading, checking with the workshop or sales team when there is a complaint, phrasing it in the brand's tone and posting it. A group with one profile per brand does all of that per profile.
Which assumptions go into the cost model?
Use your own numbers where you have them. If you do not, these are reasonable starting values. They are deliberately cautious: we only count the manual work software actually takes over, and we leave complaints entirely with a person. You can read the number of reviews per dealership per month in your own dashboard.
| Assumption | Value in the example | Where to find your own number |
|---|---|---|
| Minutes per positive review (manual) | 3 minutes | Track it for a week |
| Minutes per complaint (1 to 3 stars) | 15 minutes | Track it for a week |
| Share of complaints | 15 percent | Sentiment in your dashboard |
| Hourly rate, marketing or dealership | 40 euros | Your own staff cost per hour |
| Working days per month | 21 | Fixed |
The 40-euro hourly rate is an assumption, not a measured average. If your organisation uses a higher rate, the outcome only gets more favourable for automation.
What does it cost a dealer group in practice?
More than most boards expect. A dealer group with dozens of dealerships told us they spend 2.5 hours a day on reviews. Another group was at almost an hour a day. Run that through 21 working days and 40 euros an hour and you get a sizeable monthly amount that appears nowhere as a cost line.
| Situation | Hours per month | Cost per month (at 40 euros/hour) | Cost per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dealer group with dozens of dealerships, 2.5 hours a day | 52.5 | 2,100 euros | 25,200 euros |
| Dealer group, almost 1 hour a day | 21 | 840 euros | 10,080 euros |
| Autobedrijf Nieuwendijk, time saved per week: about 2.5 hours | about 10.8 | about 433 euros | about 5,200 euros |
Autobedrijf Nieuwendijk has 8 sites and manages 13 Google profiles, because Renault and Dacia are kept separate online. According to the Autobedrijf Nieuwendijk case study, the group saves around 2.5 hours of manual work a week and meets the importer KPIs for response rate and response time across all 13 profiles. The conversion to euros in the table is ours, using the same 40-euro rate.
Then there is the dealer who said that at 500 euros a month he would rather do it himself in Google. But at 40 euros an hour, 500 euros is 12.5 hours of work a month. The real question is not whether 500 euros is a lot, but how many hours you are already spending.
When is review software cheaper than answering yourself?
As soon as the software saves more time per dealership than it costs. Repmanager Pro costs 124 euros a month billed annually and 149 euros billed monthly, for five dealerships (prices as of October 2026, ex VAT). Per dealership that is 24.80 or 29.80 euros. At 40 euros an hour, the break-even point is 37 to 45 minutes of work saved per dealership per month.
Below is the example per dealership. We only count positive reviews as a saving, because a reply rule can answer them automatically. Complaints stay fully manual in this model, even though an AI draft helps there too in practice.
| Reviews per dealership per month | Manual: hours per month | Manual: cost | Saved by auto-replying to positive reviews | Pro per dealership (annual / monthly) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 | 1.6 hours | 64 euros | 51 minutes, 34 euros | 24.80 / 29.80 euros |
| 50 | 4.0 hours | 160 euros | 128 minutes, 85 euros | 24.80 / 29.80 euros |
| 100 | 8.0 hours | 320 euros | 255 minutes, 170 euros | 24.80 / 29.80 euros |
So the break-even point sits around 12 to 15 positive reviews per dealership per month. Below that, doing it yourself with discipline is fine. With more than five dealerships, the calculator on the pricing page works out the amount for your number. There is a free version for one profile, and there are no per-review costs.
What does software take over, and what stays with people?
Software takes over the repetitive work: every profile in one overview, positive reviews answered automatically and a draft ready for the rest. The customer contact that makes a difference stays with your team: the complaint about a repair, the call to the customer, the conversation with the branch manager. That is also why our model does not count complaints as a saving.
Most dealer groups working with Repmanager start by auto-replying to 4 and 5 stars and keep 1 to 3 stars with a person. How to draw that line is covered in which reviews to answer automatically. There are two schools: one group also lets reviews with text go out automatically, the other only star-only ratings. Both save time, the first saves more.
Time is not the only sum. The importer judges you on response time and response rate, and a dealership that falls behind costs points. How that works is explained in importer KPIs for reviews. More real-world figures on time saved are in how much time automated review management saves.
How do you set this up in Repmanager?
Measure first, then automate. That way you know afterwards whether the sum was right.
- Open the Dashboard and set the period to the last 12 months. In the locations table, note the number of reviews and the response rate per dealership.
- Check Sentiment to see what share of reviews is negative. That is your own complaint share for the model.
- Go to Reply rules and create a rule for the whole organisation: 4 and 5 stars, AI-generated reply, with the delay of your choice.
- Set tone, length and signature in the AI guidelines, and use Generate with AI on a few real reviews before you set the rule to active. A new rule is set to Active by default, so switch the status off until you are happy.
- Leave 1 to 3 stars out of the rule. They appear under Open in Reviews, and under Urgent when they are urgent. A person creates a draft with Generate with AI, checks it and sends it.
- After a month, check Action needed and the average response time to see whether open reviews have gone down.
How reply rules work is covered on the feature page. That is also where you see what the AI reply generator does with your guidelines. The dashboard shows per dealership whether you are on track.
What usually goes wrong with this calculation?
Only counting the typing. If you only count minutes at the keyboard, you come out low. Logging in, switching profiles and checking with the workshop is most of the work.
Using the intern's hourly rate. In practice reviews sit with a marketing manager or branch manager, not with the cheapest person in the building.
Forgetting the backlog. A pile of unanswered reviews is a one-off cost on top of the month. How to tackle it is in clearing a backlog of unanswered reviews.
Automating everything because it is cheaper. The saving sits in positive reviews. A complaint with a template reply costs you more than the fifteen minutes it saves.
Frequently asked questions
How long does one review take on average?
A positive review takes a few minutes, a complaint several times that because of the checking and phrasing. Measure it for a week with your own team, because it varies a lot by group and by profile structure.
Does a dealership with two brand profiles count as two locations?
That depends on how you set up the structure. Multiple profiles per dealership are possible; agree during onboarding how they count for your plan.
Is the free version enough for a small dealer?
You can start free for one Google profile, without payment details. If you want automatic replies, you need at least Lite.
Can I cancel monthly?
Yes. Repmanager can be cancelled monthly; with annual billing you get two months free.
Ready to run your own numbers?
Want to know what reviews cost your dealerships today and what is left with automatic replies? In a 15-minute demo we run the numbers with your own volumes.
