The short answer: yes, as shop windows. No, as a strategy. DoneDeal, Carzone and CarsIreland put your stock where buyers already browse, and most Irish dealers rightly pay for that. The mistake is stopping there, because a dealer who only exists on marketplaces is renting their entire presence from a platform that also hosts every competitor.
What the marketplaces do well
Intent. People on DoneDeal and Carzone are actively shopping, comparing your stock against everyone else's on price, spec and photos. Good listings with proper photos and honest descriptions convert that intent, and for fast-moving stock they're often the quickest route to an enquiry.
What they quietly cost you
The buyer relationship. On a marketplace, the platform owns the audience and you're one listing among thousands, competing mostly on price. Every enquiry arrives anonymous, every buyer was shopping your competitors in the same tab, and if listing fees rise, your only option is to pay. None of that builds your name.
What should sit alongside them?
Your own channels: social pages full of stock video, a website that ranks locally, a review profile that makes you the safe choice, and a database you can email when fresh stock lands. Dealers with strong direct channels use marketplaces from a position of strength, listing what suits and keeping the buyers they win.
What are dealers actually paying?
Here's the part worth noticing: none of the big platforms publish their dealer pricing. Packages are tiered, quoted through sales teams and negotiated dealer by dealer, usually scaling with your stock volume and stacked with paid extras like featured listings and priority placement. That structure means two things. Your bill quietly grows as your business does, and because nothing is public, the dealer down the road may be paying a very different rate for the same shop window. If you haven't reviewed your package in a year or two, it's worth asking exactly what you're paying for, line by line.
Would the money be better spent on Meta or Google ads?
This is the question every dealer principal is asking right now, and the honest answer is: partly, and provably. Google search ads capture the same ready-to-buy intent as a marketplace, except the click lands on your website, showing your stock only, with no competitor one tab away. Meta ads do the job marketplaces never could: putting your cars in front of people before they start shopping, retargeting everyone who looked, and building the name recognition that turns into direct enquiries.
The deciding factor should be your numbers, not habit and not anyone's promises. Over a couple of months, work out what each channel costs you per lead and, more importantly, per sold car: total marketplace spend against cars sold from marketplace enquiries, ad spend against cars sold from ad enquiries. There's no universal answer, because it depends on your stock profile, your catchment and how strong your own name already is. A dealer shifting commodity stock in a busy area gets a different answer to a specialist with a loyal following.
What we'd never advise is cutting the marketplaces cold overnight, or moving budget on anyone's say-so, including ours. Shift gradually, measure monthly, and let your own cost per sale decide where next month's budget goes. Happy to help you run that comparison honestly, even if the answer turns out to be "stay put".
The bottom line
Use the marketplaces, but build like they might not exist next year. That's the balance we set up for dealers across Ireland. See how we work with dealerships or book a free call.