The Legacy DMS alternative built for marine dealers
Legacy DMS was built for powersports and bolted a marine skin on top. WakeWorks is built for marine dealerships from the schema up, and AI is in every record instead of a chatbot on the side. Most dealers cut over in four to six weeks.
The short version
If you are on Legacy DMS and the pain is sluggish UI, limited multi-store reporting, no real AI, or accounting hand-off friction, WakeWorks solves all four on one platform. If your pain is "it works, but we pay too much for features we do not use", our feature-flag pricing is going to feel like a refund.
Feature comparison: WakeWorks vs Legacy DMS
| Capability | WakeWorks | Legacy DMS |
|---|---|---|
| Marine-first data model (boats, trailers, engines, hours) | Native | Retrofit on powersports base |
| AI inside every record (drafts, suggestions, scoring) | Yes, always on | Chatbot sidebar only |
| Sales, service, parts, CRM, F&I on one stack | One platform | Yes, but separate license tiers |
| Multi-store roll-up reporting | Built in, no extra module | Enterprise tier only |
| Per-feature pricing | Yes, pay for what you use | Tiered bundles |
| Open API + webhooks | Public API, documented | Partner program, gated |
| Native QuickBooks Online hand-off | Daily journal auto-post | CSV export, manual import |
| Implementation speed | 4-6 weeks single store | 3-6 months typical |
| Native mobile tech app for service | Web + iOS + Android | Web only |
| Turnstile captcha + ES256 JWT auth baseline | Shipped | Not documented |
| Row-level tenant isolation (RLS) | Postgres RLS on every table | App-level checks |
| Runs AI on customer history without you prompting | Yes | No |
Why dealers move off Legacy DMS
Not every Legacy DMS dealer is looking to switch. The dealers who call us tend to share one of these four triggers:
- AI is a chatbot in a sidebar. The AI helper opens in a window, the user types a question, the bot answers from documentation. The bot does not read your deal or draft a customer note from the service history. It does not score your lead from CRM activity. On WakeWorks, opening an RO triggers AI on that record automatically.
- Multi-store reporting requires the enterprise tier. A two-store dealer should not need enterprise pricing to see combined numbers. WakeWorks rolls up every store the user has access to, on every report, on every plan.
- Accounting hand-off is manual. Legacy DMS exports to CSV. Your bookkeeper re-keys half of it into QuickBooks. WakeWorks posts a daily journal automatically and flags variances before your month-end close.
- The UI feels slow. Legacy DMS is a retrofit on a powersports base. Boat pages render fields you do not need and hide the ones you do. WakeWorks loads a marine record in under 200ms and shows you only what matters to boats.
Migration: what cutover off Legacy DMS actually looks like
We have migrated Legacy DMS dealers before. The work is predictable because the Legacy DMS schema is stable. Here is the roadmap:
Week 0: discovery call
We pull a read-only export of your Legacy DMS tenant (customer list, open ROs, open deals, inventory, AR aging). You confirm your chart of accounts, your tax rates, and the QuickBooks file you want us to post to.
Week 1-3: data migration
Customers, vehicles, parts master, open ROs, open deals, AR balances, and the last 24 months of closed ROs come over. We rebuild your canned job library and labor rate matrix from EVO's definitions. Every tax rate gets checked against state rules, and AR ties to the penny against your Legacy DMS report pack.
Week 3-4: training
Two live sessions per role (sales, service writer, tech, parts, F&I, admin) plus a playback video your team keeps. We write custom playbooks for any workflow your shop uses that differs from default.
Cutover weekend
Friday evening: final delta export from EVO. Saturday: delta merge into the WakeWorks tenant. Sunday: you run a shakeout RO and a shakeout deal while we watch the telemetry and confirm accounting hand-off to QuickBooks. Monday morning: you open for business on WakeWorks.
Total elapsed time: four to six weeks for a single-store dealer. Eight to twelve weeks for multi-store. Costs scale with RO volume and store count. We quote after the discovery call.
Pricing comparison
Legacy DMS uses bundled license tiers plus payment and financing surcharges. Depending on plan, a single-store marine dealer pays somewhere in the low four figures per month once all the add-ons stack up.
WakeWorks is feature-flag billed. You pay a base platform fee that covers sales, service, parts, CRM, auth, and the AI engine. Everything on top is a per-feature toggle you turn on when you want it:
- F&I: on when you sell financing. Off when you do not.
- Multi-store: on when you run more than one store. Off otherwise.
- Marketing automation: on when you want automated CRM sequences.
- Payments: Stripe pass-through, no added margin.
- Migration one-time fee: scales with RO volume, not seats.
A single-store shop running sales and service typically lands under $500 a month all in. A five-store operation with F&I and marketing on typically lands in the $1,500 to $2,500 range. We will quote your exact number on the demo call.
Frequently asked questions
Is WakeWorks only for marine dealers?
Yes. We do not serve powersports, auto, or RV. The schema, the workflows, the reports, and the AI prompts are tuned to boats, trailers, engines, and hours-based service. That focus is the reason we beat general DMS platforms on day-one fit.
Do you integrate with my existing payment processor?
We run Stripe natively and pass through the processor fees with no added margin. If you are locked into a processor contract with Legacy DMS, we keep the processor and integrate on top until your contract ends.
What about the Legacy DMS customer portal? Do my buyers lose that?
WakeWorks ships a customer portal too. Buyers sign deal docs, see RO status, pay balances, and review service history in a branded portal that lives at a subdomain of your dealership site.
Can I run WakeWorks and Legacy DMS in parallel during cutover?
For two to four weeks, yes. We keep Legacy DMS read-only so reports still render from it, while all new ROs and deals start in WakeWorks. This avoids the hard-stop risk of a single-weekend cutover for shops that want a softer ramp.
What happens to our historical reports?
All closed ROs from the last 24 months come over with full line items, parts, labor, and payment history. For anything older than that, we keep a read-only PDF archive accessible from the WakeWorks UI.
How do we see it working before we commit?
Book a 30-minute demo. We open WakeWorks on a sandbox preloaded with a dealership profile that matches your size. Bring a real RO or deal from Legacy DMS and we run it on the call.
See your own migration scope in under 30 minutes
We bring your Legacy DMS numbers to the demo call. You see the side-by-side against your real data.
Book the demoLast updated 2026-04-17. Feature and pricing comparisons based on publicly available Legacy DMS documentation as of that date. Legacy DMS and Legacy DMS are trademarks of their respective owners. This page is not affiliated with or endorsed by Legacy DMS.