WhatConverts Review

Reviewed by Tom · Founder & lead reviewer

Who this is for

WhatConverts answers one question and it is an expensive question to get wrong: which marketing actually produced a paying customer. Not which produced clicks, not which produced form fills - which produced revenue.

The fit is precise. This is for businesses that spend money on advertising and whose best leads arrive by telephone. Home services, legal and medical practices, trades, dealerships, B2B firms with a long sales conversation, and the agencies who run marketing for all of them. In those businesses the highest-value enquiry is the one that never touches a form, which means the standard analytics stack sees the ad spend but not the outcome, and the campaign that quietly produces the good calls looks identical to the campaign that produces nothing.

The poor fit is equally clear, and the cons on this page say it outright: if you run no paid traffic, this is more tool than you need. A content site monetised by affiliate links or display advertising has no campaign budget to reallocate, which is the entire mechanism by which this pays for itself. The same applies to a pure ecommerce checkout where the transaction is the conversion and the platform already reports it.

There is a third profile worth naming because it is the strongest case of all: the agency reporting to clients. Being able to show a client recorded calls attributable to specific keywords, tagged with what each was worth, changes the nature of a retainer conversation. The listing on this page records an entry tier around thirty dollars a month; confirm current tiers and what they include before planning, because this category prices by tracked numbers and lead volume.

What it actually does

The platform is best understood as three layers: capture every lead, attribute it to a source, then let you mark what it was worth. Grouped by job:

• Call tracking - tracked phone numbers that swap dynamically on your site so the number a visitor sees is tied to how they arrived, with recordings and call detail against each lead
• Form tracking - form submissions captured with the full source path, without replacing your existing forms
• Chat and text tracking - conversations from chat widgets and SMS captured into the same lead record as calls and forms
• Attribution - each lead joined to its campaign, ad group, keyword, landing page, and referrer, rather than to a channel bucket
• Lead qualification and value - manual or rule-based marking of leads as qualified or junk, with a revenue figure attached, so reporting is by money rather than by count
• Reporting and dashboards - value and volume by source, keyword, and campaign, with scheduled reports and client-facing views for agencies
• Integrations - Google Ads and Analytics, the mainstream CRMs, and a webhook and API layer for pushing leads onward

How the pricing is structured

The listing here records an entry point around thirty dollars a month. We could not confirm the current tiers against the live pricing page for this update - check it before planning, because the structure below matters more than any single figure.

What drives cost in call-tracking platforms, in order:

Tracked phone numbers are the first dimension. Dynamic number insertion works by having a pool of numbers large enough that concurrent visitors do not share one, so more traffic means more numbers and a larger pool. If you run significant paid volume, ask specifically how pool sizing is calculated on your tier.

Call minutes are the second and are usually billed as an allowance plus an overage rate. A business with long consultative calls burns minutes far faster than one with short booking calls at the same lead count, so estimate from average call length rather than from lead count.

Lead volume and the number of tracked properties or client accounts form the third. Agencies are priced on how many client accounts they manage, which is the axis that matters for them and is worth negotiating.

Users and the more advanced reporting sit on the upper tiers, in the conventional place.

The cons on this page put it plainly: this is priced for businesses rather than hobby sites. The compensating argument is equally plain. If the platform identifies a single recurring campaign spending real money on leads that never buy, it has paid for a year in a month. That is not a promise, it is the arithmetic of the tool - and it only works if you actually act on what it shows.

Call tracking, and why the recordings are the point

Dynamic number insertion is the mechanism and it is worth understanding, because it is where implementations go wrong. A script on your site replaces the displayed phone number with a tracked one drawn from a pool, chosen according to how that visitor arrived. The call routes through to your real line, and the platform records which source the number was showing. To the caller nothing is different.

The consequence is that a phone call - previously the least measurable event in marketing - carries the same source detail as a click. Not merely paid search versus organic, but the specific campaign, ad group, keyword, and landing page.

Recordings are the part that changes behaviour rather than merely reporting. Two campaigns can produce the same number of calls at the same cost while one produces buyers and the other produces people who have misread the advertisement. A volume report cannot tell those apart; listening for ten minutes can. This is also the fastest way to discover that a campaign's problem is not the campaign at all but what happens after the phone is answered.

Two obligations come attached and neither is optional. Call recording is regulated, and consent requirements differ by jurisdiction - in some places one party's consent suffices, in others every party must be informed. Configure announcements accordingly and take your own legal advice rather than a platform default. And recordings of sales conversations are personal data: decide who may access them, how long they are retained, and how a deletion request is handled, before you accumulate thousands of them.

Lead value: the feature that separates this from analytics

Most attribution tools count conversions. Counting is where marketing budgets go wrong, because the cheapest lead is frequently the worst one.

The mechanism here is simple and manual by design. Each captured lead can be marked qualified or not, given a lead type, and given a value - a quote figure, a closed amount, an expected order size. Once enough leads carry a value, the reporting inverts: instead of cost per lead by campaign, you see revenue by keyword.

The effect on decisions is larger than it sounds. A campaign producing many cheap enquiries and a campaign producing few expensive ones look opposite on a cost-per-lead report and can look identical - or reversed - on a revenue report. Budget follows whichever report you actually read.

The honest cost is the discipline. This only works if someone marks leads consistently, which is a weekly habit rather than a setting. Rules and CRM integration automate part of it; judgement on quality is a person's job. Businesses that do not build the habit get an expensive call-tracking tool instead of an attribution tool. Before buying, decide who owns that task and when they will do it.

Integrations and getting your data out

The important integrations for this category are all present. Google Ads matters most, because pushing qualified leads and their values back as conversions lets the ad platform's bidding optimise toward revenue rather than toward form fills - that loop is arguably the highest-value thing this tool does. Google Analytics, the mainstream CRMs, and a webhook and API layer for anything else follow.

Run the specific check that matters here: verify your CRM connection exists and that it carries the fields you care about in the direction you need. Lead source flowing into the CRM is useful; closed-won value flowing back to the lead record is what turns a lead-tracking tool into a revenue-attribution tool. If that return path needs building by hand, know it before you commit.

On exit: lead records and their attribution data export, and the API allows a full extract. Recordings are the item to plan for specifically - they are large, they are sensitive, and a retention policy is easier to set on day one than on the day you leave.

One structural note: tracked phone numbers are provisioned by the platform, and moving providers means either porting numbers or changing them. If a tracked number ever reaches printed material, vehicle livery, or a long-lived listing, that becomes a real cost. Keep tracked numbers for digital sources and keep one permanent number of your own for anything printed.

Setup, learning curve, and support

The cons on this page note that initial setup takes configuring, and that is accurate rather than a complaint. The work is finite and front-loaded: install the script so number swapping fires everywhere including your landing pages, connect Google Ads and Analytics, decide your lead types and value rules, connect the CRM, and configure recording announcements for your jurisdiction. A day for a single business, longer across an agency's client list.

The classic implementation failure is partial coverage. A number that does not swap on one template, or a landing page outside the main site, produces leads with no source - and those unattributed leads quietly undermine confidence in every report. Test every page type that displays a phone number, including the mobile layout and any click-to-call button, before you trust the data.

Support is the strongest of the four scores on this page, and for a tool whose value depends on correct implementation that is the score that matters most. Telephony configuration, number pools, and consent settings are exactly the areas where documentation alone is not enough.

The last piece of setup is not technical: agree in advance what you will do when the data arrives. A report showing that a third of spend produces no revenue is only worth its price if someone is authorised to move the budget.

Limits and reasons to rule it out

Four honest reasons to walk away.

No paid traffic, no case. The mechanism is reallocating spend between sources. Without spend to reallocate, you are buying a reporting layer you do not need.

No phone leads, weaker case. If every enquiry arrives by form and your analytics already attributes them, the incremental value shrinks toward the qualification-and-value layer alone. That layer is genuinely useful, but it is a smaller purchase than the whole platform.

Nobody to do the qualifying. Without the weekly habit of marking leads and attaching values, the reporting reverts to counting, which is what you already had. Be honest about whether this habit will survive a busy month.

Compliance appetite. Call recording brings consent requirements, retention decisions, and access control. That is manageable and thousands of businesses manage it, but if you have no appetite for the policy work, use the platform with recording disabled and accept that you lose the feature that changes behaviour most.

A fifth, smaller point: the reporting is built around lead attribution rather than general web analytics. It is not a replacement for your analytics platform and does not try to be.

Alternatives and adjacent tools

Leadfeeder is the closest neighbour on this site and it solves the opposite half of the problem. WhatConverts identifies the source of leads who contacted you; Leadfeeder identifies companies that visited and did not. Neither replaces the other, and plenty of B2B teams run both. WhatConverts vs Leadfeeder sets the two out directly.

For outbound rather than inbound, Apollo.io is the adjacent purchase - a contact database and sequencing engine for reaching out, where this tool measures what comes in. Salesflare is the CRM to pair with if lead records currently live in a spreadsheet, since the qualification and value layer here works far better when a CRM is feeding closed-won figures back.

If the leads are arriving but the campaigns behind them need work, Semrush covers the research and competitive side, and Instapage or Leadpages cover the landing pages those campaigns point at - the two places where an attribution report most often sends you next.

CallRail is the name that comes up most often against WhatConverts in this category and is not reviewed here yet. The short version is that they overlap heavily on call tracking, and the usual argument for WhatConverts is the lead-value and qualification layer sitting on top rather than the telephony itself. Price both against your own number pool and minute requirements.

Common questions

Do callers know the number is tracked? No - the routing is invisible and the call reaches your normal line. What they may hear, depending on how you configure it, is a recording announcement, which in many jurisdictions is required.

Is call recording legal? It depends entirely on where you and the caller are. Some jurisdictions require only one party's consent, others require all parties to be informed. The platform provides announcements and configuration; the obligation to get this right is yours, and it is worth ten minutes of proper advice.

Will tracked numbers hurt my local SEO? The standard practice is to keep your real number in your business listings and structured data, and use tracked numbers for campaign traffic. Implement it that way and the concern does not arise; implement it carelessly and it can.

Can it tell me revenue, not just leads? That is the point of the lead-value layer, and it works to the extent that someone attaches values consistently. Connect the CRM so closed-won figures flow back and the reporting becomes genuinely revenue-based rather than estimate-based.

What happens to my tracked numbers if I leave? They are provisioned by the platform, so leaving means porting or replacing them. Keep tracked numbers out of print and vehicle livery and this stays a minor task.

Is it worth it below a certain ad spend? Judge it against the spend you might reallocate rather than against your total budget. If a few hundred dollars a month is genuinely at risk of being wasted, the subscription is defensible. If your entire monthly spend is smaller than the subscription, it is not.

The verdict

For a business that advertises and takes enquiries by telephone, WhatConverts removes the most expensive habit in marketing, which is guessing. Tying calls, forms, and chats to the keyword that produced them - and then marking what each was worth - converts a cost-per-lead report into a revenue report, and those two reports frequently recommend opposite decisions.

Three things to settle before you buy. Estimate your number pool and call minutes rather than your lead count, because that is what the bill tracks. Verify the CRM integration carries closed-won value back to the lead record, since that return path is what makes the reporting real. And name the person who will mark lead quality each week, because without that habit this is an expensive call-tracking tool rather than an attribution tool.

Skip it if you run no paid traffic, if no leads arrive by phone, or if recording compliance is work you will not do. Otherwise this is one of the higher-return subscriptions a service business or agency can hold. Current tiers, number and minute allowances are on the platform - confirm them before you plan, using the link below.

Best for

Marketers and agencies who spend on ads and need to know which campaigns produce real, paying leads.