Call Tracking Software for Small Business: An Honest Look at WhatConverts

If your phone rings because of an ad, you need call tracking software for small business before you need a bigger ad budget. Most owners can tell you what they spent on Google last month. Far fewer can tell you which keyword made the phone ring with the customer who actually paid. This post looks at WhatConverts, a lead-tracking tool from our Marketing Partners directory: what it does, what it costs, who it fits, who should skip it, and how it stacks up against CallRail.

Disclosure: the tool links below are affiliate links. If you buy through one, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Nobody paid for a place on this page or for a kinder write-up.

The problem: your best leads are invisible to your ad account

Online checkouts are easy to measure. A sale happens on the website, the pixel fires, and the ad platform knows exactly which click paid off. Service businesses, wholesale suppliers and anyone selling something expensive do not work that way. The customer clicks an ad, reads a page, and then picks up the phone. Or fills in a form. Or opens a chat window. The ad platform sees a click and nothing after it.

That gap has a cost. Without call and form data, Google’s bidding optimises toward clicks rather than customers, and you end up cutting the campaign that was quietly producing your best jobs while keeping the one that only produces tyre-kickers. We cover the wider version of this problem in why website visitors don’t convert; call tracking is the measurement half of the fix.

What WhatConverts actually does

WhatConverts records every lead — phone calls, web forms, chats and, on some plans, transactions — and tags each one with where it came from. In practice that means four things.

• Dynamic number insertion. Each website visitor sees a different tracking number, so when they call, the call is tied to their session: source, campaign, keyword and landing page. Calls still ring through to your normal line.
• Form and chat tracking. A tracking script captures form submissions and chats alongside calls, so all your leads sit in one list instead of three inboxes.
• Ad platform integrations. WhatConverts connects to Google Ads, Microsoft (Bing) and Facebook. With Google Ads it can send qualified conversions back, so the algorithm learns from real leads rather than raw clicks.
• Lead management and reporting. You can mark leads as quality or junk, add a sale value, and build reports. That last part is why so many marketing agencies use it: the reports are designed to be handed to a client.

The quality-marking step is the part that pays for itself. A call that lasted twenty seconds is not a lead. A call from an existing customer asking about an invoice is not a new lead. Once you mark leads honestly, the report stops counting noise and starts showing which ads produce revenue.

What it costs

WhatConverts publishes its plan prices. For a single business, the vendor’s pricing page and several independent trackers agree on roughly:

• Call Tracking — about $30/month (calls only)
• Plus — about $60/month (adds form and chat tracking)
• Pro — about $100/month
• Elite — about $160/month (adds deeper attribution features)

Agency plans with unlimited client accounts start around $500/month. There is a 14-day free trial with full access.

Here is the part the headline price hides: WhatConverts is usage-based. Each plan includes a monthly usage allowance, and anything beyond it is deducted from a prepaid balance. Independent reviews report tracking numbers at a few dollars a month each, call minutes at a few cents, and extra forms or chats at around ten cents each. Unused allowance does not roll over. None of that is outrageous, but it means your bill moves with your lead volume, and that is the single most common complaint in reviews. Check the current pricing page and run your own numbers through their calculator before you commit.

Who it fits

WhatConverts earns its place if you spend money on ads and your leads arrive by phone, form and chat. That covers a lot of small businesses: local service companies, B2B and wholesale suppliers, anyone taking custom or high-ticket orders, and agencies running campaigns for those businesses.

It is a particularly good fit if you run Google Ads with a meaningful monthly budget. Keyword-level call tracking is where the money is: once you can see that one keyword produces booked jobs and another produces nothing but price-shoppers, bid changes stop being guesswork. And if you already use a CRM, the lead data pairs naturally with the tools in our CRM and lead tracking round-up.

Who should skip it

• You sell entirely through an online checkout. Your store analytics and ad pixels already answer the attribution question. This includes most Amazon sellers — Amazon does not hand you customer phone calls to track in the first place.
• You don’t run paid ads. Call tracking is most valuable when there is a budget to steer. If all your work arrives by referral, a simple “how did you hear about us?” question may be enough.
• Your volume is very high and your margins are thin. Usage-based billing can climb quickly at high lead counts. Several reviewers say the pricing stopped making sense for them at scale.
• You want to identify anonymous website visitors. That is a different tool category. WhatConverts tracks people who contact you, not people who browse and leave.

WhatConverts vs CallRail

CallRail is the best-known alternative, and the two are closer than their marketing suggests. Both use dynamic number insertion, both integrate with Google Ads, both offer a 14-day trial, and both bill partly on usage — numbers, minutes and extras.

The differences that matter for a small business:

• Entry price. WhatConverts starts lower (about $30/month for calls only). CallRail’s entry plan is quoted by independent comparisons at roughly $45–$55/month, and it raised its top tier in 2026.
• Forms and chat. On WhatConverts, forms and chat come in at the Plus tier. CallRail bundles form tracking into some plans and sells conversation intelligence as an add-on. Compare the exact plan you would buy, not the headline.
• Who it is built for. WhatConverts leans toward agencies and marketers who want one lead list and client-ready reports. CallRail is the bigger, better-known platform and sells its own conversation-intelligence add-on for call analysis.

If calls are your main lead source and you want the better-known call platform, trial CallRail. If you want calls, forms and chats in one report at a lower starting price, trial WhatConverts. Running both trials against the same week of traffic is the honest way to decide.

FAQ

Will call tracking numbers hurt my local SEO?

It shouldn’t, if you set it up sensibly. Dynamic numbers are swapped in by a script only for the visitor sources you choose. The standard practice is to keep your real business number in your page code, on your Google Business Profile and in directory listings, so search engines see one consistent number.

Can I record calls?

Yes, WhatConverts can record and transcribe calls, with transcription billed per minute. Call-recording consent laws vary by state, so use a recorded greeting that tells callers the call may be recorded.

Is it worth it for a business spending a small amount on ads?

At the $30 entry tier, one extra booked job a month usually covers it. The bigger risk is not the price but never looking at the reports. If nobody will mark leads and adjust bids, save the money.

The bottom line

WhatConverts is a solid, honest piece of call tracking software for small business owners whose phones ring because of ads. It won’t fix a weak offer or a slow response time, but it will show you which ad spend is working. Watch the usage charges, mark your leads, and compare it against CallRail on your own traffic. You can see it alongside the rest of our partners in the Marketing Partners directory.

If you sell on Amazon as well, the attribution problem looks very different — our book Why Not to Sell on Amazon explains why owning your customer relationship matters, and the Amazon Seller’s Pocket Guide covers the numbers on the marketplace side.