Best Ping Post Software 2026: Top 5 Ping Post Platforms Ranked

A ping post platform runs a real-time auction for each lead: buyers bid on a partial lead, and the full lead goes to the highest bid above your floor. Choose one by auction speed, bid floor controls, per-lead bid logs, and fallback routing. For most pay-per-lead and pay-per-call agencies, Lead Distro AI ranks first.

This page ranks five platforms: Lead Distro AI, Boberdoo, LeadProsper, CAKE, and Retreaver. Ping post (also written pingpost or ping-post) lets you capture the market price for every lead instead of one fixed rate. The platform you pick decides how much of that auction value you keep.

Last Updated: October 21, 2026

Key Takeaways

• Lead Distro AI is the best overall ping post platform for PPL and pay-per-call agencies that want lead scoring, real-time P&L, and unified lead and call management in a single dashboard
• Boberdoo is the strongest option for high-volume operations processing 100,000+ leads per month that need deep ping post customization
• CAKE adds affiliate attribution to ping post, making it the right pick for agencies that run affiliate programs alongside lead distribution
• Retreaver is built for pay-per-call bidding, running real-time call auctions the way data-lead platforms run bid auctions for form leads, with usage-based pricing from $0.05 per minute and no monthly platform fee (as of October 2026)
• LeadProsper suits operators who want straightforward ping post with published pricing: a $500/mo base plan, billed monthly (as of September 2026)
• Ping post monetization comes from competition: when three or four buyers bid on the same lead, the winning bid can land above the single fixed price one buyer would pay, and a bid floor stops you selling below your minimum
• The five critical evaluation criteria: auction speed and buyer timeouts (published timeouts range from 2 seconds to 45 seconds), bid floor controls, full bid analytics per lead, fallback routing when no buyer clears the floor, and consent handling

This page is the focused Top 5 head-to-head. Need a wider comparison? See our 7-platform ping post comparison for Standard Information, LeadsPedia, PingTree Systems, and three more platforms. If you also need round robin, weighted, and waterfall routing, not just auctions, see our ranking of the best lead distribution platforms.

New to the model? Read the definitive ping post guide or the seven-layer ping post architecture walkthrough first. Selling in one vertical? Our vertical guides cover the extra filters each one needs, for example ping post software for mortgage lead sellers (loan type, credit band, and state licensing filters). Ready to try it? Start your free trial of Lead Distro AI. Ping post is included on the Growth plan ($497/mo) and above.

What Is Ping Post Software?

Ping post software runs a two-step auction for every lead. First, the platform sends a "ping": a partial lead with no name, phone, or email, only the qualifying fields buyers price on (state, ZIP, loan type, coverage type, case type). Each buyer returns a bid within a short timeout. Second, the platform "posts" the full lead to the highest bid that clears your floor, and logs every bid.

In auction terms, a parallel ping is close to a first-price sealed-bid auction: every buyer bids at the same time without seeing the others, and the winner pays its own bid. Boberdoo, one of the oldest vendors in the category, describes the effect simply: with ping post, "any number of companies can compete for your leads", and bidding happens in fractions of a second.

Good ping post software adds the controls around that auction: bid floors, buyer caps and filters, a fallback route for unsold leads, and a full bid log per lead.

What Is a Ping Post Campaign?

A ping post campaign is one lead type sold through one auction setup: the ping fields, the buyers allowed to bid, their caps and filters, your floor, and the fallback route. Most operators run one campaign per vertical and lead type, such as shared versus exclusive, because buyers price them differently.

Every campaign should also carry proof of consent. Telemarketing calls to the consumer are governed by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (47 U.S.C. § 227), so most buyers want a consent certificate, such as an ActiveProspect TrustedForm certificate ID, inside the ping or the post before they bid.

The 5 Best Ping Post Platforms for 2026

1. Lead Distro AI: Best Overall

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What it is: Lead Distro AI is a modern lead distribution platform built for pay-per-lead and pay-per-call agencies. It handles data leads and inbound calls under one roof, with ping post as the revenue optimization layer for form leads and the option to run your own ring tree for calls on Growth.

Best for: PPL agencies and lead brokers running ping post alongside data lead distribution and pay per call who want a single P&L view across all channels.

Lead Distro AI's ping post engine completes the full auction cycle in under 200 milliseconds. When a lead arrives, a ping fires to all eligible buyers simultaneously. Buyers respond with bids within a configurable timeout (2 to 5 seconds). The highest bidder above the configured floor wins and receives the full lead post within 200ms of auction close. Every bid, rejection, and post is logged per lead, giving you a complete audit trail.

What sets Lead Distro AI apart from pure ping post tools is the integration: lead scoring runs before the ping fires so buyers bid on pre-qualified leads, and auction revenue feeds the real-time P&L dashboard alongside data lead and call revenue. One platform, one margin number.

Key ping post features:

• Sub-200ms post delivery after auction close
• Configurable bid floors per campaign, state, or lead criteria
• Full bid history logged per lead for complete auction transparency
• Lead scoring before ping fires, so buyers bid on quality-scored inventory
• Fallback waterfall routing if no buyer bids above floor
• Every eligible buyer pinged in each auction, in parallel or as a sequential ping tree

Pricing: $297/mo Starter, $497/mo Growth, Scale by quote. Ping post is included on Growth and Scale.

Free trial: 7-day free trial. Credit card required.

Pros:

• Combines lead scoring, real-time P&L, and call tracking with ping post for form leads in one account
• Transparent per-plan pricing, with ping post from $497/mo (no custom quote required to start)
• Sub-200ms post delivery after auction close

Cons:

• Newer platform (launched March 2026) compared to Boberdoo's 25+ years in lead distribution (since 2001)
• Call tracking is usage-based (per-number monthly fee plus per-minute rate) on top of platform subscription

Start your free trial | Take the product tour

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2. Boberdoo: Best for High-Volume Custom Ping Post

What it is: Boberdoo is a veteran lead distribution platform that has built lead distribution software since 2001 (25+ years). In our view, it offers a highly customizable ping post engine for operations running at enterprise scale.

Best for: High-volume lead operations processing 100,000+ leads per month that need deep ping post customization.

Boberdoo's ping tree compares exclusive and shared bids to pick the most profitable path, and falls back to the next best bid when a buyer rejects. Buyers can set bids by any lead field, including location. In our view, high-volume lead generators who need granular control over bid parameters and buyer-specific logic will find Boberdoo's ping post engine very flexible.

Key ping post features:

• Ping post engine built on 25+ years of lead distribution software (since 2001)
• Ping tree that falls back to the next best bid when a buyer rejects
• Six distribution methods, including waterfall and best price
• Bid Experiments to A/B test ping post bids

Pricing: From $1,075/mo (up to 25 inbound actions a day), billed monthly, plus a $250 one-time setup fee (as of September 2026). No free trial; boberdoo offers a live demo.

Pros:

• Deep customization of ping post logic (our view)
• 25+ years building lead distribution software (since 2001)
• Month-to-month billing, with the same features on every tier and unlimited users, buyers, and vendors (boberdoo's pricing page, fetched October 21, 2026)

Cons:

• Higher entry price for ping post than Lead Distro AI ($1,075/mo versus $497/mo for the Lead Distro AI Growth plan that includes ping post, both billed monthly, as of September 2026)
• Lead scoring (leadQC) costs $0.20 per lead on top of the monthly fee

See how Lead Distro AI compares to Boberdoo.

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3. LeadProsper: Best for Simple Ping Post at Small Scale

What it is: LeadProsper is a lead distribution platform with ping post (including a highest-bidder mode) and, in our view, a user-friendly interface.

Best for: Small to mid-size lead sellers who want straightforward ping post without building a complex system from scratch.

LeadProsper handles ping-post auctions with a highest-bidder mode and buyer filters. In our view, the interface is approachable, which makes it a reasonable starting point for operators who are new to ping post distribution. LeadProsper starts at $500/mo, billed monthly, which includes 5,000 leads, 200,000 pings, and 200,000 pre-pings (as of September 2026).

Key ping post features:

• Highest-bidder ping post mode
• Filters and routes on any field in the lead
• TrustedForm, Jornaya LeadiD, Anura, and Xverify integrations
• Complimentary onboarding and training for new accounts
• Up to 30 seconds allowed for a ping request, and a post accepted up to 1 hour after the ping (as of October 2026)

Pricing: $500/mo base plan, billed monthly, with tiered overage above the included volume (as of September 2026).

Pros:

• Complimentary onboarding and training
• Unlimited suppliers, buyers, and campaigns
• No feature paywalls: every customer gets the full feature set

Cons:

• $500/mo monthly minimum, even at low volume (as of September 2026)
• No free trial: sign-up is through a sales call and billing starts at sign-up

See how Lead Distro AI compares to LeadProsper.

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4. CAKE: Best for Affiliate-Driven Ping Post

What it is: CAKE is a performance marketing platform that combines affiliate tracking, lead distribution, and ping post in a single system. It is built for agencies that run affiliate programs alongside their lead distribution operation.

Best for: Mid-to-large agencies that manage affiliate publishers as part of their lead supply chain and want ping post, affiliate tracking, and offer management in one platform.

CAKE's lead distribution product supports ping post, including pinging several buyers at once and collecting their bid prices, while its affiliate software handles click tracking, sub-affiliates, and payouts. In our view, for agencies where the affiliate relationship is as important as the distribution relationship, CAKE connects both sides of the business.

Key ping post features:

• Ping post with asynchronous pings to several buyers at once
• Affiliate click tracking, sub-affiliates, and payout tiers
• Offer management with targeting rules, payout tiers, and caps
• Lead routing by buyer rank, round robin, weighted price, and buyer volume
• Default buyer timeout of 2 seconds, changeable per buyer contract

Pricing: No published prices (demo request only), as of September 2026.

Pros:

• Affiliate click tracking, sub-affiliates, and payouts live in the same platform as lead distribution
• Buyer Portal, one-click lead returns, and duplicate detection built in
• Offer management built in

Cons:

• No published prices, so budgeting starts with a demo request
• In our view, best suited to affiliate-first networks rather than simple lead brokerages

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5. Retreaver: Best for Pay-Per-Call Ping Post

What it is: Retreaver is call tracking and call routing software with real-time bidding (RTB) that routes each call to the highest-bidding buyer. It serves publishers, networks, and advertisers.

Best for: Call-only operations that want to run real-time call auctions with dynamic number insertion.

Retreaver's real-time bidding routes each call to the highest-bidding buyer in real time. Dynamic number insertion (DNI) replaces numbers on landing pages so you can track visitors, personas, and keywords, and form data from lead forms can be appended to the call.

Key ping post features:

• Real-time bidding (RTB) that routes calls to the highest-bidding buyer
• Dynamic number insertion for source and keyword tracking
• Form data appended to calls
• SkipThrough adaptive IVR that asks only the pre-qualifying questions available buyers need

Pricing: Pay-as-you-go with no mandatory monthly platform fee or contract. Retreaver's pricing guide lists call usage starting at $0.05 per minute and number rental at $1 per number per month, with no extra charge for real-time bidding (Retreaver pricing guide, last updated March 18, 2026, fetched October 21, 2026). Rates may vary with volume.

Pros:

• Free trial with self-serve sign-up
• DNI plus tag-based routing on any contact attribute
• AI call transcription with intent and disposition analysis

Cons:

• Pricing scales with call minutes and numbers rather than a flat plan, so budget from your call volume

See how Lead Distro AI compares to Retreaver.

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Ping Post Platform Comparison Table

Not verified: we could not confirm this on the vendor's own website as of September 2026. Check with the vendor.

Ping Post Monetization: How Auctions Raise Revenue Per Lead

Ping post monetization is the gap between what one buyer pays at a fixed price and what the best of several buyers will pay right now. A fixed-price buyer prices for its average lead. In an auction, each buyer prices the specific lead in front of it, so a lead that one buyer values highly (the right state, the right loan size, inside business hours) sells at that buyer's price instead of the average.

Three levers decide how much of that gap a seller keeps:

• Buyer depth. In our view, two bidders rarely beat a good fixed price. The more buyers that bid on the same lead type, the more often one of them values a given lead highly.
• The floor. The floor is the lowest bid you accept. Set it near today's fixed price, then raise it when buyers keep winning at the floor.
• The fallback. Leads that nobody wins at the floor go to a direct post buyer or a waterfall, so the auction never costs you a sale.

The bid log is what makes this measurable: you see every buyer's bid on every lead, not just the winner.

A Worked Example: One Lead, Four Bids

The numbers below are an illustration to show the mechanics, not market data. Your prices depend on the vertical, the lead, and your buyers.

Say you sell auto insurance leads to one buyer at a fixed $30. You switch the campaign to ping post with four buyers and a $32 floor. For one lead, the bids come back like this:

That lead sells for $41 instead of $30. Now assume, for illustration, that over 1,000 leads in a month the auction clears the floor on 700 leads at an average winning bid of $38, and the other 300 fall back to your fixed-price buyer at $30. Revenue is 700 x $38 + 300 x $30 = $35,600, against $30,000 at a flat $30. The $5,600 difference pays for the software many times over, and the bid log tells you which buyers drove it.

What the Auction Changes on Your Margin

Revenue is not profit. Suppose, for illustration, each lead costs you $22 to generate. At a flat $30 you keep $8 per lead, or $8,000 on 1,000 leads. At the blended $35.60 per lead above, you keep $13.60, or $13,600. Revenue rose 18.7% and margin rose 70%, because your cost did not change. This is arithmetic on assumed prices, not a forecast, so rerun it with your own cost per lead. For selling as a publisher, see ping post lead generation; for how the bid request is built, see how bid requests work.

The same math can run the other way. If the average winning bid sits below your old fixed price, keep the fixed-price buyer as primary and run ping post only on the lead types where buyers compete.

What to Look for in a Ping Post Platform

Auction Speed and Timeouts

The time from ping to post matters because consumers move on if contact is delayed. Sub-500ms post delivery is the target for data leads. Lead Distro AI completes the cycle in under 200ms from auction close. The second number to check is the timeout, meaning how long a buyer has to bid. Vendors publish very different values (checked October 21, 2026):

A short timeout keeps the consumer experience fast but shuts out slow buyer endpoints. Test each buyer's real response time before you set yours. For direct post versus auction speed trade-offs, see ping post vs direct post.

Bid Floor Controls

Your floor price is your margin protection. Can you set floors per campaign, per state, or per individual lead criteria? Flexible floor controls mean you never sell below minimum on high-value inventory, regardless of which buyer wins the auction.

Bid Analytics

Every bid from every buyer on every lead should be logged. This data tells you whether your floors are set correctly (if buyers frequently win at the floor, raise it), which buyers are most competitive (giving you leverage to negotiate better direct rates), and which lead types command the highest prices in your network.

Fallback Routing

What happens when no buyer bids above your floor? A fallback waterfall ensures every lead has a home: either a direct post buyer at a fixed rate or a secondary network. Without fallback routing, leads that fail the auction go unsold.

Lead Scoring Integration

Buyers who receive pre-scored leads bid more confidently and pay more. If your platform can score leads before the ping fires and include the quality score in the ping payload, your buyers have better data to bid on, which drives higher average bids across your entire auction volume.

Ping Post Platform Selection Checklist

Score every platform on these eight questions before you start a trial or demo:

1. Lead types. Form leads, calls, or both? Form leads use ping post; calls use real-time bidding (RTB).
2. Entry price and billing basis. Monthly or annual, setup fee, and any per-lead, per-ping, or per-minute charges.
3. Auction controls. Floors per campaign or state, parallel pings versus a sequential ping tree, and a per-buyer timeout.
4. Bid log. Every bid on every lead, visible to you.
5. Fallback. A direct post buyer or waterfall for leads that miss the floor.
6. Consent handling. TrustedForm or Jornaya tokens captured at the form and forwarded in the post.
7. Lead scoring before the ping. Whether it exists, and whether it costs extra (boberdoo's leadQC is $0.20 per lead; Lead Distro AI includes lead scoring on every plan).
8. Trial and exit. Free trial or demo only, and month-to-month terms or a contract.

How to Sell Leads on a Ping Post System

Selling leads through ping post takes the same four steps on any platform.

1. Line up buyers who accept pings. Most large lead buyers in insurance, legal, mortgage, and solar run their own ping endpoint. Ask each buyer for their ping and post specs: the fields they want in the ping, their response timeout, and how they return a bid.
2. Map your fields once. The platform translates each lead into every buyer's format, so you do not rebuild a form for each buyer.
3. Set a floor price. The floor is the lowest bid you accept. Start near the fixed price you get today, then raise it when buyers keep winning at the floor.
4. Add a fallback. Leads that no buyer wins go to a direct post buyer or a waterfall, so nothing goes unsold.

In Lead Distro AI you add each buyer's ping and post endpoints to the campaign, and the ping post API integration guide shows the exact payloads. If you are new to the terms, the ping tree guide explains how a sequential ping tree differs from a parallel auction.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best ping post software?

The best ping post software for most pay-per-lead and pay-per-call agencies in 2026 is Lead Distro AI, because it runs data-lead and call auctions in one account, posts the winning lead in under 200 milliseconds, logs every bid, and starts at $497 per month on the Growth plan with a 7-day free trial (credit card required). Boberdoo fits operations above 100,000 leads per month that need deep custom bid logic. LeadProsper suits sellers who want simple ping post with published pricing, CAKE suits affiliate networks, and Retreaver suits call-only auctions.

What is ping post?

Ping post (also written pingpost or ping-post) is a way to sell one lead to the highest of several buyers in real time. The seller first sends a ping, a partial lead without contact details, to every eligible buyer. Each buyer answers with a bid. The seller then posts the full lead to the highest bid above a floor price. If nobody clears the floor, the lead goes to a fallback buyer. The whole cycle usually takes a few seconds, so the consumer is contacted while still interested.

How does ping post monetization work?

Ping post monetization works by letting several buyers compete for each lead instead of selling it at one fixed price. Each buyer bids on the specific lead in front of it, so leads that a buyer values highly sell at that buyer's price. A floor price protects your minimum, and a fallback buyer catches leads that nobody wins. Sellers tend to keep more revenue when more buyers bid on the same lead type and when they raise the floor as the bid log shows buyers winning at it. See the worked example above for the math.

What is a ping post campaign?

A ping post campaign is one lead type sold through one auction setup. It defines the fields you collect, which of those fields go into the ping (never the consumer's name, phone, or email), which buyers can bid, their caps and filters, your floor price, and where unsold leads go. Most sellers run a separate campaign per vertical and per lead type, such as shared versus exclusive, because buyers price them differently.

What is the best ping post platform for my vertical?

The best ping post platform depends on your vertical and volume. Lead Distro AI suits agencies that sell insurance, legal, mortgage, or solar leads and want lead scoring, floors by state and lead type, and a real-time P&L. Boberdoo fits operations above 100,000 leads per month that need custom bid logic. LeadProsper suits simple setups with published pricing, and CAKE suits affiliate-heavy supply. Each vertical has its own filters, so read the guides for insurance, legal, mortgage, and solar.

How much does ping post software cost?

Published entry prices for ping post, billed monthly, are $440 per month (Ping Tree Systems Standard), $497 (Lead Distro AI Growth), $500 (LeadProsper, with 5,000 leads and 200,000 pings included), and $1,075 (Boberdoo, plus a $250 setup fee), as of September 2026. CAKE does not publish rates. Retreaver has no monthly platform fee and lists calls from $0.05 per minute (October 2026). Lead Distro AI includes ping post from Growth, with a 7-day free trial (credit card required).

What is the best Boberdoo alternative for ping post?

For most pay-per-lead and pay-per-call agencies under 30,000 leads per month, Lead Distro AI is the strongest Boberdoo alternative for ping post. Ping post starts at $497 per month on the Growth plan, versus Boberdoo's $1,075 per month plus a $250 setup fee, and you can start a 7-day trial instead of booking a demo. Lead scoring is included, where Boberdoo charges $0.20 per lead for leadQC. Boberdoo remains the stronger fit above 100,000 leads per month when you need deep custom bid logic. See the full Lead Distro AI vs Boberdoo comparison.

How do I sell leads to multiple buyers at the same time?

Use ping post. The platform sends a partial lead with no contact details to every eligible buyer at once, each buyer returns a bid, and the full lead goes to the highest bid above your floor. Lead Distro AI runs this auction in under 200 milliseconds and falls back to a direct post buyer or a waterfall when nobody clears the floor. If you prefer fixed prices, round robin and weighted distribution also split leads across several buyers without an auction.

What is the difference between ping post and direct post?

Ping post is a two-step delivery method: a partial lead "ping" goes to multiple buyers to collect bids, then the full lead is "posted" to the highest bidder. Direct post skips the auction and sends the full lead to a single buyer at a pre-negotiated fixed price. Ping post usually earns more per lead where several buyers compete. Direct post is more predictable and works better with one dominant buyer or thin auction competition. Most high-volume agencies run both.

What is the difference between ping post and waterfall routing?

Waterfall routing sends a lead to your first buyer, waits for acceptance or rejection, then moves to the next buyer in sequence. Ping post sends a partial lead to all buyers simultaneously and lets them compete in a real-time auction. Ping post is faster for the consumer and earns more per lead in competitive markets. Waterfall is more predictable when buyer pricing is similar. Most agencies use both: ping post first, waterfall as the fallback when no bid clears the floor.

What timeout should I set for ping post bids?

Set the buyer timeout to what each buyer's endpoint can reliably meet, usually 2 to 5 seconds for form leads. Published defaults differ by platform (checked October 21, 2026). CAKE defaults to 2 seconds (2,000 milliseconds) per buyer contract and lets you change it. LeadProsper allows up to 30 seconds for a ping request and accepts a post up to 1 hour after the ping. Boberdoo sets ping response time per source, agreed with the vendor. Shorter timeouts keep the consumer experience fast, while longer ones let slower buyers bid.

Do I need consent proof to run ping post?

Most buyers require proof of consent before they bid or accept the post, because calls and texts to a consumer fall under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (47 U.S.C. § 227). In practice, the seller captures a consent certificate at the form, such as a TrustedForm or Jornaya token, and passes it with the ping or the post. Never put the consumer's name, phone, or email in the ping. Ask each buyer for its exact consent requirements, and ask your own lawyer about your obligations. This is not legal advice.

Can I run ping post for pay-per-call?

Yes, but the mechanics differ. Pay-per-call platforms run real-time bidding (RTB) on the live call, so buyers bid and the call routes to the winner. Retreaver says it routes calls to the highest-bidding buyers in real time, with no extra charge for RTB (as of October 2026). Lead Distro AI handles form leads and inbound calls in one account, with ping post for leads and the option to run your own ring tree on the Growth plan ($497 per month). Check each platform's call bidding specs before you commit.

The Bottom Line

Ping post is the revenue optimization layer of a mature lead distribution operation. The right platform determines how much of your leads' market value you actually capture. Lead Distro AI delivers sub-200ms auction speed, rule-scored pings, full bid analytics per lead, and a unified P&L across data leads and calls, so you can run ping post lead distribution at scale with full visibility into your margins.

For agencies focused on high-volume custom deployments, Boberdoo's 25+ years in lead distribution (since 2001) is hard to replace. For affiliate-heavy operations, CAKE pairs affiliate tracking with lead distribution in one platform. For call-only agencies, Retreaver's real-time call bidding is, in our view, the most purpose-built option in this comparison.

For a broader benchmarking exercise across seven platforms, see our complete 7-platform best ping post software comparison, which adds Standard Information, PingTree Systems, and LeadsPedia to the set. To explore how our auction engine works in practice, take the product tour before your first auction goes live.