HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack, and Angi all promise leads. They deliver — but at a cost most contractors don't fully understand until they do the math.
With a lead service you pay for each lead, and the same homeowner is often sent to several contractors at once. You pay whether you win the job or not, and you're competing on price from the first call, because the homeowner is collecting quotes.
The Organic SEO Alternative
When a homeowner finds your Google Business Profile or your website for "[your service] in [your city]" and calls you, the lead comes straight to you. Nobody sold the same lead to anyone else. The homeowner may still call around, but you're not one of several contractors who were each handed their number.
You still have to win the job. But you're not racing other contractors to call the same number, and there's no fee per lead.
It isn't free. A site and a Google Business Profile take work to build and keep up, and it takes time: new pages usually start showing in Google within weeks 3–6, and nobody honest can promise you a ranking. The difference is that you're paying for your own visibility, not renting a spot on someone else's lead list.
Do the Math With Your Own Numbers
Pull last year's invoices from every lead service you use and add up what you paid. Then count the jobs you actually closed from those leads. Divide the first number by the second. That's what each job really cost you in lead fees, before the time you spent chasing the ones that went nowhere.
Do the same math for any website or SEO company you pay, including us. A local lead system from SolutionDG is from $249/month plus a one-time $999 setup. Our monthly report counts the leads that came in; you count the jobs they turned into. It's month-to-month, so if the math stops working, you can stop paying.
Either way, judge it on jobs, not on how many leads someone says they sent you. Your domain and your leads stay yours.
