Yes, contractors and trades businesses need their own website, even if you are already on Angi, HomeAdvisor, or Thumbtack. Those apps rent you leads, and they sell the same lead to several competing contractors at once. In 2023 the FTC ordered Angi’s HomeAdvisor to pay up to $7.2 million for misleading contractors about the quality of its leads. A website and Google Business Profile you own win direct leads from homeowners who found and chose you. Keep a lead app to fill a slow week if you want. Just stop building your business on leads you rent and share.
Isn’t being on Angi or Thumbtack enough?
Not if you want to keep what you earn. Lead platforms are rented discovery: you pay to appear, the platform owns the customer, and the same homeowner request gets sold to several contractors who then race to call first. You are buying the chance to win a job, not the job. And you never build anything of your own from it, no audience, no reviews on a profile you control, no repeat customer who remembers your name.
A website flips that. A homeowner searches, finds you, reads your reviews, sees your license and your past work, and contacts you directly. That lead is yours alone, it costs you nothing per lead, and it came from someone who already decided they liked you. The lead app becomes one channel instead of your whole business.
What do the lead apps actually cost you?
More than the per-lead price, because you are paying for a lead several of your competitors also bought. Per the FTC’s 2023 order, HomeAdvisor providers generally pay an annual membership fee of about $288 plus a separate fee for every lead. Thumbtack charges each time a customer contacts you, and those requests are not exclusive either.
| How the lead comes in | What it costs you | Who owns the lead |
|---|---|---|
| Angi / HomeAdvisor lead | ~$288/yr + a fee per lead, shared with several pros | The app |
| Thumbtack lead | Pay per contact, non-exclusive | The app |
| Your own website + Google profile | The build, then $0 per lead | You |
| A referral from your reviews | $0 | You |
This is the contractor version of a restaurant paying a third of every ticket to a delivery app. A lead app can make sense to fill a gap. It makes no sense as the foundation of a business, and a federal regulator has already fined the biggest one for how it sold those leads.
Do homeowners even look you up online?
They look before they ever call. About 98 percent of consumers use the internet to find a local business (BrightLocal, 2023), and 92 percent read reviews before their first visit (BrightLocal, 2025). Homeowners also want proof you are legitimate: roughly 70 percent worry about hiring an unreliable contractor and 41 percent say they have been deceived by one (Leaf Home and Morning Consult, 2025).
A clean website answers all of that in one place: your license and insurance, real photos of your work, your reviews, and an easy way to reach you. And 17 percent of small businesses still have no website at all (Clutch, 2025), so in a lot of local trades, simply having a good one puts you ahead of the shop down the road.
So should you cancel Angi and HomeAdvisor?
Not necessarily overnight, and any web designer who tells you to drop everything is not being straight with you. A lead app can genuinely help when you are brand new with no reviews yet, or when you need to fill a slow stretch. Use it for that.
But the goal is to graduate off it. Homeowners trust third-party lead platforms the least of any channel (just 14 percent) (Leaf Home and Morning Consult, 2025), while word of mouth and your own reputation win. Every job you land direct through your site is one you did not pay a per-lead fee for and did not share with three competitors.
What should a contractor or trades website actually include?
It does not need to be big. For most trades, a handful of pages does the job, as long as the things a homeowner needs to trust you and reach you are one tap away on a phone:
- Your services and the areas you serve, in plain language.
- Proof you are legitimate: license and insurance, stated clearly.
- Real before-and-after photos of your own work, not stock images.
- Your Google reviews, and a link to your Google Business Profile.
- Tap-to-call and an easy quote request, right at the top.
- Pricing or an instant quote tool. Homeowners are far more likely to call a contractor whose site shows pricing (66 percent), yet only 28 percent of contractors do it (Clear Seas Research, 2024). That gap is an easy win.
That last one is exactly what we built for Lansing Pavement Services: a custom instant-quote calculator plus before-and-after project galleries, so a homeowner gets a real number and sees the quality before they ever call. If you want the same, that is the heart of our web design work, and you can see how we approach a nearby market on our Lansing web design page.
What does a contractor website cost, and how do you start?
A professional trades site is one of the most affordable projects we take on, and it is built to pay for itself against what you would otherwise spend on shared leads. You can see current starting rates on our pricing page. Every project starts with a free homepage mockup, so you see the design on your own screen before you spend a cent.
